It was three years ago Monday that the Chicago White Sox rebuild had its signature moment.
Tim Anderson’s walk-off home run into the corn in the Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, handed the Sox a 9-8 comeback win over the New York Yankees, giving fans hope that 2021 could be the year.
Long story short: It was not the year.
The Sox have fallen so far and so fast since that ’21 season that the lineup Yankees starter Luis Gil faced Monday night on the South Side was nearly unrecognizable, especially with Luis Robert Jr. getting the day off for a mental refresh.
After losing 24 of their last 25 games, the Sox got a chance to face Aaron Judge and the Yankees in a mismatch made in MLB heaven.
But heaven can wait.
The Sox wound up cruising to a 12-2 win before a raucous crowd of 22,815, posting season highs for runs and hits (18) to snap a franchise-record 12-game home losing streak.
Interim manager Grady Sizemore chalked up his first win, and Sox pitchers survived despite issuing 11 walks.
Before the game, a reporter asked Yankees manager Aaron Boone if it would be “catastrophic” to lose a game to this historically bad Sox team.
“You know, when we don’t win, it’s usually catastrophic,” Boone replied. “And when we do win, it is what it is. We’re on a mission to be a great team, a championship team. Most of us have been around long enough to know that every night you set foot on a big-league diamond, you’re capable of losing and you’re capable of winning.
“If we play well, we should put ourselves in a good position. But you can’t get caught up in that.”
You can’t blame Boone for being diplomatic. But every team that plays the 2024 White Sox knows how embarrassing it would be to lose to them, particularly during this stretch of unfathomable baseball.
The Sox (28-92) had last won at Guaranteed Rate Field on July 10 against the Minnesota Twins. They avoided becoming the second team in history with 92 losses in 120 games, a feat accomplished by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics (27-92-1).
If you were looking for a David-versus-Goliath scenario, Sox Park was the place to be. Like the biblical matchup, the underdogs came out on top in this one as well. Andrew Vaughn and Gavin Sheets had four hits apiece, while Korey Lee and Brooks Baldwin homered for the Sox.
Rookie left-hander Ky Bush, making his second career start, faced a lineup that featured Juan Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in the Nos. 2-3-4 slots. The three sluggers had 92 home runs between them, not far off the Sox’s major-league-worst total of 101 entering the game. Bush walked seven and gave up six hits over 4 2/3 innings but limited the Yankees to one run.
Judge, who leads the majors with 42 home runs, finished with an RBI double and an infield hit but was denied his 300th career homer when a second-inning fly to right was caught on the warning track. He was playing in his 953rd game; the record for shortest time to hit 300 homers is held by Ralph Kiner, who accomplished it in 1,087 games. Even Yankees immortal Babe Ruth took 1,173 games to reach 300, though he did start his career as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox.
Some managers lately have been intentionally walking Judge with the bases empty, as early as the second inning. It’s the kind of treatment that hasn’t been seen regularly since Barry Bonds was destroying the record books in the early 2000s with the aid of modern chemistry.
Would Sizemore, in his third game as interim Sox manager, join the club and not pitch to Judge?
“We’re going to be extremely careful,” Sizemore said before Monday’s game. ”That guy does a lot of damage.”
Of course, many of the fans who turned out Monday came specifically to watch Judge hit a home run. History is fun to watch, at least when it’s not a historic losing streak.
And it’s not like the Sox need to win to make the postseason. This is, after all, entertainment. So maybe …?
“Yeah, I’m not worried about anyone else,” Sizemore said. “They can go buy another ticket somewhere else. … I’m going to try to minimize his damage as much as I can.”
Sizemore ordered an intentional walk to Judge with first base open and two on in the fourth, a move that fans of both teams booed loudly. But Stanton grounded out to end the inning, making the strategy pay off.
Sizemore didn’t have any qualms about how to approach the hottest hitter in baseball, much like Joe Maddon didn’t care in May 2016 when the Cubs manager had his pitchers pitch around Washington Nationals star Bryce Harper in a four-game series at Wrigley Field. The Cubs walked Harper 13 times, including an MLB-record six times in one game, which included three intentional walks.
“For me, it was about the right thing to do in that moment,” Maddon later told me. “It was all about their lineup construction that made me do it. It had nothing to do with competing or not competing. I have to look out for the best interests of us first. I’ll never look out for what’s in the best interest of the Washington Senators-slash-Nationals.”
The 2016 Cubs were trying to become a championship-caliber team.
The 2024 White Sox? Not so much.
After Bush on Monday, fellow rookie Jonathan Cannon starts Tuesday and Davis Martin is slated for Wednesday.
Sizemore, a former teammate of Boone’s in Cleveland, knows he has nothing to lose. He’s playing with house money since general manager Chris Getz already announced the 2025 manager will come from outside the organization. Sizemore said the two-game series with the Cubs was “just wild,” and he was excited to go “toe-to-toe” with the Yankees.
“I’m trying to have fun with it,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever manage again, so I’m going to manage like it’s the World Series. I don’t really care about anything else. I just care about the guys and having fun and putting them in a position where they’re competing and having fun and playing good baseball.”
I asked Sizemore if he really thought he never would manage again.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Guys are in this career their whole lives, and maybe you never even get an interview or maybe you never get that job. So I don’t know where I’ll be. I didn’t walk in here this year ever thinking this was a possibility.”
