Done

With the Cubs’ loss to the Brewers in the NLDS Saturday night, the Chicago baseball season is officially over. It’s liberating, in a way. Now, I don’t have to listen to White Sox manager New-Mickey Venable—and I’ll call him by his given name the day he gets his team ten games over .500, I promise—start every answer to a question with “Yeah” or wonder why the lineup features the likes of Jacob Amaya or Josh Rojas or Will Robertson or why a hot hitter sits for one of the above. I miss reading box scores, but only for the 60 wins on the season. On a possibly related note, the 1967 team-autographed ball I bought arrived over the weekend. Talk about a stroll down memory lane—Wayne Causey, Don McMahon, Don Buford and, oh, so many more. Best of all, the autographs are clear, which makes it easy to spot Ken Boyer and Rocky Colavito (acquiring aging talent, always the White Sox way). The only tough signature to decipher belongs to coach Kerby Farrell, born two weeks after my dad and died 25 years before he did. Gary Peter, Joel Horlen, Walt Williams. Perfection, or almost. There’s no Cisco Carlos, who amassed an eyepopping 0.86 ERA in 41.2 innings. The 26-year old rookie got his first start August 25th (Bukowski father and son were in the stands, I distinctly recall), and Colavito was acquired July 29th. My guess is the autographs were amassed sometime between July 30-August 24. I lived and died with this team, the last gasp of a “Go-Go” Sox iteration dating to 1951, before my birth. With five games left in the ’67 season and one game out of first place, the Sox finished out the schedule against the tenth-place A’s and seventh-place Senators. Easy-peasey, right? No, a five-game losing streak brought me to tears and ushered in three miserable seasons of losing culminating in the 56-106 debacle of 1970. Hope returned in the following season with the hiring of Chuck Tanner. I already have the 1971 team ball: Bart Johnson, Jay Johnstone, Carlos May…Venable as the new Tanner? Sox fans should be so lucky.