One more time: Once in a Lifetime
Hi, everyone. My name is Brett, and I’ve been a White Sox fan for 43 years.
When I took over South Side Sox two years ago, I wrote this piece, and today, modified, it makes sense to trot out again.
So, I'll ask it again: How did I get here?
My very first game at Comiskey Park was a June loss to the Yankees in the storied summer of 1977. Richie Zisk hit a home run deep to left-center field, over the roof and out of the park. Mind you, before the plate was moved up in the early 1980s, hitting a ball out of Comiskey Park was a rare and massive feat—more so when accomplished by the notoriously spaghetti-strand-swinging Chisox.
Compared to many others, I don't feel like I have rich and robust memories from my childhood. So what I do remember really stands out. While I don’t remember much from my first White Sox game, watching Zisk’s clout soar higher and higher, then disappearing to leave everyone sitting around me to wonder what happened, was magical. You don’t let go of that stuff.
A couple of years later, I was with a friend and his family at jacket day. We had general admission tickets, but for a sold-out weekend game, we couldn’t find four seats together. So we watched the game from a bench in the Picnic Area.
That's a bummer, right? No one wants to go to a game just to stare at Ralph Garr's back. Well, we lingered long enough after the game, somehow not getting shooed out of the park, that we eventually made our way down to the tobacco-stained White Sox dugout and snuck onto the field to run the bases, ending with a slide into home.
Glory was first and briefly glimpsed in 1983, when the club went from also-ran to world-beater in the space of one exceptional second half, losing only 15 games after July and winning the AL West by an almost-impossible 20 games.
That late dominance made the team’s frozen bats in the playoffs vs. Baltimore all the more heartbreaking. My dad had enough connections to the team to score us ALCS seats, although even a child might question those contacts when our prime, fifteen dollar seats were wedged into the armpit of old, support column-scarred Comiskey. The Orioles came to town and brutalized us, right in front of my naive eyes, 11-1. Ron Kittle hit a double in his first at-bat, and the next chance he had, O’s starter Mike Flanagan kneecapped Kitty, knocking him out of the series.
The last time I can remember crying over a defeat was the next day, watching on TV, when Britt Burns lost a 10-inning heartbreaker that knocked the 99-win White Sox out of the playoffs. Curse ye, Tito Landrum!
Things get a little muddled after that, from “The Hawk Wants You” to those detestable curly-C unis to Hawk & Wimpy’s you can put it on the board...YES! to the exploding plastic inevitable of the falling-short 1993 and (sort of) 1994 division winners.
In September 1990, I drove up from Texas to see the White Sox play in Comiskey for the last time, and fancied myself a pirate for peeling a few chips of white paint off of the walls as a souvenir when I left, not fully comprehending that in mere weeks the glorious Palace would be reduced to looter-luring rubble. Looking back, I wish I'd been around to pull a few bricks from the piles.
By April of the next year, I flew back up to Chicago to see the White Sox debut in “Comiskey Park II,” and the less said about that day, the better. I was still in school, and my Spanish professor made fun of me for missing class to see a baseball game. Turns out, he was right.
At the end of the decade, I responded to getting what remains the best job in sports I’ve ever had by immediately taking a day off to watch the White Sox be embarrassed by the in the 2000 ALDS. Even grew a Jerry Manuel playoff beard for that ... one ... game.
I hardly need to get into 2005, right? Aside from seeing plenty of regular season games, I was lucky enough to have seats behind home plate for the entire run of the playoffs. (OK, like 30 rows behind, I’m not the M&Ms dude.) Took a Bill Veeck shower on that 80-degree ALDS Game 1 day and kissed the Minnie statue on the cheek for good luck. Stood stunned as A.J. ran to first to rescue the ALCS against the Angels . Watched the wintry mix up in the stadium lights prior to Game 1 of the World Series. Lost my voice cheering the PK grand slam and Scotty Pods game-winner. And was one of a million at the parade a few days later.
Coincidentally, the very first White Sox games I’d ever covered were in the September meltdown of 2005. Specifically, I was at the walk-off game on September 20, which represented the first pause in two weeks of the Pale Hose’s fall free-fall. Cleveland had carved seven games off the White Sox lead already, and before Crede’s dramatics, there was palpable panic at the park. Natch, I fumbled my way through the Sox clubhouse and thought not of decorum while plopping down to chat with Jermaine Dye (I just sat right down on someone's locker chair, strictly verboten!) to rap, and making Cliff Politte delay a couple of cold ones to talk to me postgame for a Sox game program feature.
Blackout 2008? I was there, thrilled to the core. Never has there been a White Sox game louder and more intimidating than Blackout 2008.
A couple of years later, after continuing to write dozens of features for the White Sox, and even a groundbreaking tome about Ozzie Guillén, I was able to cover the team full-time as a beat writer, wire to wire.
Yep, driving overnight with Mark Gonzales when our postgame flight in Minny got banged and we needed to get to Detroit the next day. Missing the first game of a doubleheader when my plane to the Motor City turned around and headed back to O’Hare midway through the trip. Becoming part of a Guinness world record for biggest crowd to wear lucha libre masks when the Anaheim Angels crowd got bored with, you know, watching baseball. Writing off-day copy in the pitch black of a grotty K.C. hotel after one of their charming Wizard of Oz specials blew the roof off of Kauffman, begging just one more minute out of the laptop battery. Writing Blackhawks and White Sox copy on a Blackberry while covering both teams during the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup playoffs run in 2010, after my state-issued “netbook” had spat out its last bytes. Panicking when the Tampa TSA neglected to re-pack my camera gear, which a smarter man might have discovered sometime before arriving at Yankee Stadium that night.
Getting a chance to break up Hawk’s pregame reverie in the broadcast booth with a bum rush, breathlessly telling him how much his passion for baseball, and sense of the fun of the game, helped me fall in love with baseball. (Helluva perk, being on a first-name basis with a legend from then on.) Standing in a major league dugout and taking a pause to call my dad one of untold times, just reminding myself, holy crap, I’m in a major league dugout. Having story subjects cross the field, or climb up into the press box, to say job well done. Working overtime — or taking extra time — to get it right. Playing fair, even if not everyone else is playing by the same rules.
I’ve already lived a dream life with the White Sox. And now, I get to cover them again, running South Side Hit Pen. At Sports Illustrated!
Ol’ Minnie must be looking out for me up there.
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What's important to add here is that I alone am not South Side Hit Pen.
I've never wanted to be the sole voice of a site, so the second I started with South Side Sox I started building a great coverage team. And some of those voices — Year of the Hamster, Mike Gasick (Danks for Nothin), Darren Black, Dan Victor, Lurker Laura, KP — are still with me, two sites later.
Along the way, the team has filled out. The #SoxMath twins, Joe Resis and Ashley Sanders, have been a backbone of the sites, doing a little bit of everything. Some writers, like Leigh Allan, WhiteSoxMan, and Trevor Lines, I found on our very pages, commenting and fanposting. James Fox stretched beyond his prospect work at Future Sox to writer on the big-league club with us, as did Sean Williams and Owen Schoenfeld. Clinton Cole, also from FS, provided photography and a steady voice on podcasts. And as part of our apparent Visiting Professors series with Future Sox, Julie Brady came over to do her exquisite brand of affiliates storytelling. I did a lot of outreach and recruiting, and hopefully those who took the plunge like Janice Scurio, Tommy Barbee, Keelin Billue, Leonard Gore, Scott Reichard, Ali White, Kim Contreras, Laura Wolff, Tiffany Wintz and Mark Liptak have been rewarded with some fun opportunities. It took awhile for some, like Colleen Sullivan and John Gorlewski, to finally hop on. Some people, like Tom Borowski, Sam Sherman, Matt Clark, Ryan Matte and Jake Mastroianni, reached out to me, instead of being recruited. And even a newer White Sox fan like Amber Giese, who brings a different perspective and voice the team, have hopped on.
Soon you'll meet all of these writers, initially via our Meet the Players series, and eventually through their writing. But for now, I wanted to give everyone a quick wave of the spotlight, because without this great team, there is no South Side Hit Pen.
I will be a prominent voice on the site, the primary editor and organizer, and perhaps also even the face of South Side Hit Pen here. But this effort we're endeavoring here at Sports Illustrated, is foremost and always a team first.
So, White Sox fans: sit back, relax, and strap it down. We're gonna knock your socks off.