Thursday, October 27, 2005

The White Sox are world champions...

...and I have the most excruciating pain in my side. Given a choice of which one I could handle easier, it'd be the pain in my side by a landslide.

It's not that I'm not...happy...for the White Sox -- if at least one defines happy as the same feeling as being told you've won 100 million dollars, only to be told afterwards that to keep the money you had to go celibate for the rest of your life -- I mean, I'm sure they worked hard for their championship, blood, sweat, tears (mostly mine as they got closer), etc.

But, well, perhaps it's my continued agony in Royals fandom, and that 90% of my interaction with White Sox fans as a Royals fan have been...poor...and that the same 90% of interaction with those White Sox fans had to have been the most unintellectual pieces of conversation I've ever had the displeasure of having.

Perhaps it's the North Side/South Side hype that has gotten to me, and the White Sox's perceived persona -- bad guys, wearing black, rowdy fans, their stadium of U.S. Cellular One that's nicknamed "the Cell" -- that put them on my short list of Most Hated Baseball Franchises.

Maybe it's the fact that they picked up Dustin Hermanson, and got a lot of very good relief pitching out of him that could have been to the Giants' benefit early in the 2005 season, had they re-signed him. Maybe it's picking up "Double Play" A.J. Pierzynski, and having that rat bastard on their team while they won a World Series, with him taking center stage in the LCS against the Angels with his "savvy" play on that strikeout, running to 1st base after the caught strikeout pitch was rolled away (it was savvy, and it was smart, but it's smart and savvy like running all the way around the bases on a close but obvious foul ball, just in case the umps change their minds -- yeah, you're smart and savvy, but there's still no way you should get away with it).

Or, finally, maybe it's watching the first two games of the Series and realizing how flawed the Astros were, and thinking that despite the fact that they outplayed the Cardinals in the LCS and deserved to go to the World Series, that the Cardinals would've matched up much better than they did to Chicago. I mean, there's no way that the Cardinals would've allowed the White Sox to walk them 12 times in a game and not win. Albert Pujols, by himself, would've driven in more runs than the Astros scored in that game.

But this in no way hampers my ability to see what the White Sox are; a very good team that was simply better than every team they played against in the postseason. You don't whip through October only losing one game for nothing. Whatever Ozzie Guillen is doing, I hope some of it rubs off on Felipe Alou and Buddy Bell.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I stumbled across this blog. I too was not moved by the white sox. mainly because the white sox have been the ugly step daughter of chicago for so long that all these phony cubs fans have decided to root for them becuase the cubs want to be losers every year and they celebrate that. Im actually a yankee fan, and i know you probably hate us too, but we dont hate the royals, just george brett! :)

Daniel said...

Heh, it's a lot easier to not hate a team when you've been kicking their butt for years on end, although the Royals actually split with the Yanks in 2005. Usually though, it's wholesale slaughter and the Yanks are the butchers.

Thanks for stopping by.