We come to praise the 2008 White Sox, not bury them
(Before we begin, crank up the speakers and click on the music player to set an appropriate memorial mood with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. A New Orleans procession just seems right.)
One reason why I'm glad to be a White Sox fan is that, by and large, we know a good season when we see one. It doesn't have to result in hardware to call it a success, which is a mindset likely borne out of necessity. If Sox fans didn't shrug off failure, there's no way we would've survived all these years.
This was a good season.
This particular team might not go down in Sox lore with other also-rans, like the '83, '77 or '67 versions, but it belongs on the same tier as the 2000 or 1990 squads. Those campaigns fizzled out in the end, but they weren't supposed to be in contention in the first place. Thanks to a few out-of-nowhere performances and down years from the competition, they were able to claw out of the second division with optimism for the future.
Considering where the Sox were last year, and where they were expected to end up this year, I can't find any reasons to be upset. It helped that the Sox were just good enough at tripping over themselves to not inflate expectations beyond reason. Perhaps if Carlos Quentin stayed healthy and had a September that
matched his previous five months, a first-round exit might hurt more. Alas.
If nothing else, this season marked a reversal of 102 years of fortune.
The division-winning Sox teams of the past built huge division leads and coasted into the postseason to varying degrees. Below is a list of the Sox playoff teams and their narrowest September margin:
- 2005: 1.5
- 2000: 5.0 (final day)
- 1993: 2.5
- 1983: 11.5
- 1959: 3.5
- 1919: 3.5 (final day)
- 1917: 3.5 (first day)
Meanwhile, the franchise history was littered with teams that couldn't close the deal:
*The 1905 Sox pulled into a dead heat with the Philadelphia A's on the eve of a head-to-head series Sept. 27, but they never recovered after back-to-back losses.
*The 1908 Sox only needed to win the final game of the season against Detroit -- sound familiar? -- to earn a postseason berth. The game was over in the first inning, as a two-run Ty Cobb triple put the Tigers on a fast track to a 7-0 victory.
*The 1916 Sox spent three straight late September days a half-game back of the league lead, but could never grab hold of first for even a day.
*The 1964 Sox held a slim division lead going into Labor Day . Three straight losses knocked them back into second place, and they finished one game behind the New York Yankees. The Yankees won their first 11 games against the Sox that year, in effect the equivalent of the Metrodome Twins.
*The 1967 Sox played their way into a tie for first at the start of September, but couldn't close the gap the rest of the year, ending the season with five straight losses -- including two losses in the same night to the last-place Kansas City A's.
*The 1972 Sox, on the back of Dick Allen, managed to hold a half-game lead on the Oakland Athletics in the final week of August. The A's, proved too strong in the end and won the second of five straight AL West pennants.
*The 2003 Sox held a two-game lead on the Minnesota Twins Sept. 9, but three straight losses dropped them back into a tie. A sweep at the Metrodome one week later basically ended the season.
The 2008 White Sox had three separate chances to join this list
after they found themselves a half-game behind with the Twins taking
care of business on the last day of their regular season. The Sox had to win three games to make the playoffs, and they did just that.
The first was a
5-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians that snapped a five-game losing streak, thanks to seven great innings by Mark Buehrle on short rest. The second was
an 8-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers, with Alexei Ramirez providing the crushing blow with a grand slam.
That set up a one-game playoff against the Twins, where
John Danks pitched the game of his life and Jim Thome provided the only run with a 461-foot solo shot. Their efforts led the Sox to the division title,
only the second time in Sox history they won a pennant when trailing at any point in the final month of the season.1906 marked the only other time a Sox team accomplished that feat, when
the Hitless Wonders found themselves one game behind the Yankees Sept. 23. They then rattled off nine wins in 10 games to take a commanding lead en route to their first World Series title.
In a poetic twist, those Sox beat the heavily favored Cubs, who had set a record with 116 wins, four games to two in the only all-Chicago World Series. One hundred and two years later, the Sox rallied from a late-September deficit; the Cubs were dumped unceremoniously in the postseason after leading their league in victories by a clear margin.
Of course, the crosstown championship never came close to materializing (although the Sox's season did last one game longer). But the Sox didn't need to go any further to call this season a winner. They had overcome the odds in more ways than one -- winning three straight elimination games, beating the arch-rival Twins with everything on the line and bucking their own sorry history of late-season fades.
If this season gives us new hope when the Sox scuffle in September, then
losing to a clearly superior Tampa Bay Rays (even if that sounds wrong) doesn't really matter all that much. And sure, it's easier to say that with a World Series title in our recent memories, but I think Sox fans would find a way to appreciate it either way.
After all, they failed with their belts tight. We can't ask for more than that.
Even if
we still don't know what the hell that means.
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That said, I'd like to thank everybody who frequents and participates on this site for its third season. I appreciate the level of discourse and am immensely proud that despite disagreements and disappointments, I've never had to delete a single comment.
(Please don't get any ideas.)
If your interest in the Sox goes into hibernation now and lies dormant until the spring, then thanks, so long, and hope to see you back next year...
...but, if this is your first year on Sox Machine, the season doesn't end here. We'll go through a healthy post-mortem, ponder the future, sift through hot-stove talk and dissect the crap out of major moves when they happen. I'll also have a couple big announcements to make in the next week or so.
For those who make this site part of a daily routine, I'll give you a reason to stop by just about every day. And for those who make this site an occasional visit, hopefully I'll give you reasons to come back more often. After all, next season is only a handful of months away.