New in PJ Media:
“You have to have a sense of humor,” said Chicago White Sox pitcher Davis Martin, and yeah, that would certainly help. The White Sox lost their 120th game of the expiring baseball season on Sunday, making them only the second team in the last 125 years to lose that many, and only the third team to do so since organized baseball began in 1876.
Martin himself hasn’t won a game all year. He offered some insight into what it was like to be a professional athlete on a team that lost its game virtually every day: “You walk that fine line of being on the edge of losing your mind — always on that razor’s edge. We’re just watching it all, and we’re like, oh my gosh, this happens and this happens. Truly, it’s so many things.”
So many things — 120, in fact, and counting. As of this writing, the ChiSox have six more games left. If they lose even one of them, they’ll set a modern record for losses. If they lose two or more, they will go down (way down) in history as the worst major league baseball team ever.
Some wags will at this point bring up the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, a National League team that famously won only twenty games and lost 134 and was then unceremoniously dropped from the league. But the past is another country. Major League Baseball tends to discount records from before 1901 when the American League was founded and the modern era of baseball is considered to have begun.
In this case, there is a good reason for doing so. The owners of the Cleveland Spiders, a pair of brothers named Frank and Stanley Robison, were allowed to own another major league team as well, the St. Louis Browns, which they called the Perfectos, and is now the Cardinals. The Robison brothers wanted their Perfectos to be perfect, so they transferred all the halfway decent players on the Spiders to St. Louis, leaving the Cleveland team stocked with retreads, has-beens, and never-weres. Today, in our morally upright and scrupulous era, that would never be allowed, and so the Spiders’ 1899 record is not one that will give any consolation to the present-day White Sox.
Instead, the White Sox are vying for baseball immortality with the 1962 New York Mets, who won 40 games and lost 120. Even though both the White Sox and the Mets have lost 120 games, with a break or two, the Sox could still escape the title of “Worst Baseball Team of All Time,” since the Mets had two rainouts and thus ended up playing only 160 games. The White Sox will play 162, which means they could still win one or two more games than the Mets did.
There is more. Read the rest here.
somehistory says
After that many losses, how can they have any playing spirit left? They must be trying to charge up just so they won’t be the ‘worst’ team ever to play.
However, there are more important things in life. As long as they can keep supporting their families, they have a reason to play.
And so if they do get that title, somewhere down the road, some other team can come along and take it away.
Luchtpint says
This is probably the worst disaster to ever befall Mankind.
mike says
and to think we were avid Sox fans only a few years ago
the thinking of do more with less falls away when the poor players get drafted and
explode with talent
only proves the management sucks and that management has no clue on how to
cultivate the stock before they let them go
the CUBs were no better
I spend most of my life near Chicago and going to games
to see the same every year
the White Sox are the definition of insanity
40 rounds says
I also grew up a little West of Chicago and was a big Cub fan as were most of the people I knew. I do remember white Sox fans were always gleeful when the Cubs lost but I never felt that way when the Sox lost…ahhh
commonsense says
Robert, the St. Louis Browns are now the Baltimore Orioles, not the Cardinals. The move to Baltimore and team name change occurred in 1952 or ’53.