Yuk! White Sox get whomped, 8-1
The Sox played the Twins tonight, and baseball lost (rim shot).
Yeah, old joke. Fitting, though, as the Sox got crushed in the rubber match in Minnesota, 8-1, in a game your 16-inch beer league team would be embarrassed to have played.
Time out for an etymological diversion
Ever wonder why we call the deciding contest of a three-game series a rubber game? No? Too bad, because you're going to find out anyhow, just to avoid talking about this actual game for a while.
Besides, remote learning is all the rage this year.
If you're a card player, you've probably assumed the term comes from bridge, where it takes two victories to complete a rubber. You'd be wrong.
The phrase did stop off at the card table for a few hands, but the term goes all the way to before the actual material rubber was known in any English-speaking domain, or even in Europe. The Aztecs and Mayans had put rubber to use in a way we can now appreciate, to create balls for their sports, but no one from across the big waters had dropped in to conquer and loot and murder and such yet when the sporting term of "rubber" was first used.
That was way back in the late 16th Century, and was in the English game of lawn bowling, wherein a ball that was left rubbing against another — a rub-ber — was a no-no. From lawn bowling to the card table to other sports and competitions to America.
Fascinating, eh, wot? Well, OK, maybe not, but a needed diversion after this travesty.
We now return to our regularly scheduled game. Regretfully.
First the good news — thanks to a misplayed Yasmani Grandal fly ball in the eighth, long after the outcome had been determined, the Sox ended up with officially as many hits as errors, at four of each.
The offense was offensive
Of course, had it not been for some very generous official scoring, that wouldn't have been the case. The Sox lone run came on:
- A Nick Madrigal infield single that was misplayed by Luis Arráez.
- A Tim Anderson fielder's choice that should have been a double play, but was blown by Arráez.
- A Yoán Moncada walk on a terrible ball four call, one of roughly 10,893 bad calls on the night, by the plate ump, the base umps and even the replay folks — evenly distributed so as to tick off both teams equally.
- A Grandal walk
- A José Abreu dribbler to the right side that Miguel Sanó booted around for a while and settled for a play at first.
Much credit for the Sox offensive ineptitude goes to José Barríos, whose slurve was nastier than a sow protecting a new litter of piglets. Still, the Twins D tried its best to give away runs and the Sox just wouldn't accept the offers.
The defense was much, much worse
No excuse for the defense, though, with every infielder screwing something up badly, and Eloy Jiménez blowing a fly ball to add to the fun.
The capper was a rundown play that started with a grounder to first with the decidedly un-fleet of foot Sanó on second, and ended up with the ball rolling happily along in foul territory as Sanó scored and the batter ended up on second. A Little League coach would have been apoplectic if his charges had shown such ineptitude on a play you're supposed to actually practice, but the Sox apparently don't.
As for the pitching
The umps actually saved the Sox in the first, making a bad call to give them a double play when a bad Madrigal throw meant Anderson wasn't on second when he caught the ball, a call somehow upheld on appeal when even Stoney and Jason said it should have been overturned. That got Reynaldo López out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam and meant he didn't have to get pulled ... until the second.
Maybe this outing will at least end any thought of ReyLo starting another major league game. Of course, we'd have to find an alternative.
Oh, yeah, one more piece of good news — of the eight Minnesota runs, it was a nice tie between earned and unearned.
Looking for highlight videos?
Then go to the Twins site. We had no highlights, unless you want to include Ricky Renteria deciding to pitch Jimmy Cordero for the 43rd consecutive game.
And now?
The Sox head to Kansas City for four games, down one to Cleveland and a half-game ahead of the Twins.