Good Company, Nice Weather, Bad Results

 Until yesterday, Clare and I had never been to a Sox game, just the two of us.  Baseball and softball have always been a full family affair for us. 

But yesterday, Clare, well into her 26^th year and a little over a month from her wedding, left work to meet me at Guaranteed Rate Whatever for an afternoon game against the Pirates.  It was great for all the wrong reasons—no waiting to get in, no waiting at the concession stand, out of the parking lot in minutes.  Oh, and no major league baseball team otherwise known as the Chicago White Sox.

“Ricky’s boys,” as the advertising slogan calls this rag-tag collection of maybes and whatnots, did go through the motions for eight innings, building up a 5-2 lead behind homeruns by Tim Anderson and Daniel (he of the barrel chest) Palka.  Reynaldo Lopez looked sharp through 7-1/3 innings, rookie Jace Fry got his two outs, and then Nate Jones laid an egg in the form of four runs and a 6-5 loss.  What’s not to like about a 9-25 team?  Let me tell you.

I don’t like being told that reinforcements are on the way, at some point but don’t ask when.  Yeah, maybe things will be great in 2020, for those fans who don’t die between now and then.  Then again, maybe the survivors won’t be so happy with the state of things two years hence.  Nothing says the reinforcements have to be any good or that they’ll even get here.  Third baseman Jake Burger, last June’s first-round draft pick, ruptured his Achilles for the second time since spring training, this while walking in his backyard last week.  Don’t count on Burger in 2020. 

What you can count on is the mind-numbing “entertainment” between innings, with fans getting to name that tune and pick a favorite in the video-board race of the three Italian beef sandwiches.  Did I mention the pizza race or the match-the-Sox logos contest?  Well, consider it done.

So, I had to put up with that crap and try to keep score as best I could.  The problem here is that the Sox have decided to do away with scorecards; they must’ve been hanging around the plastic straws or some other bad character.  Instead, I got to pay twice as much for a program, which let me keep score as long as I didn’t go looking for names and numbers printed anywhere.  Trust me, said program didn’t fit on my clipboard and didn’t sit well on my lap.  I’ve seen prescriptions more legible than what I did.

All in all, the best part of the game was the company.  Clare and I shared observations borne of two-plus decades of watching games together.  My daughter has even picked up one of my old habits.  I used to go “Ooh!” when Clare swung hard at a pitch and missed.  Now she does it for the likes of Tim Anderson and Daniel Palka.  That means the, the acorn, no matter how comely, didn’t fall far from the tree.