“Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” was the name of Jimmy Breslin’s book on the 1962 New York Mets, a team that has been the embodiment of a losing sports franchise for more than six decades.
The title was taken from a quote Mets manager Casey Stengel may or may not have said about his team. Breslin was reputed to have embellished quotes and admitted in a New York Times interview, “He didn’t say it alone. I heard him say something in league with it.”
No matter what Stengel said, the ’62 Mets will always be synonymous with losing, thanks to a record 120 losses in their first season. It’s a dubious mark the Chicago White Sox are tracking like the Titanic heading toward that fateful iceberg, with 106 losses heading into Sunday’s series finale against the Mets on the South Side, one shy of breaking the franchise record set in 1970 and tied Saturday night.
The Sox have been a punchline in Chicago all season, a team that followed a 14-game losing streak in the spring with a league-record-tying 21-game losing streak in the summer and take a nine-game losing streak into Sunday.
But with four weeks remaining, they’re about to become a national story as they edge closer to sports immortality. The two remaining members of the 1962 Mets — pitchers Jay Hook and Craig Anderson — already have been interviewed about the possibility of seeing their record fall to the Sox, and both players maintain they wouldn’t wish that mark on anyone.
While comparisons between the 2024 Sox and ‘62 Mets are inevitable, it’s fair to say the Sox won’t become nearly as lovable as the Mets, an expansion team that returned National League baseball to New York after losing the Dodgers and Giants. The Sox don’t have a player like “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry to serve as a symbol for their awfulness. Throneberry once hit a triple off the Cubs but was called out for not touching first or second.
But those who have paid close attention to the Sox know the ‘62 Mets have nothing on them when it comes to ridiculous occurrences.
In fact, just Wednesday against the Texas Rangers, second baseman Lenyn Sosa was hit in the face between innings by a warmup throw from catcher Chuckie Robinson. It was the Sox season in a nutshell, everyone seemed to agree.
Unfortunately, it was just one of many moments that captured the season in a nutshell.
In a City Series game against the Cubs on Aug. 10 on the South Side, rookie shortstop Brooks Baldwin took a cutoff throw and inexplicably ignored Cody Bellinger as he rounded third and scored on a play in which he normally would’ve been out by 15 feet. Cubs players were seen laughing on the bench while watching a replay on their iPads. “It’s going to happen sometime,” interim manager Grady Sizemore said.
Confirmed, especially to the White Sox.
On June 21 in Detroit, Paul DeJong forgot how many outs there were in the top of the ninth inning and was doubled off first on a routine fly to center to end a 2-1 loss. Manager Pedro Grifol gave a long and tortured analysis of the game afterward but ignored the defining moment until reporters asked him about DeJong’s gaffe.
“Did you talk to him?” Grifol shot back. “You asked him?…. He already answered the answer.”
Grifol morphing into “Stengelese” that night was perhaps his only resemblance to Stengel, a Hall of Fame manager who won 10 pennants and seven World Series with the New York Yankees before coming out of retirement to manage the Mets. Grifol, who was fired Aug. 8 after going 89-190 in his two years, will not be remembered as fondly as Stengel, who lasted four years with the Mets despite a .302 winning percentage (175-404).
Grifol’s most memorable quote was declaring the Sox were “f—ing flat” after a late May loss to Baltimore, an ill-advised assessment that lost what little respect he had left in the clubhouse.
The former Sox manager’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene, from the second day in spring training when he revealed he was jotting down moments like bullpen outings that he termed as “wins.”
“Those are wins that we’re taking out of each day and putting them in the wins column that are really important to our progression plan,” he said. “So today, Corey Knebel’s bullpen and Dominic Leone’s bullpen, I’m not going to forget those.”
He’ll always have Camelback Ranch.
NBC Sports Chicago’s Sox analyst, former manager Ozzie Guillen, said after one loss that he “should be embarrassed” to have interviewed for a job in which he lost out to Grifol.
Amazingly, Grifol’s .239 winning percentage in 2024 is higher than Sizemore’s. The interim manager, whom general manager Chris Getz said won’t be considered for the vacancy, took a 3-16 record (.158 winning percentage) into Saturday’s game. Sizemore will likely go down as the only manager to intentionally walk a hitter (Juan Soto) to face Aaron Judge, the hottest player in baseball who is on his way to another 60-plus home run season.
Judge promptly hit his 300th career home run. Even Sox fans stood and applauded greatness, having seen nothing like it the last few years.
The 2024 Sox won’t be remembed as lovable, but their ability to confound and confuse fans is awe-insiring. After a 44-minute rain delay against the Atlanta Braves on April 2 at Sox Park, the game was delayed when first-base coach Jason Bourgeois was missing. It soon went viral on social media. “Quite incredible,” the Braves announcer said. “That’s something that usually happens at a Little League game.”
But that was just the beginning. Outfielder Tommy Pham pretended he wanted to fight the entire Brewers team on June 2 in Milwaukee after being nailed at the plate on a terrible send by third-base coach Eddie Rodriguez. “There’s a reason why I do all kinds of fighting in the offseason,” Pham said. “Because I’m prepared to f— somebody up.”
Conveniently forgetting he was not actually a Sox player, oblivious Sox play-by-play man John Schriffen yelled, “Nah, we ain’t taking that from the Brewers, I don’t care how many L’s we got this year.” The Sox took it. And they took it some more.
On July 2 at Cleveland, center fielder Luis Robert Jr. caught a ball in medium center with one out and a runner on third in the ninth inning of a tie game and didn’t even attempt to throw the winning run out at the plate. Grifol said those criticizing Robert were “making something out of nothing,” as if expecting the outfielder to make an effort on a game-deciding play was an obsolete way of thinking.
There was much more madness, and there’s probably more to come in the next four weeks as the Sox creep toward the Mets’ record. The Sox are making sure no one forgets just how much of a train wreck this 2024 season was.
As Stengel liked to say, you could look it up.
