“Sell the team” officially replaced “Fire Tony” on Saturday as the trendy new chant on the South Side.
After venting their displeasure with manager Tony La Russa during last year’s lost summer, disgruntled fans turned their attention to Chicago White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf during a 10-run inning in a stunning 12-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.
La Russa never got fired for last year’s flop, retiring for health reasons after missing the final weeks of an underachieving season. Reinsdorf is unlikely to sell the Sox, no matter how many games they lose this season. Chanting doesn’t usually work — Oakland A’s fans have employed the same “Sell the team” chant during home games as the owner prepares to move the franchise to Las Vegas.
But Sox fans made their point, and chanting their desires in public clearly feels cathartic to a sizable number of them while making for a nifty 10-second video clip on social media. If the poor pitching, mental mistakes and general malaise continue, expect to hear the chant repeated in the coming months.
The Sox ended their 10-game losing streak Sunday with a wild 12-9, ninth-inning comeback win over the Rays, avoiding their longest losing streak since the summer of 1956. They’re 8-21 and 3-15 since Tim Anderson went on the injured list April 11 with a left knee sprain.
Anderson returns Tuesday for the opener of a crucial series against the Minnesota Twins, and Andrew Vaughn’s three-run, walk-off homer in the seven-run ninth Sunday was a moment to savor for a team that has been running on fumes the last two weeks.
One game can’t change the Sox fortunes, but at least it ended a streak that looked like it might never end. And no “Sell the team” chants were heard Sunday.
But the Sox’s April stagger has been one of the biggest topics in baseball the first month, and it will be a while before they fumigate the ballpark from the stench.
La Russa may be the biggest beneficiary of the early woes, which can be traced to holes in roster construction and failures by top prospects to live up to their hype. This is mostly the same core of players as the 2021 division champs, minus José Abreu, meaning the biggest change was in the manager’s chair, from La Russa to Pedro Grifol.
The theory goes like this: If it’s the players’ fault in 2023, maybe it wasn’t really La Russa’s fault in 2022.
Not all of it was, of course. The players bear most of the responsibility, along with the two guys who put the team together: general manager Rick Hahn and executive vice president Ken Williams.
But any dissection of the wrong turn in the Sox rebuild would have to include the fact La Russa was steering the ship when it veered off course. Luis Robert Jr. not running hard to first base Saturday to “conserve” his hamstrings is the direct result of La Russa telling players to do just that last year. Grifol promised when he arrived that his players would run hard, but Robert was still operating by the La Russa rule.
Pulling him from Saturday’s game for a “mental lapse” helped Grifol show he’s in charge, but Robert claimed afterward he was suffering from tight hamstrings, giving the manager an excuse to sit him Sunday rather than bench him again. Robert pinch-hit in the seventh and was replaced by a pinch runner after getting hit by a pitch.
Maybe Grifol will steer the ship into the rocks and be gone when Hahn finally relinquishes his throne and moves into some John Paxson-type role in the organization. But until that happens, it’s up to him to keep the season from going completely off the rails.
Or maybe it’s too late and it ”doesn’t (bleeping) matter,” as Sox starter Lance Lynn said Saturday when asked if he knew he had a no-hitter in the seventh, the longest bid of his career.
Lucas Giolito, Lynn and Mike Clevinger have strung together three good starts in a row, something the Sox need to repeat over and over if they are to turn things around.
Lynn’s start Saturday, which Grifol called “phenomenal,” could have been a good audition for his next role as trade-deadline chip. As the veteran leader of the rotation, Lynn’s struggles have been magnified — 0-4 with a 7.16 ERA — and at 35 it’s no surprise some have wondered whether his days as a dominant starter are over.
But for most of Saturday, he looked like the Lynn of old.
“I’m back to being me,” he said afterward, disregarding his previous six starts.
A boisterous crowd, many of whom came out on a cool night for a pregame pub crawl and a Sox hockey jersey giveaway, was into every pitch as Lynn made his no-hit bid. When Gavin Sheets made a nice running catch at the wall for the final out of the sixth to preserve the no-hitter, Sox fans began referring to Dewayne Wise’s catch that saved Mark Buehrle’s perfect game in 2009.
Everything seemed to be falling into place.
But in a season of blunders that has defied belief, Lynn went from dominant to done in only five batters, and the 10-run inning that ignited the “Sell the team” chants had begun.
Sunday’s comeback was a perfect way to respond. The Sox could breathe a sigh of relief knowing they won’t make history this week with a franchise-record losing streak. It was as improbable a win as we’ve seen on the South Side in a couple of years.
“Baseball is a crazy game, man,” Grifol said.
Crazy enough for the Sox to flip the script?
We’ll soon find out.
()