Column: Past, present and future meld together on the Chicago White Sox’s road to infamy

Everyone is going to have a favorite memory of the 2024 White Sox season.

There certainly are many to choose from as the Sox close in on the magical number of 120 — the most losses in major-league history.

Mine occurred Wednesday in the 6-4 loss to the Cleveland Guardians when Andrew Vaughn fielded a grounder at first base, glanced at the runner going to second and watched Andrés Giménez beat him to the bag for an infield hit.

Sox gotta Sox.

Baseball being what it is, the very next ball was once again hit straight at Vaughn.

“Step on the bag,” a fan shouted from the second deck, a request that was heard all around the park thanks to the lack of people.

Vaughn did that and was promptly rewarded with a mock ovation.

The reaction from Sox fans made two things obvious:

They’re able to laugh off the ridiculous things that seem to happen every day.

They’re still paying close attention to the game despite its meaninglessness.

When it comes down to it, Sox fans basically are the same as their parents and grandparents. They share the same DNA and sense of humor.

When the Sox came home from Baltimore tied 1-1 tied in the best-of-five American League Championship Series in 1983, some fans carted around a banner at old Comiskey Park that read ‘Don’t F−−−  Up.” It was quickly whisked away, but the messengers made everyone laugh, at least until the Sox blew Game 4 and lost the series 3-1.

Writers and essayists are going to dissect and psychoanalyze Sox fans these final two weeks as the team continues its march toward infamy.

Why are they still watching? What makes them tick? Are they rooting for the Sox to break the record? What do they think of Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf?

No one paid much attention to them or their team for the first five months of this journey. But now the national media is on hand and chronicling every loss, and players are being asked to explain how this happened and how they feel. That includes The Athletic, a very serious publication that fired its Sox beat writer two years ago and decided not to replace him because of a lack of interest in the team.

They’re not alone. Only two newspapers, including the Tribune, travel with the team on the road. Local TV reporters are busy with the Bears. If not for the pursuit of the record, this Sox season would finish without anyone in the clubhouse asking questions.

A cursory glance at the number of empty seats at Guaranteed Rate Field suggests most Sox fans already have tuned out the team. The Sox entered the series against the Oakland A’s averaging 17,788 fans, and only a few thousand actual people showed up for the games against the Guardians. The upper deck has been closed on several occasions so they wouldn’t have to open up concession stands for only a few dozen people.

But to blame all that on the 2024 Sox would be wrong. Only when the Sox are very, very good do fans venture out to 35th Street and Shields Avenue. In 1996, the Sox were in a wild-card chase and I was reporting that summer on the lack of attendance at the then-6-year-old ballpark.

“I keep hearing it’s the upper deck, but we’re not selling out the lower deck either,” then-general manager Ron Schueler said.

Schueler made it a point to note the fans’ decision to avoid going to the ballpark would affect his ability to add at the trade deadline.

“It’s awful tough,” he said. “It puts a lot of pressure on me. Am I going to say to Jerry, ‘Give me money to get a player’ when the crowds aren’t there? From all I’ve heard, this makes no sense.”

In a conversation that summer with George Wendt, a longtime Sox fan then starring as Norm on “Cheers,” he asked: “Has it ever been a hot ticket, really?… Maybe you could’ve put it on the free TV-vs.-cable TV thing a few years back. But now they’re on WGN sometimes, so I don’t know. It seems like emigres to Chicago, the postgraduates who settle here in the suburbs, north or south, become Cubs fans. It seems like to be a Sox fan, you have to be born and raised on the South Side.”

Whether that’s still the case 28 years later I can’t say. But consider this: The Cubs, with a team that has a 0.6% chance of making the playoffs, just announced an average 3% season-ticket price hike for 2025. The Sox in August announced a decrease in their season ticket prices next year, citing the team’s performance the last two seasons.

One ballpark is beloved. The other is functional — but only full if the team is winning.

“Last Comiskey,” a companion piece to the documentary of the same name on the final season of the old park , included a quote from a Sports Illustrated writer heralding the opening of the new Comiskey in 1991. He wrote old Comiskey “was a grand, old place, but let’s face it — the time had come for it to go. It creaked. It smelled like stale beer. The clubhouses were the size of phone booths. The stands had more pillars than Rome.”

That was the tired narrative the Sox used to convince fans, the media and politicians a new ballpark was necessary for the future of the franchise. Rehabbing old Comiskey was never considered. Reinsdorf and his partners convinced Gov. Jim Thompson and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan to build them a new one with taxpayer money.

Reporting on the final day of old Comiskey in 1990, Madigan told me he was “nostalgic” about its demise.

“Having played a role in the passing of the bill, I’m sad to see the old park go, but I’m happy about the new one,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been the same in Chicago had we lost the Sox.”

Now the Sox are looking at building a new ballpark in the South Loop, about a mile away from a courthouse where Madigan soon goes on trial for allegedly running his state and political operations like a criminal enterprise.

The developers have already built a playing field to show what it would look like with the Chicago skyline in the background. Some movers and shakers have been invited on a boat trip Monday to the site of the proposed ballpark, hoping to increase interest in a project that will need massive public funding.

I asked for a credential, but the media was not invited. Two questions I’d ask:

Would “The 78” make the Sox a drawing card, or would the team have to win consistently to fill it, like the current one?

And if Reinsdorf doesn’t get what he wants, will we lose the Sox?

These are interesting days for the franchise that gave us the “Black Sox,” “Disco Demolition Night” and the exploding scoreboard.

The 1962 Mets’ record awaits, and everyone will be watching.

Don’t stop now, boys.