As I've jumped around from team sites to newspapers to blogs this offseason to research White Sox news and rumored targets, I occasionally encounter the press release for a team's upcoming fan fest.
Famously, the Whie Sox are going without one. They haven't reinstated SoxFest since the pandemic, and they haven't been motivated to even summon an excuse. It's just not happening, and for "multiple factors" this year.
I don't think the Sox have ceased SoxFest because they're frightened by their fans, or hate them. The former takes introspection, and the latter takes effort. Instead, the cancellation of SoxFest strikes me as more the product of a creeping agoraphobia.
Here's my theory: Thanks to the pandemic, the White Sox never had to explain the return of Tony La Russa to the public, and the relief they felt made them reconsider why they bothered dealing with any uncontrolled environments. Grocery stores and Amazon will deliver everything they need, so as long as they pay the utilities regularly enough, they'll never have to go out. All they have to do is post the occasional losing score tweet with "Final." as the caption in order to keep the neighbors from calling for wellness checks.
But reclusive living eventually takes its toll, physically, emotionally, socially. Whenever the White Sox are forced to put on their least filthy pants to face the outside world, it's gone pretty poorly. Rick Hahn short-circuited under follow-up questions about Mike Clevinger, and Jerry Reinsdorf prefaced his appointment of new GM Chris Getz by saying he still didn't know how fans got shot in the bleachers, with nothing to soften the transition. Nevertheless, there's no sign of this isolationism losing its grip. They still haven't named a replacement for Jason Benetti one month after letting him leave for a division rival, but when you live like the White Sox do, who needs a voice?
SoxFest was probably a hassle to stage, and the fan/team interactions never approached the crazy heights of the years when Ozzie Guillen and Kenny Williams gave as good as they got, so I think it's easy to overstate the value of the convention. I also think it's easy to overlook the healthful benefits of having to face the public every so often. SoxFest meant that, at least once a year, the chief decision-makers in the White Sox organization had to think about the best way to present themselves to society, and it's no coincidence that the franchise's hygiene has deteriorated since they started avoiding it.
Pedro Grifol is another byproduct of a SoxFest-less world, because when you don't have the threat of giving on-the-record answers to direct questions from fans, you can get by with saying nothing for a pretty long time. Given that Grifol spent most of the season exclusively managing upward, it seems like he could stand to be forced to relate downward. Even if he didn't see any benefits, it would've afforded everybody an earlier opportunity to understand that Grifol lacked the juice.
The signs were there, even before Grifol lost his first game. BeefLoaf pointed out in December that Grifol struggled to name favorite songs, bands, snacks or vacation destinations. I remember seeing this spring training tweet saying "Pedro Grifol has us wanting to run through a brick wall," then watching the accompanying video and wondering if it was because the admins wanted to feel something.
And then there was that moment during ESPN's Opening Day broadcast, when Eduardo Pérez, Grifol's longtime friend and booster, set the stage for an emotional conversation in a car on the way to Grifol's managerial debut. The dialogue was instead so halting and stilted that, had Pérez not gotten choked up while expressing pride in Grifol, you might've assumed the two hadn't met until an Uber Pool brought them together.
Grifol has been asked numerous times in postseason/offseason interviews about areas he can improve, and just like the White Sox with SoxFest, Grifol declines to divulge specifics. As long as he's going to avoid identifying weaknesses, there's no reason to believe he's invested in improving, especially as his overt flattery of the front office grows more obscene.
Even something like "I could relate to the public better" would be a start, because it wouldn't require him to admit any flaws with his on-field acumen, and his messaging would still be a problem if he entered 2024 with an 81-81 record. Instead, he finished 40 games under .500, so the record tanked his personal credit score.
Despite the fact that Grifol's job requires him to meet with the media twice a day as the leader of the team, he operates at a remove, and he whiffs on every opportunity to reflect a more well-rounded person. With the White Sox in the process of succumbing to a third rebuild, team personnel shouldn't be the ones initiating the disconnect. Alas, as long as public encounters are treated as something the White Sox can live without, they're probably going to keep living like this.
