The Worst of Times, and the Best

            More than any other sport, baseball employs its past to measure its present.  The slightest streak or accomplishment invites comparison to the last time something similar happened.  When you’re winning, that’s great, oh, but when you’re losing, it can hurt.  And the White Sox are in a world of hurt.

            The current ten-game losing streak along with a season record of 40-69 invokes constant mention of the last time the team was so bad.  In the blink of an eye, today becomes 1970, when the Sox last lost 100 games, 106 to be precise.

            I was 18 then, in the summer between high school and college.  On the day of my graduation from St. Laurence, Walt Williams went five for seven with five runs scored in a 22-13 win over Boston at Fenway.  That put their record, on the last day of May, at 18-29, with another 38 wins to be spread out over the next four months.  Not that I refused to listen to them in the car after I got my driver’s license in June.  My sister lent me her Chevy Impala convertible for two glorious weeks that summer.  I drove out into the country with the top down, on top of the world while driving beneath a starry sky.  The radio switched between the Beatles, the New Colony Six, the White Sox.  It was a South Side thing.

            In late September, the Sox named a new manager; he would be the best I’ve ever seen in Chicago.  No, not Tony LaRussa but Chuck Tanner.  The man just did things differently.  Tanner made a starter out of knuckleballer Wilbur Wood (who recorded four 20-win seasons to three for HOFer Phil Niekro); batted Bill Melton leadoff at the end of the ’71 season to help him win the home run crown (three homers in two games to edge Reggie Jackson); and let Richie Allen be Dick Allen, as long as he hit.  In a word, Tanner innovated.  How novel in Chicago.

            The White Sox also brought up a good deal of talent in the early ’70s.  Terry Forster made the team as a 19-year old in ’71; he was six months older than me.  The next year, it would be Goose Gossage, a year older.  And the year after that would see Bucky Dent (21) and Brian Downing (22).  The Cubs were Ernie-Banks old.  The White Sox were cocky and young, like me.  What could possibly go wrong?

            Bill Veeck bought the team after the ’75 season.  He let Chuck Tanner go and started trading the young talent—Forster and Gossage for Richie Zisk, Dent for Oscar Gamble, Downing as part of a deal for Bobby Bonds.  Tanner ended up winning a World Series with the Pirates while Veeck eventually hired Tony LaRussa.  So, it all evened out, I guess, or would have had LaRussa won a championship in Chicago rather than in Oakland and St. Louis.

            So, the silver lining in this miserable baseball season is to be reminded of 1970, when I was little more than a boy, and 1971, when very young, talented ballplayers started showing up in the White Sox dugout.  As for the 2012 season, Clare can remember the summer she was 21.