Dan Kozlowski, 38, of Crown Point, Indiana, tailgates with other fans Thursday before the White Sox home opener against the Detroit Tigers at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Welcome to Day 1. That’s the tagline you hear as you walk into the door, enter into the ballpark.
As if something new awaits you. As if something is going to be different. If history does what it has the reputation of doing in repeating itself, then the baseball season that began Thursday for the White Sox could be different. Just more of the same different, not the opposite of it.
Sunken in what can only be called a historic dive in baseball dysfunction, the White Sox, along it seems with their fan base, seem to be clinging on to this miracle called optimism. It showed itself everywhere in Bridgeport from Mitchell’s on Halsted to Grandstand on Wallace to Franco’s on Princeton, in and outside Turtles and Cork & Kerry, up and down every aisle tailgated in every parking lot, in every seat and lining all of the corridors on every level inside Guaranteed Rate. Day 1: The new beginning.
Of what, exactly? We came to Opening Day to see what hopelessness looks like on the field, feels like in the stands. Hoping that it won’t last long. An inning, a game, a month? Hoping for something — anything — different. Knowing that there’s hope on the other side of this baseball city doesn’t help, knowing that you don’t want your side to represent the overall feelings of hopelessness that has become the sad hallmark for the entire city.
“We are a different team. And we’re going to approach things differently,” are the words manager Pedro Grifol used after Thursday’s season-opening loss to the Tigers. Words that will not come back to haunt him as long as his team shows-up and more times than not shows-out. Words we won’t hold against him unless different ain’t different.
See, the dossier we White Sox fans carried around with us on Day 1 and will stay with us the rest of this season reads our verity: In the last three seasons this team has gone from 93 wins (won the division) to 81 wins (second in the division) to 61 wins (second to the bottom of the division, thanks KC) to this Season Four’s downward trajectory of a mathematically-predictable (hopefully impossible) win total of 29. Which would tie us with the 1897 St. Louis Browns for fifth lowest win total in MLB history, but the third worst winning percentage (.179) the game has ever seen. A downward trend which would make this year’s team the only team in the 20th and 21st centuries to win less than 30 games.
We have nuanced arguments and discussions (a.k.a.: beliefs and thoughts) steeped in nothingness. No knowing of what this season will turn out being, no knowing of what the future beyond that holds. A pitching staff that isn’t only inexperienced but so unfamiliar that even Sox players’ family members couldn’t pick them out of a lineup — with Michael Kopech being the only pitcher on the current roster who was on last year’s Opening Day roster. Still dealing with Kenny’s (Williams) and Rick’s (Hahn) urgent removal. No more Tim Anderson. No more Jason Benetti. The Dylan Cease trade, the final brick. No mortar.
No clubhouse culture, no rules. No pitching, no fielding. In-team fighting, on-field knockouts. No one got shot. So last season, right? Right? Yet, here we are. Finding purpose in coming together 33,000-plus strong in a 40,00 seat soon-to-be deserted stadium to see one another on Day 1. Suffering in plain sight. Literally at the beginning of another end.
The great unknown for all who have yet to turn our backs on our team. The no knows of what this team can or will do; the no knows of who they even are. The sentiment: Cheer now. Later is probably reserved for everyone but us. Which is why we hope hard.
The underlined feeling of the day was that we came together more for solitary than for baseball. A message of “Sox Lives Matter” to an owner who has become our enemy, our silent killer. Hoping that once our systolic number levels-up to our diastolic number, we will treat all games this season the same: With intentionality regardless of the W/L record. Explained most eloquently by a White Sox fan heading toward Turtles for the Day 1, 0-1, postgame tailgate, saying in his loudest outside voice, “I don’t care what their record’s gonna be. This is the White Sox. This is our s—-!”
And no one else’s.
The White Sox themselves posted: “It’s beginning to smell like grilled onions and Opening Day.” Half true. Because on Opening Day it was beginning to smell like something.