The biggest day of the Chicago White Sox season finally is at hand.
After an 8-0 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, the Sox will debut their new Chicago Bulls-themed alternate uniforms, celebrating what the team’s website described as two “iconic” franchises.
Like the vintage Reese’s commercial in which someone accidentally gets peanut butter in his chocolate while another person gets chocolate in his peanut butter, this is a melding of two franchises that was bound to happen.
Whether it works as well as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup will be in the eye of the beholder.
During the unveiling of the new City Connect uniforms this week, White Sox chief revenue and marketing officer Brooks Boyer called it “the first time we’re going to see a collaboration between an MLB team and an NBA team on the field.”
This is exciting stuff for the Sox, who take an 8-23 record into Friday’s game against the Houston Astros after snapping a three-game losing streak on “Weather Day” at Sox Park.
“How about that, we’re 1-0 this month,” manager Will Venable said. “Every win is great.”
Sure, the Sox still have one of the the worst offenses in baseball, but they’re 6-0 when scoring eight or more runs, so there’s that. In their other 25 games, the Sox are 2-23 and averaging 2.2 runs per game. Go figure.
Now we’ll see if the all-red jerseys can sell the Sox better than the actual team, which began the day 11½ games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the American League Central. Coincidentally, the Sox are run by Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who also happens to be chairman of the Bulls.
It wouldn’t surprise me if someone close to Reinsdorf suggested the alternate jerseys be inscribed with “JERRY” across the front instead of “CHICAGO,” only to be shot down by the modest owner who never wants to call attention to himself. Teaming up with Reinsdorf’s other team was much easier than joining forces with the Bears, Blackhawks or … you know who.
Photos: White Sox unveil their new City Connect uniforms — with a splash of Bulls
The Sox and Bulls have much in common, aside from having the same 89-year-old boss.
Both teams are in rebuild mode and preaching patience, whether it’s Bulls executive vice president of basketball operations Artūras Karnišovas or Sox general manager Chris Getz doing the preaching.
Both teams once employed Michael Jordan, though only one of them is still cashing in on Jordan’s legacy. And fans of both teams wish the owner would sell their favorite team to someone who would spend money to compete for a championship. But you can’t have everything — or really anything if you’re a Sox or Bulls fan over the last two decades.
Ironically, of all the things the Sox have done wrong over the years, from building the oh-so-high-and-steep upper deck at the new ballpark in 1991 to rehiring Tony La Russa as manager in 2020, the one thing most fans seem to agree on are the classic Sox uniforms.
The return in the early 1990s to the old-school white jerseys with black pinstripes, and the classic Sox script logo ended a long series of uniform changes that included the red pinstripes of the Dick Allen era in the early 1970s, the ugly “SOX” jerseys of the Winning Ugly era of the 1980s and the 1976 jerseys that Chris Sale famously took a scissors to on a throwback uniform day in 2016.
The current Sox cap became iconic when West Coast rappers embraced it in videos, and the uniform scheme in use now has lasted for more than three decades.
But baseball is all about making money, and MLB’s City Connect marketing ploy is just another cash grab that all teams employ except the New York Yankees and Athletics.
The new all-red Sox/Bulls jerseys that will be worn Friday’s certainly should make the team some cash. I looked for one on the concourse Thursday and saw it was selling for $174.99, plus tax. They were made in Indonesia, so fans better get one before the tariffs hit.
Sox fans will either love them or hate them, but at least they’ll be talking about them. That’s what really matters. As the Sox scuffle their way through another awful start to a season, on a TV network that many fans can’t watch, they’re becoming increasingly irrelevant.
But on Thursday, Sean Burke pitched six scoreless innings to improve to 2-4, Miguel Vargas hit a three-run home run, Luis Robert Jr. drove in three runs and saved four with a leaping catch and the Sox avoided a sweep before a crowd of 11,917, including thousands of kids who got a chance to miss school for the Weather Day promo.
Burke walked the bases loaded in the first before escaping a big inning when Robert robbed Rhys Hopkins of a grand slam.
“That catch was one of the key of the game,” Robert said through an interpreter. “Not just for Sean, but for us as a team collectively. With a grand slam in the first inning, it would’ve been different there.”
Roberts’ RBI single in the first gave Burke a slim lead to protect, and the rookie settled down thereafter, allowing only two hits.
“Definitely think that catch helped out a ton,” Burke said. “Just kind of a sigh of relief that I was out of it and from there you just go in with your stuff.”
After Vargas’ home run off Craig Yoho in the sixth broke it open, Robert drove in three runs with a double in the four-run seventh, and the Sox bullpen combined for three shutout innings
The Sox did make one roster move Thursday, reinstating Chase Meidroth from the 10-day injured list and placing ex-Cub Gage Workman on the IL with a right hip flexor. They could add to the offense if they call up their hottest minor-league prospect — first baseman Tim Elko, who has nine home runs at Triple-A Charlotte. But Venable didn’t sound like a call-up was imminent.
“If we think that there’s a time he can help us, yeah,” he said. “He’s obviously swinging the bat really well and we really like the guy. Great guy to have, works extremely hard. So we’d be happy to have him at some point if it makes us better.”
It couldn’t make them any worse. First baseman Andrew Vaughn is hitting .167 and entered the day with a minus-0.9 WAR, the worst among qualified hitters. But it’s a new month, and maybe wearing those new Bulls jerseys can help lift the Sox.
It didn’t exactly work for the Bulls, but that’s another story.
