Michael Rosenberg / Special to FOXSports.com
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The other day, I was watching baseball in the late afternoon because I'm a sportswriter and I'm allowed to call that "work."
The Red Sox's championship defense was about to end, and the announcers went on and on (and on and on) about how this was a tragedy for the American way of life because the greatest underdog story in the history of the republic was about to end.
And I'm thinking: HELLO!?!?
The Chicago White Sox should be America's team, at least for this month. In an era where everyone uses the word "respect," the White Sox have truly been disrespected, in every possible way — locally and nationally, this year and historically.
Since 1917, the White Sox have thrown as many postseason series as they have won. (We refer to the 1919 Black Sox scandal, when the White Sox fixed the World Series rather than take steroid tests. Or something like that. My history is fuzzy.) Yet the White Sox aren't even considered lovable losers in their own city because the Cubs last won a World Series in 1908. And the Cubs play in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, while Sox Park, as the locals call it, has a parking-garage motif.
Clearly, the White Sox's home is being held against them. Suffer for decades in Fenway Park and people write poems about your "valor." Suffer for decades in the second-best ballpark in your own city, then move to a place that's even more sterile, and people want nothing to do with you.
But true, die-hard White Sox fans might be the most resilient in sports. They have sat through a lot of bad baseball, ignoring the hipper crowd, cooler building and more popular team on the other side of town.
Look at the rest of the playoff bracket. We have all gotten teary-eyed at the thought that the Yankees might end their four-season World Series drought, but I'm not sure we can call that a curse just yet. Anaheim won the Series in 2002. Boston won last year. The Braves won in 1995. St. Louis won in 1982, which isn't quite 300 years ago, no matter what Cardinals fans say.
San Diego has never won it, but the Padres didn't belong in this postseason. And Houston has never won it, so we'll give them a little America's-team love, too.
But no team compares to the White Sox. If America fell in love with last year's self-proclaimed "idiots" from Boston, why not Ozzie Guillen's White Sox? Guillen is the king of inappropriate remarks. Like Charles Barkley, he gets away with it because, well, he's damn entertaining ... when you can make out his Spanglish.
"You can understand most of what he says," centerfielder Aaron Rowand recently told the Chicago Tribune. "Sometimes you don't. Sometimes he'll come up and say something and walk away, and you'll turn to the guy next to you and go, "What'd he just say? I didn't get that one.' "
Even in the context of this season, the White Sox are the best story in baseball. They were supposed to be mediocre; instead, they were far and away the best team in the American League for most of the season.
In the old days, we would have said they "find a way to win" and left it at that. But in 2005, you can't buy a Ballpark Frank without some stats-obsessed seamhead telling you that players who like mustard are four times as likely to see their OPS drop to substandard levels if they don't ramp up the EKG in the ICU. And so everyone said the White Sox would obviously fall apart — forget their record; the geek's stats say they aren't any good.
Then they did fall apart. And Cleveland won every game in sight. But just when we thought the White Sox were choking like Eddie Gaedel on a foot-long hot dog, they finished with a flourish. They just swept two teams — Cleveland and Boston — that were fighting for their playoff lives.
This is America's team. Or at least, it should be. All those fans in Kansas City, Detroit and Pittsburgh — who haven't come close to the playoffs in years — should adopt the Sox, at least for the month. The world loved watching the Red Sox finally win last year (or at least, the world who wasn't rooting for some other team.) This year's sweethearts have different color Sox. So let's pay attention, OK?
Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg is a frequent contributor for FOXSports.com.
Game 1 Line-ups:
Jose Contreras v. Paul Byrd
1.Chone Figgins 3b
2.Orlando Cabrerra ss
3.Vlad Guerrero dh
4.Garret Anderson lf
5.Bengie Molina c
6.Darrin Erstad 1b
7.Jaun Rivera rf
8.Steve Finley cf
9.Adam Kennedy 2b
1.Scott Podsednik lf
2.Tadahito Iguchi 2b
3.Jermaine Dye rf
4.Paul Konerko 1b
5.Carl Everett dh
6.Aaron Rowand cf
7.A.J. Pierzynski c
8.Joe Crede 3b
9.Juan Uribe ss
The '59 White Sox did an amazing thing. Fox and Aparicio...
Interesting article in #23... thanks.