The Ecstasy of Defeat

Can the White Sox do it? Does Chicago deserve it? Does Tim Walz, or Anyone, Care? A conversation with Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, about the Meaning of Life.

For your consideration: The Return of The Badwagon

—

We live in turbulent, truculent times. Matters of grave importance are in flux; one day you think the country faces a certain depressing storyline, and then, seemingly overnight, the scene shifts momentously and who knows where we wind up?

I think you know what I am talking about. We are confronting what we have become as a nation, and wrestling over whether this is really what we want to be: bullies and braggarts and bigots and weirdos? Or do we want to be miserable defeatists mired in despair? But now, suddenly, there is a third reality, a bright beacon around which we can flitter like moths, and coalesce: I am talking about the Chicago White Sox.

Let’s take a breather from the furious frenzy of politics. Let’s enjoy the beauty of failure, embrace it, and grow mighty from the purity of it. Remember, Chicago will be the scene of the Democratic National Convention: There is resonance in this.

The White Sox are a bad baseball team, but even better than that, they appear to be on the cusp of becoming the worst baseball team the modern world has ever known. Their ineptitude is degrading and pathetically wound-licking: One of their better players is “Andrew Benintendi,” whose last name, as i see it, tepidly translates into “good intentions.”

This team is so bad it is seriously statistically challenging the comically feckless 1962 Mets, the losingest team in modern baseball history, for the distinction of being immortally bad. Can we not love this team for their failures? Indeed, can they love themselves? Can we not celebrate humanity in its glorious totality — strong and weak, good and bad?

It was just three months ago, in the Gene Pool, toward the very start of the season, that I envisioned exactly this scenario, but cited … The Miami Marlins, a team that, at the time, stank like a deceased mackerel in the sun. I proposed launching The Badwagon, a takeoff on “The Bandwagon,“ Tony Kornheiser’s famous 1991 mid-season columns urging fans to join his online club rooting for the Redskins to keep winning games, and then win the Super Bowl. (They did, and did.). The Badwagon would be similar, but different. I was urging readers to root intensely for the Marlins to keep losing, on the theory that there is nobility in abject failure.

That was three months ago. Time, that thief of joy, intervened. The Marlins found a small degree of competence. They began winning occasionally. Right now, they are a very bad team indeed, but not a historically, world class very bad team.

But Time, and Fortune, have once again smiled on us all. The second worst team from three months ago, the Chicago White Sox, girded their loins and roared stunningly backwards. You can practically hear the urgent bleat of a garbage truck in reverse. As of this morning, The White Sox were on a spectacular 21-game losing streak, a mere two losses from the worst frenzy of decay in history. They are now way worse than the Marlins. As of today, their record was 27-88, which is a winning percentage of .235. That’s even crappier than the uber-crappy ‘62 Mets, a brand-new team, one composed almost entirely of castoffs from other teams, a team that included the famously maladroit Marv Throneberry, a team that finished the season at 40-120, the most losses ever. Their winning percentage was .250. The 1916 Philadelphia Athletics finished even lower, at .235.

Let’s not even stop there. The worst winning percentage ever, by any big-league baseball team anywhere on Earth since 1910, belonged to the 1955 Taiyo Whales of the Nippon Professional Baseball League. It was .231! The Sox are even closing in intercontinentally.

Why should you care? Maybe you don’t even like baseball, or sports. It doesn’t matter. It matters if you like yourself, and your country, and the notion of honor, and the nature of achievement. Achievement doesn’t have to be good. Achievement has to be Big.

This is about the pseudo-Manichean nature of triumph and loss. The issue, as I have said, is not black and white — it’s more like matter and energy, which seem oppositional, but are made of the same same glorious substance. It is our lifeblood.

—

Hey, send in your real-time questions and observations here. We anticipate some political churn today, as well as baseball, and we will respond via this Orange Button.

And please subscribe, paid or unpaid, hopeful or defeatist, here, (weirdos excepted):

—

My point is, today, that once again I’ve decided to resurrect The Badwagon. Resurrect in the American people — particularly the good people of Chicago, America — a fierce hunger for loss. Shouldn’t the historical gift of unprecedented defeat be celebrated just as lustily as is unprecedented success?

We are defined by who we are — our achievements, our personalities, our charity and such — but we are also defined by the accumulation of grand things we have experienced — the things we get to tell our grandkids. These things might be good or bad. Both connect you with historical milestones, the sorts of things that give you colorful stories to tell, and maybe even dramatically embellish, which, as a witness to history, is your birthright. The last time I wrote about this, I used this example, and I use it again, because there is simply no better one, anywhere, anytime:

Have you ever seen this 1950’s clip of the old TV show, I’ve Got a Secret,” in which the featured guest was a man who, as a child, had been at Ford’s Theater and saw the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? He was the last living witness.

Consider this for a minute. That man, then 95, had bravely shuffled, unsteadily, onto the TV set wearing a huge black eye from a fall he’d taken the day before. He’d made the decision not to cancel, he said, because he “wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Later, he said that this moment on TV had been the pinnacle of his life. Two months after that, he would die.

Do you think that man, Sam Seymour, would have ever reached that life pinnacle had he been the last living witness of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Abraham Lincoln?

I trust you see my point.

In short, I contend we must seize the moment and root, as a nation, for the White Sox to pull it out. To defeat the '62 Mets, which is to say to lose heroically to the '62 Mets.  

But … how do I do this? I’d already said everything there was to say, philosophically, on this subject. And then it occurred to me.

Neil, are you there?

—

Neil: Ready and waiting.

Neil Steinberg is a friend of mine. He is the brilliant, unbalanced, indefatigable city columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who actually writes a blog called Every Goddamn Day, because, yes, that is how often he files. It’s become a book. He has written another book with the delightfully argumentative title You Were Never in Chicago. If you believe you know more about Chicago than Neil, please write a letter of complaint in longhand and address it to me at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018.

Neil, do you think the people of Chicago can be persuaded to accept this challenge? Can they be persuaded to embrace it?

—

Neil: Short answer: no.

Remember, Gene, that half the city is already rooting against the White Sox, or would be rooting against them, if they gave the Sox any thought, which they don't. That's because we're North Siders and therefore Cubs fans. Chicago is a big city — you can drive 20 miles up Western Avenue and still be in Chicago. The place is divided, geographically and psychologically, by the main branch of the Chicago River, with those above — literally and metaphorically — worshipping at the shrine of Wrigley Field, and those below going to ... I kid you not ... “Guaranteed Rate Field,” formerly U.S. Cellular Field, ne Comiskey Park.

Wrigley Field, as you must know, is a gem. A quaint little ballpark set in what was once a regular urban North Side neighborhood. Yes, the current Cubs owners are fast retro-fitting the area around Clark and Addison into Disneyland. But the park itself is still without peer. 

As for GRF ... it was built in 1991, just before baseball thought to include charm in their new ballparks — I like to think that Baltimore's Camden Yards, constructed just a year later, learned from the generic gamespace the Sox play in. Let's put it this way: I'd rather buy tickets and sit in the bleachers at Wrigley on a day when there isn't a game than watch the Sox play for free from the owner's box. 

Actually, it's worse than that. I don't even like being paid to go to Sox games. Not even the American League Championship Series. If you find a copy of "Sox and the City: A fan's Love Affair with the White Sox" by movie critic Richard Roeper, turn to page 180. There, during the 1996 championships, he runs into a colleague, "cold, tired, and cranky, and all he wanted to do was go home. Yet his goddamn newspaper was making him stay."

That was me. And I should point out, before someone else does, that I am not your typical sports fan. In fact, I am the guy who coined the phrase, "Sports is the same thing happening over and over." The idea of watching athletic competitions for fun is fairly alien. 

But even I am susceptible to the herd mentality, to being drawn in, such as the Sox's staggering, perhaps historic, losing season. Maybe a month back, I noticed, skimming the sports section, that this was a disaster aborning. And a hazy thought, "Maybe I should go to a game to observe their shame, maybe even write a column about it" rose like a bubble in warm honey.  But that would involve going to a Sox game, and who wants to do that? The bubble popped silently.

There must be a lot of that going around. Attendance at Garry, as Chicagoans would affectionately call Guaranteed Rate Field if they had any affection for it, is off 20 percent from last year — 16,000 a game, less than half capacity. 

Let's put it this way. I was on the L Friday and got off the 35th Street station of the Green Line — heading to the Chicago Police Department headquarters, a block east. A block west is Sox park. I saw it, and considered walking over to look at it more closely, since I was writing this. But then I shrugged and didn't. What would be the point? Why bother? It's the Sox.

Comparisons to the 1962 Mets are ill-informed. While the raw numbers might be comparable, there is no "loveable loser" aspect to the Sox. They are not incompetent in some grand, operatic way, their roster isn't filled with colorful bumblers, washed up has-beens and drunks and such. They just don't win. I couldn't name a single player if you put a gun to my head.

Me: Benintendi.

Neil: Fine. I honestly feel the team is cursed. That 1996 playoff mentioned above, the idea was to activate beloved Sox star Minnie Minoso, a coach on the team, so he could have an at bat — that way, he'd have batted in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and the 1990s. The sort of compassionate quirk that makes you love baseball. Major League Baseball, not famous for its flexibility, said okay. But the White Sox players took a vote and said no, Minnie couldn't have his at bat, because they're babies and didn't want to take attention off themselves. The Great Karmic Wheel of Baseball was so offended that it contrived to have Michael Jordan announce his retirement there, from the ballpark in the middle of a game. Plus they lost. To the Blue Jays.

So the White Sox were punished, then, and in later years. Such as 2005, when they did win in fact win the World Series, but half the city, and much of the country, failed to notice or care and those few who did promptly forgot it happened. So when the Cubs finally won in 2016, national broadcasters seemed to think Chicago hadn't won a series since 1908. Because the White Sox just don't count, to the people that do. As to why that is, well, it's complicated.

—

Me: Not that complicated.

Two principal observations. 1) I once went with my 9-year-old son to Wrigley Field, and sat behind home plate in the first row second deck, right behind the batter, immediately above the screen. I paid extravagantly for those seats. My wife and daughter had gone shopping by themselves at Marshall Fields. They were buying petticoats, or whatever women buy. For Dan and me, this was to be life-affirming dad-male bonding experience.

It was terrifying. Both pitchers were specialists in high heat. Most batters fouled balls directly behind them, directly at us, at 100-plus miles an hour. The balls hammered into the seats mere feet beside us for all nine innings. I was tense and taut for the whole game, worried about attempting to catch or at least deflect any before they pulverized my son’s face. He spend the afternoon whimpering and cowering. He never again went to a game, as far as I know, and he is now 40. I don’t believe he has ever even watched one on TV, start to finish. But that is beside the point.

Second principal observation: Unlike you, Neil, I am old enough to have watched Minnie Miñoso play. I am also old enough to have pronounced it as “Mi-NO-so,” as everyone did, as though there were no Hispanic humans on Earth. I believe that is still the case. I also believe no one in the United States ever — even now, when we know better — pronounced it ”Ro-BEAR-toe Clay-MAIN-tay,” instead of Ro-BER-rto Clem-EN-tee." It is ugly. But that is another issue for another day.

Anyway, you make good points, but we have veered from the topic. To remain faithful to the phony intellectual pretext of this column, we need to refer to philosophy. Does there exist, in the townspeople of Chicago, a willingness to embrace historic ineptitude as a positive force? Can Chicagoans manage to transcend the stigma of failure, and embrace it as a cultural achievement? Answer, please, with at least one reference to Freud, Jung, Kant, Schopenhauer, or Nietzsche. 

Tom: Hello.

Me: What? How did you get here?

Tom: I dropped in. This thing is spinning out of control. You need help. I am Tom Manteuffel, and I interrupt briefly to present the views of a man who has had many distinctions in life, the most illustrious of which is being the father of the young woman from your column Saturday, the woman who thought cauliflowers were infant broccolis. But I also grew up in Rock Island, Illinois, and I have some thoughts to share on this subject.

Me: Okay.

Tom: About the White Sox I can claim no expertise, but I can about the Cubs. There is one crucial difference though between the Cubs and the White Sox: the Cubs fill seats even when they are in last place. This is because Cubs fans, unlike Sox fans, look at the long picture. It’s why they can accept going 108 years between series titles. For the true Cubs fan, there’s always next year. Or the next. Kierkegaard’s notion of the knight of infinite resignation eerily describes the true Cubs fan. A Cubs fan could never imagine a Badwagon, no matter how sad their team’s current record sinks to, because every collapse is merely the prelude to the next climb.

Me: I should have included Kierkegaard in my challenge to Neil. Neil?

Neil: Here, with Nietzsche.

I see the trap you're setting here for me, Gene. You're asking me to speak for all Chicago, and if I've learned anything, you can't do that. I could answer your question — "does there exist, in the townspeople of Chicago..." etc. — literally: sure, 2.7 million people. Everything exists somewhere. I'm sure you could find an Al Jolson fan on a unicycle.

I think what you're driving at is, "Will this become part of the soul of the city?" (Our current mayor, the feckless and flailing Brandon Johnson, refers to the "soul of Chicago" a lot, because he doesn't know what else to say).

Who the hell knows? Cubs fans embraced their loserhood because they didn't have a choice. When they finally won the series in 2016, after wandering through a 108-year championship desert, there were guys — okay me — who worried that something definitive was being lost. That winning is overrated. Or as Oscar Wilde wrote: "There are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." (I thought it was Nietzsche who said that, then did that fact-checking thing we're supposed to do. Maybe next time).

SoxWorld, well, there's no place to go but up, right?

I have found that hardship is clarifying. We suffer into wisdom. So yeah, maybe after their team loses 121 or 122 or 123 games, Sox fans won't be as big world class jerks as usual. I wouldn't bet money on it. But it's possible. These are tough times for Chicago — hollowed out by COVID, gutted by the post-George Floyd riots, a national pinata and sneering code word for Republicans, about to become the center of attention at what is sure to be a strife-torn Democratic National Convention. 

Baseball, as always, is supposed to ground us to the best of America, even if it is also, as A. Bartlett Giamatti famously said, a machine "designed to break your heart." That's also called being alive.  You're supposed to get your heart broken, periodically, if you're doing life right, and caring about stuff. Chicago is a tough town with a big heart, and it will endure the Sox losing the same way it endured their winning. Honestly, I try not to think about the White Sox at all, and usually succeed.

—

Me: You might have to think about them one more time. IF the White Sox enter the final game of the season with the record at stake — if a loss will be the difference between second worst-ever, and worst-ever, I am going to take two people to see the game, which will happen in Detroit on Sunday, September 29. The two people will have won a contest I ran to make fun of the Sox. I fly them out, and me, and Rachel, and maybe her dad, and you and your lovely and badass wife, Edie. The game and travel and hotel, and, dinner are on me. (It’s tax deductible.) You in?

Neil: Absolutely. Though as always, I’ll be going to the game for the company. That something is also happening on the field is just an added bonus.

—

Whew, okay. Back to dreary old politics, and this excellent cartoon by Nick Anderson. It made me laugh out loud:

Also, today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll.

—

We are entering the real time segment of The Gene Pool, where I take your questions and observations, and try to respond to them in real time. The politics of today have not descended on us full-bore yet; so far, you are mostly answering my challenge, on the weekend, for times you have unknowingly repeated a falsehood, even a slander, because you had been, as Bogie said, “misinformed.”

—

Q: Regarding being misinformed, and passing it on:

I am not sure who I slandered here. Definitely my parents, but possibly myself as well. I was born on November 17, 1972. My parents were married on December 3, 1972. You get the picture.

This knowledge didn’t bother me. My mother and father gave me a good life, and I loved them and they loved me. So what if they jumped the gun a little?

I was a single child. We were a straitlaced family. We never discussed this. Never came up. In my young adulthood, I delighted in telling my girlfriends (I am female) about this giggly truth. It was funny. My outwardly nerdly parents weren’t entirely nerds, after all. Eventually, in my 30s, I brought it up with my mother, as a little ribbing joke.

It turns out it wasn’t true. They’d had no “wedding” — I’d known that, hence no photos and other paraphernalia. They were married in court. But they’d been married in court in 1971. My mother had the documents to prove it. I was not a bastard, they had not “sinned.” I have no idea where I’d gotten the bad info. It was something I just “knew.” Years of defaming them just for shits and giggles!

A: It’s not exactly defaming them, but depending on their rectitude, they might have felt it was. Did you tell them you were yukking it up over their … disgraceful debauchery?

—

TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

—

–

This is Gene.   Regarding the issue of misconceptions people ignorantly passed on, in the two days after I proposed this challenge, I wound up discovering that I had passed on two more over the years.  No, Madam Chiang Kai-Shek almost certainly did NOT bed Wendell Willkie in a one-night stand, and no, Cary Grant never sent a telegram, responding to a publicist asking how old Cary Grant was, by sending back: “Old Cary Grant is doing fine.  How you?” 

—

Q: I am a copy editor.  I am a very good copy editor.   When I was young I was not yet a very good copy editor, but I got a job as the ONLY copy editor of a small weekly newspaper, my second job working with people on their first job.    It was full of callow young reporters, and I was full of …. myself.  The very first thing I did was circulate a kinda snide  message from the New Copy Editor to All Staff, telling people of my main beefs over the misuse of English, things I wished them never to do.  It was a many-page document containing some wisdom.   I inveighed against confusing “imply” and “infer,” for example.  Unfortunately, I also indignantly informed my new writers that the proper expression was “the renown . . .,” as in “the renown Nelson Mandela,” not “renowned,” which I said was a classic misuse that would identify you as an illiterate.  I also completely confused the use of possessive apostrophes, saying such things as “the Jones’ house.”   These were horrible mistakes, exactly the opposite of what was true.  It was based on ignorance that had been reaffirmed my whole young adult life by no feedback because readers didn’t know or didn’t give a crap.   Also, I grew up as an avid reader in a mostly non-intellectual household, so I was off on some pronunciations, such as facade, Hermione, and epitome.  You know how I pronounced them because you were once a child.  

I have the soul of a copy editor — if we indeed, have such a thing — and so this has embarrassed me all my life.  I am currently 59.  I am a strong proponent of the Oxford comma. It is a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term and before the coordinating conjunction in a series of three or more terms.  It adds a character-space but its absence so often introduces a confusion.

—

Q: This is incredibly embarrassing as it involves comedy. For ages I thought the routine “Cleans and Dirtys” was from Nichols and May mainly because of the back and forth between the male and female voice. Someone finally pointed out, “You mean Shelley Berman.”  I was stunned. It is one of my favorite bits of all time (routines is a clean; bits is a dirty). I even expanded on it (comma is a clean; period is a dirty; colon is a VERY dirty). I also found it may have a flaw (fastener should be a clean and both nail and screw should be dirtys). At some point, I may have suggested it for a contest idea and misattributed it.  Truly, a huge error; a major boner. 

A:  This is a terrific, deceptively simple sophisticated bit, kind of saucy and kinky.   The woman, who is terrific while using only three words but with excellent inflection and timing, is Lovelady Powell, an American actress and singer who co-starred in the 1975 comedy The Happy Hooker. She also hawked Playtex bras on TV. 

—

This is Gene again, and this is from Adam-Troy Castro, a writer, of science fiction, fantasy and horror books.   The man can write.    He filed this on Facebook, about Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists: 

“So there he sat, grumpy and unhappy to be there, knees wide apart and soft tiny hands dangling between them, like vines that had yet to sprout fruit; this terrible man, upset with the world to the extent that it was not fully about him, unable to fill the void inside him with the worship of followers, unable to find love despite the existence of children who had been raised to be as venal as himself; unable to find satisfaction despite a store of money that should have paid for any pleasure it ever occurred to him to want. There he sat, in a room full of people who were not fooled by him, who knew exactly what he was and were not interested in flattering him. There he was, falling back on an act that had always worked quite well on those who had drunk deep from his poison, wondering why the interviewer had scorn for him, why the audience appeared to be laughing at him instead of with him, wondering why they didn't see at once why asking him tough questions was "very unfair," wondering why they didn't approve wildly when he said that the black woman wasn't black. There he was, and it was a very small taste of purgatory for him, and all he knew was that later he would have the opportunity to complain at length about their rudeness, to perhaps call their humanity into question, to, if all went well, further than that, once he reclaimed the power that was only useful, in his estimation, because it was good for him. There he was, and what got under his skin, what would bother him while he got whatever sleep he was still capable of in a diurnal cycle shattered by drug abuse, what he only vaguely realized was a taste of the desserts that awaited him, was that none of this was a step closer to his destiny, but an hour's further lurch closer to the moldering darkness of his grave: the only mirror in all the universe that would reflect his true face back at him.”

—

Please comment and observe:

Q: Hawk Tua: I can't believe I have to explain this. Yes, she is expectorating, but the act she is describing is kind of a combination HJ + BJ. She pauses in mid....let's say J,  Hawk Tuas, and continues with the combo platter. Hawk Tuas will happen several times during this J. It's not a loogie, it's just some saliva because, I suppose you get a lot of saliva in your mouth during said J. It adds to the lubricating effect.  

A: I cannot believe I have to educate you on this.   No one is disputing the meaning of the Tuah.  It is the hawk that is unnerving.   Hawk is part of “hawking up a loogie,” and that involves phlegm and snot. 

—

Q: I used to (and still do) sometimes hear syllables and be able to repeat them, but struggle to parse them into words.

So, at summer camp, I learned a card game I remembered as "Egyptian Rasgru".

"Rasgru"...a perfectly cromulent nonsense word to me.

I passed along both name and game, ignorant of the "real" name, until I heard another camper pass it along again.

A: Yes, I figured it out.  The name is “Egyptian rat screw.”  That is what you were saying.  It’s an adult version of the kids’ game Slap.  You said this to kids? You are a beast.

–

Q: Regarding your anecdote about Roger Ebert: For about 10 years I took a film class through the University of Chicago taught by Roger Ebert. No exams, no grades. Just a great film every week and interesting discussion (well, except for the woman who saw Christ figures everywhere). Roger enjoyed sharing funny stories at Gene’s expense—the zingers weren’t just on-camera. So, while I am not sure how he would feel about being “the fat one,” Roger might have enjoyed the story if had you told it about Gene. But I have to admire your bravery, admitting that you dissed the guy who helped launch John Prine. John Prine’s first review: When Roger Ebert discovered the singer in 1970 - 

A: Wow, great review.  That Ebert.  He could write, too.

—

This is Gene. You know how Vance is a slimy loose cannon? This is new, and it is really, really bad.

For those who are behind a Times paywall, try this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/opinion/jd-vance-fascism-unhumans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A04.yH5G.QcOUmSHPqu1W&smid=url-share

—

Q:  I’m curious about your $1000 contribution to Biden. What’s happening to it now?  Does it automatically go to Harris?  Were you offered a refund?  Did they ask you what you wanted to do with it?

Sean Clinchy

A: No questions were asked.  Kamala has it.  I trust her to do right by it. 

–

–

Q: Gene, Trump's campaign is flagging. He is dropping in the polls. Part of the problem is, we're seeing the same old tropes we saw in the past two campaigns. "Make America Great Again" has gone stale. He needs a fresh slogan, something that invokes presidential stature, that carries a sense of history, that captures the thrust of his campaign. How about "Return to Abnormalcy"? 

A: Very nice. 

— 

Q: My mother was of the belief that Freddie Mercury was the sole vocalist for Queen, i.e. all the voices in Bohemian Rhapsody are just him recorded over himself. This may have a kernel of truth in it to the extent that he did do some harmony layers, but not enough that it didn't baffle a friend when (informed by my mother) I asked, after Freddie’s death, how on earth they were going to a Queen concert with no one to sing.

A: Is he a hologram yet?      Ah, yes, he is.

---

Q: Minnesotan here. I'm so excited that the rest of the country will get to see how awesome Tim is (we call him Tim). Teacher, soldier, hunter, father...never lost an election. He's been a great leader here. Unrelated - I just realized the other day that Inauguration Day and MLK Jr Day fall on the same day in 2025. How cool would that be to see Kamala take the oath on MLK Day! And our Lt Gov would then be the first woman governor here, and first Indigenous governor (in the state, if not the country)

A: DON’T JINX IT.

—

Q: I was at the Saturday Twins-White Sox game, super fun to see the Sox lose! And it was Joe Mauer Day - classy guy. Did you know St. Paul MN has given baseball FOUR Hall of Famers?

A: I didn’t. I am really rooting for the Sox to lose the next three in particular. They’d beat the ‘61 Phillies for longest streak. I actually remember it.

—

Q: On the pain chart, how does the current White Sox collapse compare to the '64 Phillies collapse where they COULD have won the pennant? It seems a lot easier to accept he pain of the White Sox collapse. Tom Logan - Sterling, VA

A: I remember that, too! They lost something like 12 of their last 13 games, right? Cards snuck in.

—

Q: I think there would be interest in the last surviving witness to Reagan's almost-assassination!

A: Nah, that’s feeble.

Okay, I am calling us down. Pleeeeaase send in more questions and observations. We will need them for Thursday.

And please donate to the very, very special I Dislike Trump Button: