Four years ago, on the day before the last SoxFest got underway, the inner offices at Guaranteed Rate Field were popping with activity and enthusiasm.
Inside one of them, sales calls were being made to season-ticket holders. Once the hook was set, a Sox bigshot would hop on the line to reel the deal in.
“A lot of exciting times are coming,” then-manager Rick Renteria told one fired-up customer.
“It’s going to be so much fun,” then-broadcaster Jason Benetti assured another.
Young pitcher Michael Kopech, ready to scale the mound again after Tommy John surgery, was on some of those sales calls, too, to the delight of fans who viewed him as a budding superstar. Little could anyone have imagined at the time that Kopech would sit out the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Renteria and Benetti can’t be found kicking around the Sox’ ballpark anymore, as you know. As checked-out on the team as many fans have become, those customers might not be around anymore, either.
But, oh, the first weeks of 2020 were full of so many good feelings. The Sox of 2017 to 2019 had compiled the franchise’s lowest three-year win total, not counting strike-shortened seasons, since 1968 to 1970, but things were looking up dramatically.
“Do you see the guys we have in this room?” shortstop Tim Anderson, reigning American League batting champion, said at McCormick Place West, to where SoxFest had moved from the Hilton Chicago.
Big-name newcomers Yasmani Grandal and Dallas Keuchel raved about the team’s talent and postseason aspirations. General manager Rick Hahn couldn’t have sounded more confident.
Veteran Jose Abreu might have been the only one who pumped the brakes at least a little.
“I don’t want to say that we’re going to be in the playoffs or that we’re going to win the World Series because we don’t know yet,” Abreu said through a translator. “We might have the talent, but we don’t know.”
Anybody seen any of those guys lately?
Anybody planning to hit SoxFest next weekend?
Of course you haven’t. Of course you aren’t.
SoxFest appears to be a thing of the past — a relic — not unlike the Sox’ championship hopes of so shortly ago. In the afterglow of another happy, well-attended Cubs Convention, it’s the time on the calendar when a slightly grumpier, less-well-attended SoxFest traditionally would be ramping up. But the Sox called off the 2021 and 2022 events, blaming the pandemic, and then just blew it off — weirdly — in 2023.
Why? “Due to several factors,” the team barely even tried to explain in its only official statement.
The vagueness was insulting to fans, who were left to assume that chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was in part clapping back after catching endless grief for trying to remake a buddy movie with Tony La Russa starting with the 2021 season. Did Reinsdorf want to host an event where fans would snipe at him and gripe about the team’s miserable 2022 performance? Probably not.
And this year, Reinsdorf clearly didn’t have the stomach for a SoxFest restart. One imagines the chilly receptions fans would have given manager Pedro Grifol and new GM Chris Getz and shudders. Reinsdorf would have been chased with torches and pitchforks. Who needs it? Not the old chairman, who turns 88 next month. Bah, humbug.
The Sox don’t miss an opportunity to alienate their supporters. It’s true even amid the positive vibes that are buzzing this week after news that talks are happening about a potential Sox stadium in the South Loop. SoxFest-goers surely would have been very pleased to be further informed — and get to weigh in on — that.
There will be a fan event Friday night at the Field Museum, but it’s billed by the club as an “exclusive Season Ticket Holder party” where some “[mingling] with our current players and coaches” will happen. In other words, mosta youse ain’t invited.
No Fest for the rest. No black carpet or ribbon-cutting ceremony. No stages for photos and autographs and conversations with beloved Sox alumni. No live interviews on NBC Sports Chicago. No sponsorships from Beggars Pizza (the jokes about fans pleading with Reinsdorf to stop hiring people from the Royals write themselves) and Old Dominion Freight Line (the jokes about the Sox shipping out most of their pitching staff do, too). No fun-filled activities for fans like the “Speed Pitch” station or the Sox-themed escape room (maybe Grandal’s catching ability and Keuchel’s changeup are still trapped in there?).
The Sox could have tried to make it work this year. Just think of all the questions fans might have had for new rotation members Erick Fedde and Chris Flexen, starting with, “Who are you fellas again?”
Perhaps fans could have signed up to race alongside new catcher Martin Maldonado, who was the big league’s second-slowest player — ahead of only Grandal — last season. Beat Maldonado and get tickets to a game. Lose to Maldonado and get tickets to two games.
Goodness, the line to try to hit a target and drop Reinsdorf into a dunk tank might have stretched from McCormick Place West to the Obama Presidential Center site in Jackson Park. Hey, now there’s an idea for the next time there’s a SoxFest — invite the former president, stick him in a No. 44 jersey and let him work the crowd.
But will there be a next one? No?
We doubt it, too.
Pretty weak.