White Sox Choke Away Historic Choke

CHICAGO--The Chicago White Sox have choked again. It was just a month ago that the team was on the verge of the worst collapse in baseball history after losing a 15-game lead to the Cleveland Indians in less than a month. Now the Sox are in the postseason, prompting baseball fans around the country to wonder, once again, what might have been.

“Well well well. They choked again. Unbelievable,” said a Dave Zuckert, a White Sox season ticket holder, who lives a block from US Cellular field. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy about it. I’m really glad they made the playoffs. But it’s uncanny the way they can be on the verge of something historic and then mess it up. They can’t even choke right.”

Gary Richter, a fan since the 1950’s who has witnessed four decades of choking, said he was not surprised at all that the White Sox couldn’t close the deal when they had the chance.

“This is just their nature. They have to do this,” said Richter, 58. “In all my years of being a fan I have never seen them follow through on anything. They always choke. Now they’ve choked away a historic choke. Only they could do something like that.”

Richter was enthralled with the team early in the season when they boasted the best record in baseball and one of the strongest pitching staffs in the either league. Then in August, they started to slide, and eventually looked poised to make history. Not so fast, White Sox fans.

“You know what’s funny? I actually resigned myself to the fact that they were going to choke,” Richter said. “I even started to enjoy it on some level. I thought it might elevate us up to the level of lovable losers like the Cubs. It could be something for future generations to look back on, a curse to be broken. But then something strange happened. They started winning. That’s when it occurred to me. They are choking again, but in a totally different way. Goddamn curse. Will it ever be broken?”

It wasn’t long ago that the White Sox were the toast of major league baseball. Few expected them to continue their near-perfect play in the first half of the season, but nobody expected their downward spiral in the second half. It got so bad in mid-September that fans and media were already writing them off, even though they were still in first place.

“I thought they were finished,” said Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jay Mariotti. “To me it was a foregone conclusion. I was even considering writing a book about it, you know, like that guy from Boston who wrote The Curse of the Bambino. It was going to be a sweeping historical epic, one that chronicled decades of frustration and heartbreak for the fans of Chicago. Now that’s on the back burner. Who knows, maybe they’ll choke horribly in the playoffs and we can start talking about curses again. Nah, they’ll probably fuck that up, too.”

A monumental choke in the playoffs isn’t likely for these White Sox. With the pressure of the pennant race finally lifted, they believe their worst days are behind them.

“Getting through September was really grueling,” said pitcher Mark Buerhle, who was 6-5, with a 4.07 ERA in the second half. “We did learn a big lesson from it, though: Never, ever be in first place by a lot of games. You’re just setting yourself up for disaster. Better to be in second or third place and then just quietly go home at the end of the season, leaving the history for some other team. That’s our motto now. It’s posted in the clubhouse.”

Manager Ozzie Guillen, who was the subject of intense scrutiny during the second half of the season, is breathing a sigh of relief now as his team readies itself for a postseason run.

“You know, we were dead and buried a few weeks ago. Nobody believed in us,” said Guillen. “It’s amazing how fast everyone jumped off the bandwagon and gave up on us. It almost seemed like people wanted us to choke, like they were almost willing us to screw it up. Well we proved them wrong. Now they all think we’re going to make a run at World Series, and we’re going to prove them wrong again.”