According
to an office memo:
As of today, the Daily Southtown will no longer be covering pro sports with its staffers.
We will be getting our pro sports copy from the Sun-Times.
Whatever remaining news we will get (Sox and Cubs in particular) and we will ship out.
This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, the main one being it's one less outlet from which we can receive Sox information. Also,
Nate Whalen's blog remains the best effort any beat writer's made at interacting with fans, although it seemed to give away this move, having not been updated since Sept. 29.
Still, the writing was on the wall when Joe Cowley made the jump from the Southtown to the Chicago Sun-Times. The
merger between the Southtown and the Star publications just a couple days ago seemed to be the final nail in the coffin.
It's a pretty precipituous decline for a paper that used to take the lead on all things White Sox just three years ago thanks to Cowley's sources and personality, warts and all.
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What this means is that we'll have to spend even more time parsing Scott Merkin's work on whitesox.com, such as this response in
his mailbag this week:
What do you think will happen with Erstad this offseason?
-- Wade, Bismarck, N.D.
Well, I believe Erstad will spend a great deal of time with his family, watch as much Nebraska football as he possibly can, and work his tail off to be ready for the 2008 season. If you are asking me whether Erstad will be back with the White Sox, which I knew you were, Wade, but I couldn't resist having a little fun, I'm saying he will still be playing on the South Side of Chicago.
The $3.5 million option is very affordable, considering the versatile possibilities a healthy Erstad brings with him. Williams also has talked about regaining that edge missing from the last season and a half, which Erstad also features.
For starters, I hope Erstad saw
Nebraska get its bell rung by ol' Mizzou, giving the Tigers their highest ranking in my lifetime. We may as well enjoy the No. 11 spot while it lasts, since Oklahoma is a likely loss next week.
In terms of his real answer, I'm forced to comfort myself with what
he said about Timo Perez after his release:
Both Harris and Perez, a consummate pinch-hitter, spot
starter and strong clubhouse influence on the young Latin players,
could re-sign with the White Sox at an adjusted salary.
Timo was never mentioned as a possibility again, so I have to take this as meaningless fluff from the Sox's PR guys. It's too absurd to digest it as anything else:
Reason No. 1: What team is going to pay him four times as much as the Sox did this year for his production?
Reason No. 2: The last sentence is mindnumbing in its logic --
Kenny Williams wants to regain an edge missing from the last year and a half, during which he made an attempt to solve by signing Erstad, who played on the 2007 team that seemed to be missing edge, so the reason why the team was missing edge was because Erstad wasn't there, even though he was.
Reason No. 3: Erstad wasn't a member of the 2005 team. Note that those receiving the massive and unwieldy extensions are the ones who helped Jerry Reinsdorf achieve his dream. There's
a good discussion of this phemonemon on South Side Sox.
Aside from picking up Erstad's option, my biggest concern is that "edge" is replacing the word "grind," which may have played itself out as it became synonymous for "lack of talent." Start worrying if the Sox announce a new partnership with
Ford.
Hell, even Merkin's last sentence makes it seem like he's talking about a car: "Williams also has talked about wanting side-curtain airbags and a backup camera, which Erstad also features."