Baseball is over for Chicago this year. The early season was promising for the Cubs and the Sox. Both teams were on top. There was speculation there might even be Crosstown Classic World Series. While the Sox battled on, sometimes winning ugly, the Cubs started to slide downhill.
After the Cubs traded Baez, Rizzo, and Bryant, the team imploded and went right into the toilet. The Sox kept battling it out. Now, like the Cubs fan’s mantra, it is wait til next year.
There will be plenty of criticism to go around, blaming players, Tony LaRussa, and team management. It is futile. Like all sports, baseball is an all-hands-on-deck team sport., more so in post-season. Ownership, management, coaches, players, and other assorted members must work in harmony, synced to the nth degree.
When the Sox won the World Series in 2005, even hardcore Cubs fans begrudgingly cheered with the rest of the city. When the Cubs won the Series in 2016, the same held. Maybe the Sox needed Billy Goat Tavern’s Sam Sianis goat to breathe some magic in the team since the animal took Sam’s uncle’s curse off the Cubs.
Baseball is a business, besides a sport. Sometimes the business gets in the way of the sport, as happened with the Cubs, though there is no way of knowing if keeping the three past World Series players would have stopped their slide. Baseball is also about fatigue, minor and major injuries, and mistakes. During the post-season mistakes, even minor ones, are more critical.
I am sure the “experts” will hold seances to dissect the Sox season and give us their reasons, excuses, or horse manure for why the White Sox blew it. It will be meaningless.
The season is over for both teams. Wait until next year and hope that next season will be better.