SoxFests Past

Lately, we’ve been going to every other SoxFest, the White Sox fan convention.  Three years ago, I finally managed to get Minnie Minoso to sign a baseball that Luke Appling, Bill Veeck, Luis Aparicio, Hoyt Wilhelm, Billy Pierce and Walt Williams have autographed.  Let me just say that never has an octogenarian looked better in a three-piece suit.

Bill “Moose” Skowron, as I recall, was wearing a sweatshirt and talkative.  On hearing that Clare was about to start her first season of college softball, he gave her this bit of advice:  “Hit the ball up the middle, and don’t worry if you take the f****n’ pitcher’s head off.”  Moose also was sporting one of five his World Series rings.  “I’m selling it,” he said, “but you couldn’t afford it.”  I wish.  Of course, the autograph was free.

Last year, Clare wanted her picture taken with second baseman Gordon Beckham and former Sox center fielder Aaron Rowand.  Like Jim Landis two generations before, Rowand played a beautiful centerfield and swung a so-so bat.  By so-so, I mean just under 1200 career hits and a .273 batting average while playing on two World Series winners.  But if he had only listened to his hitting coaches, Rowand would probably still be playing.  Instead, Aaron Rowand was bull-headed.

Rowand hit out of a crouch that looked like he was sitting on the edge of an invisible chair, and he tried to pull everything.  That resulted in way too many groundballs to short and strikeouts.  Eventually, bad habits catch up with a hitter, and it happened to Rowand after the 2011 season.  A little over a year later, he was signing autographs and posing for pictures on a January Sunday in Chicago.  Not that my daughter minded.

As a group, White Sox fans rate right up there with Phillies fans, the difference being we don’t feel the need to go to games to boo people.  We will, however, attend the fan convention and voice our opinions, loudly.  This year, someone asked manager Robin Ventura if he had a pulse.  I’m not sure how many people in the audience believed Ventura when he answered, Yes.  And the Adam Dunn comments…Consider that Clare told me she would have asked for his autograph and then thrown the ball at him.

           It’s a good thing Dunn’s contract is up at the end of the season.  Otherwise, I’d hate to see what happens if we go to SoxFest next January.