35thstreetswarm

Nah, no cheaters please.

So it turns out people have different preferences when it comes to choosing a home state. Got it. Can we not do the whole proxy culture war that is the Illinois vs. Texas/Florida debate? Boring.

Yes, from an outsider’s perspective this has to look a bit like the Padres/Phillies/Mets of last yr—a talented team in a down year due for a bounce-back season, allowing a new manager to surf the wave to some degree. Remains to be seen whether that’s accurate.

Sigh…well there goes my crystal-clear #1 choice from 2020, and my slightly more cautious #1 choice from this year. Oh what could’ve been. Oh well, there are other acceptable choices. But pretty amazing we missed out on the manager of the only modern baseball dynasty TWICE in 3 years.

Wow. That's really incredible.

That's about where I am. Never thought I'd root for the Cubs over any team in my lifetime, but here we are.

So it sounds to me like the only truly Soxtalk-friendly hire at this point is Espada. Bochy probably second but will attract some hate because he looks too much like TLR (read: old). I'd guess Washington/Schildt will be met with criticism similar to Bochy, only more intense. Just about everybody else whose name has been floated (Ozzie, Thome, Harris) would inspire outright mutiny. I guess it's possible they could swoop in with some really inspired, out-of-left-field hire of a promising young candidate we haven't thought of, but that seems pretty un-White Sox.

Whatever, none of them are beating the Dodgers.

You're all dreaming -- with this org it would clearly be a washed-up "veteran" with a big head like Mayor McCheese

That was one of the "little things." They should really try to do that the right way.

Holy s%*# he's so safe ?

I have a lot of Dodger fan friends in LA and SF and they all despise him. They think he's completely controlled by the FO and analytics department and that anybody with an earpiece could do his job.

I am plenty pessimistic about things right now but I think the three things he needs are possible. I do think we'll get a "proven manager," and Andrus at second is not exactly a reach. That just leaves "legit" outfielder. I'm not positive that will happen but I think it's a real possibility.

As much as watching the playoffs mostly just triggers my anger at the FO over the '22 season, I'm a little encouraged by the fact that these playoffs are studded with teams whose rebuilds/construction were considered suspect at best -- and failures at worst -- at various points in recent history. Put aside the NL and AL superteams in the Dodgers and Astros, and the creepy-consistent Cardinals. The Phillies were a cautionary tale until as recently as last year -- proof that you can try a total rebuild and still completely blow it. Last Fall the Padres were below .500, out of the playoffs, left for dead, and proof to some that splashy FA signings were fool's gold. The Mets were similar, eight games below .500 and looking mired in high-rent, Met-style mediocrity. Mariners looked like they had wasted money and were headed in the wrong direction. Last year's Braves won the World Series a few months after they themselves were left for dead. Even the Yankees were out of playoff contention for much of last year, ultimately getting bounced in the play-in and leaving doubt about their roster construction. I recognize there are plenty of things about this organization that distinguish it from any one of those examples, (I know -- "big free agent signings!") but boy things sure can change quickly in this league.

For sure. The old-timer argument against celebrating/fun is that it *implies* what Naylor was doing explicitly last night, i.e. intentional, personal disrespect aimed directly in the eye of your opponent. Won't rehash the debate over bat-flips and other positive on-field celebrations (I think they're fine). But I won't defend publicly insulting and disrespecting an opponent just because they're your opponent. That stuff makes the game nastier instead of more fun.

If the Guardians lose tonight Naylor’s clownishness is going to look real bad. Like, turning point in the series/Guardians narrative bad.

I’m really surprised at how hard I am rooting against Cleveland this series. F Cleveland.

Yep—don’t worry, next year everybody will be back to the old “nobody can possibly compete with [insert talented team with great regular season record] this year. I mean, who matches up with them?” Then some unexpected team will knock that team out to everyone’s immense shock. Then repeat the same the next season.

You are far more limited in your playoff guarantees with the end-of-season first-time season ticket purchase, at least with the partials. Last year, for example, they only offered you a single LCS and single WS ticket, whereas I'm pretty sure existing STHs got tickets to every playoff game.

Totally agree with you regarding the regular season. The thing that keeps me coming back (like a sucker) is the guaranteed playoff tickets in the event of a deep playoff run, and the stinging memory of getting myself and family members shut out of World Series games because I couldn't find tickets for less than four figures. That was 2005. If that happened again nowadays the guaranteed face-value WS tickets you get with season ticket packages would be an absolute goldmine.

I honestly can't believe we're talking about it. I'll say it: hiring Ozzie would be more ridiculous than hiring LaRussa (at the time of the hire). At least Tony was a decade removed from a WS title, rather than a decade removed from being run out of his second town in two years on a rail.

Cleveland's front office IS good, but Soxtalk would not be happy if our FO operated like Cleveland's. The Soxtalk hive mind wants an AJ Preller, whether he's ultimately successful or not.

Leaning toward renewing. I would kick myself if I bought for this cursed season and then passed for a season when they bounced back, which I think is reasonably likely. That said, I will wait for a little while to make sure they don't commit another TLR-level unforced error in their manager search.

Plot twist 2: he's your brother

As I put my kid to bed the other night, I looked at the Anderson and Moncada fatheads on his wall, the "Southside" flag he has hung up, and all the other Sox memorabilia he has collected and just got so angry. He's a fan because of me, just as I'm a fan because of my dad. We live in just about the heaviest Cubs neighborhood imaginable (even live across the street from a Cubs WS hero from 2016) and yet he and my other sons have remained die-hard Sox fans throughout their childhoods. They suffered through a rebuild that chewed up their formative years while their friends' team celebrated, I suspect largely out of loyalty to their dad. For years they have fended off their Cub fan friends by parroting what they heard from me: just wait 'til 2021/2022/2023, that's our time. Just wait. We went to 20 games in what should have been a season of joy, all the while I could tell they were looking at me wondering "so, when's this gonna happen? I told everybody this was going to happen, dad, so what's going on?" The answer, of course, was that it was not going to happen at all, and I'm not sure it ever will. Honestly, I feel guilty for believing in this franchise and worse for inflicting my kids with this Sox fan disease. Screw this team for making that happen. Screw them especially because they had legitimate success in their grasp and arrogantly pissed it away because of a dysfunctional front office beholden to a capricious, dictatorial owner. I know it's just sports. I have plenty of thoughts on what can be done to (hopefully) turn this around. But for now I'm just stewing in anger. That is all.