Someone call Homer or Christopher Nolan, because I have been on one hell of an Odyssey! OK, with that bit of topical humor out of the way, allow me to re-re-reintroduce myself. My name is Leonard Gore, Lenny to my friends and colleagues here at South Side Sox, and @Leonard42 on the Bird App (oh! Also @leonardg42.bsky.social on Bluesky!) I’ve been a White Sox fan for as long as I could remember, and that’s a verifiable fact because when my parents took me to Old Comiskey back when I was a wee little
baby, they lost me for a good long while as they passed me down the aisle for ladies to ooh and ahh at my objectively adorable cheeks, and I ended up two sections over. I like to tell folks I knew even back then that the place was my true home, and not the fact that I could have been kidnapped and raised by a nice family in Bridgeport that had to find an elaborate reason why their baby boy was a darker shade than the rest of his siblings!
But to bring this back on track, why am I coming back on board now? Right as this White Sox team is two-thirds of the way to a playoff spot? As Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas, Colson Montgomery, Davis Martin, Sean Burke, Grant Taylor and former Savannah Banana Tristan Peters all take off and play the best baseball of their lives? As Will Venable manages as if this team hasn’t lost 300+ games over the last three seasons and has this team believing they can beat anybody in a mediocre American League?
Well, to be honest … this team may have brought me out of the darkest time for me as a Sox fan in my entire life.
It started with Pedro Grifol staring into the camera and saying with a straight face that the White Sox were here to “kick your ass” only to find out that the rest of the league was the boot and the Sox were bent over, bottom getting redder and redder leading to 121 losses and the well deserved title of Worst Team of All Time. I found myself becoming what I never thought I would be: apathetic.
Josh Naylor hits a game-tying grand slam in the ninth inning followed by a three-run homer in extras? Welp, that is to be expected. Oh well.
Miguel Vargas gets blindsided and collides with 75 Million Dollar Man Andrew Benintendi as a ball drops for a hit? Damn, they went full White Sox!
The team loses its 21st game in a row, tying a major league record leading to the 1,000-Yard Stare from a shellshocked Vargas in a sewage-filled Oakland dugout? Sure it stinks in here, but I can’t tell if its the raw sewage or the Chicago White Sox.
You, dear reader, were there too. I don’t need to re-litigate the darkest three-year period in franchise history. The point is, it weighed on me. It weighed down on my soul to a point where I was actively despising this team and the ownership.
Oh, and don’t even get me started on how Jerry Reinsdorf decided that his handpicked successor to Hawk Harrelson, the great Jason Benetti, was an ingrate for being too popular and taking Sundays off to do national baseball and NFL games and let him walk to Detroit (DETROIT!), replacing him with the abomination that is John “South Side STAAAAAND UP!” Schriffen. That’s a whole another 10,000-word post.
But even with the 19-game improvement to only lose 102 games in 2025, I didn’t see much daylight in the upcoming 2026 season. And given the fact the team began 2026 with a Chase Meidroth homer off of Cy Misiorowski and Munetaka’s first major league homer, only to sandwich 14 Brewers runs on Opening Day, the 7-14 record to begin the season felt like this was the start of another slow march to a loss total that had three digits again.
But then, an amazing thing happened.
The White Sox … just kept … winning. No crazy-long, 12-game winning streaks … but three five-game win streaks in the first half? Not bad. Not bad at all!
Edgar Quero, in the midst of a slump that would eventually send him down to Charlotte, comes up with a walk-off homer to overcome a blown lead in the ninth to beat the Cubs? Well, would you look at that! This team may have something cooking!
Braden Montgomery gets called up and in his major league debut hits a walk-off home run off of Atlanta’s elite closer, called by Bob Costas, in front of an incognito MLB draft prospect Daniel Cholowsky? THIS TEAM DOES NOT QUIT! POST THE PARADE ROUTE ONLINE!
Amazingly, this is only three-highlights from a season’s worth of them that probably eclipses the total highlights from 2023-2025 combined. I could have gone with more, but Brett is already looking over my shoulder politely asking me to land this plane.
Just a couple of days ago, the White Sox just had their second consecutive extra-inning walk off win over the Yankees, splitting a series where the team absolutely could have lost all four games and sent this fan base into its first existential crisis of the season, casting doubt on whether this hot start was revealing itself to be the mirage we all had buried deep in the back of our minds. But they split the series (much thanks on Wednesday to the Yankees catcher airmailing an ill-advised pickoff attempt to end the game at third base) and somehow, amazingly, have yet to have a losing streak longer than three games this season.
So are the Sox a lock for the playoffs? For as mid as the AL has been all season, this team is still young and prone to periods of silent bats. The Guardians, despite a recent slump, still have José Ramírez and the nasty ability to somehow win games with a roster full of MLB The Show NPCs. The Twins, through some legitimate voodoo, have an offense as potent as even the vaunted Sox squad and are an uncomfortable three games back, right there with Cleveland. Tarik Skubal, thankfully, got his farewell start in Detroit and will hopefully not be a problem for the White Sox until they face whichever NL team pays thru the nose to rent him for the playoffs. And the Royals … well they just gave up a walk-off grand slam to the Twins while strike from victory. (At least they have Bobby Witt Jr.?)
But your White Sox are in first place on August 1. They are entering a nine-game stretch vs the AL-best Rays, the suddenly hot-as-hell Red Sox, and the against the third-place second-place middling Guardians. Given the Sox track record, they’ll go 4-5 but somehow sweep Cleveland and finally start to pull away towards the most improbable Sox division title since 2008.
And with that, I leave you with this. There is a non-zero chance the 2027 season will be locked out and games will be lost. Hell, there may be ZERO baseball next year. So ENJOY THIS RIDE, Sox fans. Expect success. Fill up the Rate and cheer like crazy for your South Side 9. Crazier things have happened.
Let’s Go White Sox!!!
