Monday, October 26, 2009

Happy Anniversary

Four years ago today, White Sox fans, October 26, 2005 ...

Sorry, that posted kinda large, but maybe that's appropriate (and I don't know how to make it smaller)

SoxFest 2010

Hotel room packages/tickets went on sale this morning at 10 am and sales were brisk.  Interest already is strong for January's event (January 22-24 to be exact).

You can only order at whitesox.com. Click here.

2-For-2

The great Gordon Beckham claimed his second rookie award today when he was named the MLBPA's 2009 Player's Choice Outstanding AL Rookie. Voting for this award, like that of the Sporting News, is by MLB players.

Each winner receives $20K to donate to a worthy charity.  Word is that Gordon is splitting his award between a charity that fights Parkinson's and The Joyce Thome Foundation.

Ozzie and the World Series

I'm off tomorrow to NYC to join manager Ozzie Guillen and the FOX crew for the 2009 World Series.

Ozzie joined Joe Buck, Tim McCarver and Ed Goren of FOX today for a conference call promoting the series and Ozzie's role in the pre and postgame coverage.

Among his comments:

Ozzie on possibly cursing on air: Don't worry. We have a bet. I'm going to win a lot of money.  
 
Ozzie on the World Series: This could be one of the best. Both teams have speed, power and pitching. 

More Ozzie on the World Series telecast: I only curse and say bad stuff about my team.  
      
Guillen: It's going to be fun. I'll do my best and be myself. I'll talk about what I know. The only thing I know in life is baseball.  
   
More Guillen: Ratings will be up in Venezuela, Columbia and Puerto Rico with people tuning in to watch!  
 
Ozzie Guillen on his FOX World Series gig: It's a great opportunity to work with a group who has been doing the World Series for so long.

Ozzie on instant replay: I think you have to trust the umps. I don't think we need to move anything right now."

Ozzie on the Game 1 starters: I have seen them a lot.  They have different ways of competing.  CC is better than he was in the past.  Lee was having trouble one year, went to AAA, came back and was amazing.  These two have grown up so fast.

Dayan Viciedo

FYI, Arizona Fall League devotees, White Sox player development staff decided to cut Dayan Viciedo's AFL season short due to tendinitis in his elbow (not considered serious in any way). Brent Morel is taking his place.

 

Thursday, October 15, 2009

SoxFest Packages on Sale Oct 26

Mark your calendar.  SoxFest room and ticket packages go on sale at 10 am Monday, October 26, only via whitesox.com.

Saturday/Sunday and individual-day passes will go on sale in the future.  As SoxFest veterans know, the very best way to enjoy the weekend is to get a two-night stay at the Palmer House Hilton.  That way, you get exclusive access on Friday night.

 

 

Tuesday, October 12 (I think), 2009

Arizona Fall League Begins

Play starts today in the Arizona Fall League and seven White Sox are on the Peoria Javelinas. OF Jordan Danks, 3B Dayan Viciedo and INF CJ Retherford (Hawk's favorite) are the position players, while the Javelina pitching staff includes Justin Cassel, Sergio Santos, Jacob Rasner and Matt Long.

If you want to follow the Arizona Fall League on twitter, try @MLBazFallLeague

Handicappers

You are not.

A quick read through your postseason baseball picks shows we may not have a winner of this winter's prize.

Stay tuned, though.

Videotape

For those who asked, I am trying to track down a video tape of KW's Second City appearance Friday night.

 

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Congratulations

To the Minnesota Twins on capturing the AL Central title in dramatic fashion last night with a 6-5 win over the Tigers.

As a baseball fan, I love the first days of the Division Series, with up to three great baseball games a day.  For me, it's like the first games of the NCAA college basketball tournament, only better, because the games generally are better, more compelling.  The only thing that is better is when the White Sox are playing in October. Getting better but still not over it yet ...

Mr. Hilarious

OK, so they are not words that automatically go together, but try "Ken Williams" and "improv comedy" in the same sentence. The Sox GM is helping out a very worthy local cause, Gilda's House, by appearing in an improv show this Friday night. For information and to see who else is appearing, click here.

Postseason Brackets

Readers, submit your picks for this postseason.  Post your winners of each matchup, DS through WS.  When the dust settles after the World Series, we'll crown a champion in some appropriate way.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Thanks

My personal thanks and appreciation to all White Sox fans for a terrific season in 2009.  Thanks for attending, watching, listening, reading, tweeting, following and basically, offering your passion to this team. While the season was frustrating on many counts, I do love this game because even in years where a team falls short of winning a division, baseball offers such great moments: Mark Buehrle's Perfect Game (and DW's catch), President Obama taking the mound at the All-Star Game in St. Louis wearing a Sox jacket and the emergence of Gordon Beckham as a feel-good star of the future. Maybe it's the way the season ended, but I wish we could start 2010 right now ... I can't wait to see Jake Peavy, MB, John Danks and Gavin Floyd (plus whomever) take the mound each day next summer.

I'd love to hear from you all about any of your own personal moments/highlights from the season and maybe what has you fired up -- assuming you are -- about 2010. I'd love to read your replies.

Today

Regardless of who you cheer for or follow, you have to love the drama, excitement and tension of a one-game playoff.  I'm looking forward to watching today's game from Minneapolis.  Who are you cheering for and why? And which team do you think will capture this winner-take-all contest?

Let me know your thoughts ...

 

So as we sit and watch Game 1 of the Twins-Tigers DH today, which team do you want to see win the American League Central (if it's not the White Sox)?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

What A Difference A Year Makes

Driving into the ballpark this morning, I thought of how different the end of 2009 felt from last year at this time when we were finishing a crucial weekend series with a game looming on Monday with the Tigers and a possible playoff-game for that Tuesday.  Granted we still have a week of road games to conclude this year, but it just really struck me this morning how much I missed the excitement, energy and adrenaline we all experienced in 2008.  Perhaps by missing out on it in 2009, we'll appreciate it even more in 2010!

Excitement

I am pleased by the number of Sox fans I speak to who already are excited about the 2010 season in the sense that they look forward to seeing Jake Peavy pitch every five days and are excited about how good our rotation will be.  Certainly we need to figure out why the middle of our lineup struggled so much for most of 2009 (especially the second half) and recreating your bullpen is an annual challenge for every team in baseball, but I do think people are excited.  I'd like to hear how you all feel as we start to close the book on 09 and look for 10.

No Football

Just to be clear, my television is not tuned to football this morning!  I actually watched the United States (with White Sox reps Kirk Champion, Ehren Wassermann, Lucas Harrell and Josh Kroger) win a gold medal at the IBAF World Championships in Italy, beating the Cubans.

I texted my congrats to Champ, who replied that our guys really stepped up and that he really missed buffalo wings!

Ah, I told him, in reply, I am sure the Chianti is tremendous, so everything balances out.

 

Friday, September 25, 2009

Tonight's Lineup

Pods7, Beckham 5, AJ 2, PK 3, Ramirez 6, JD 9, Q dh, Getz 4, Rios 8. Peavy pitching.

Just Saying

If you happened by Bolingbrook Golf Course on Thursday -- very, very early on Thursday -- you might have seen the links grudge match to end all grudge matches: Harold Baines (unbeaten all summer) and Kevin Hickey vs. your correspondent and Mark Salas.

Well, by the end of the morning round -- we teed off in the dark and into the fog -- Salas was dancing a jig ("I saw that," Baines noted) and we did not have to play the 18th hole.

"Go ahead and celebrate," Baines told Salas, "You just went 1-20."

"Yeah, but it's good to go out on top, a champion," Salas replied.

Because of a 10:30 am outing, we decided we needed to tee off at 6:30 am.  Only problem was, none of us Einsteins thought about whether the sun would be up by then! Add in the fog, and the first hole was played in utter darkness, low visibility and silence (we were the only ones out there).

Four hours later, a new champion had been crowned.

God save the king.

Pregame

Prior to batting practice, Jerry Reinsdorf presented Mark Buehrle with a specially commissioned ring to commemorate his Perfect Game this July (and he gave Buehrle a second ring for Mark's dad). The team also presented Mark with a specially designed display case (done by our great in-house designer Gareth Breunlin) that included hand-written notes from his teammates and color copies of newspapers from around the country from July 24.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Today's Lineup

Pods 8, Beckham 5, AJ 2, PK 3, Kotsay dh, Ramirez 6, Quentin 7, Getz 4, Rios 9. Danks pitching.

PK

Paul Konerko is the latest player to be honored as Army Strong. This is a great interview with Paulie.

Perspective

A 14-year-old girl was here yesterday before the game to meet the White Sox.  Originally scheduled to meet Jim Thome, instead Gordon Beckham filled in as her host (which, no offense to Jim, but I am guessing any 14-year-old girl will pick Gordon right now!). The very special guest brought a smile to everyone's face, and manager Ozzie Guillen invited she and her family back as his personal guests on Saturday.

I am told that ABC7 will be running a story on this special Sox fan at 4:30 pm today.

Welcome Back

Also on Saturday, we are going to host a special soldier who is returning from his deployment overseas.  His first wish: attend a White Sox game.  During his deployment, he met a special friend, a 12-year-old boy from Chicago who helped raise money to buy phone cards for soldiers overseas.  During the past year, this kind-hearted kid was diagnosed with luekemia. So now, this soldier wants to bring his new buddy to the game so they can enjoy it together. They will be my guests on Saturday.

Finally

A few days ago, I asked fans via twitter, facebook and here, to write me with their special story of why they are a Sox fan.  I told people to limit it to 25 words or less and received great replies.  This one was the winner (even though she went over 25 words).  See what you think:

Hello Mr. Reifert,

I have been trying to figure out who to send this to for a couple weeks now, and when I saw your tweet, I finally knew. My story is a bit of a long one, so bear with me. However, it is in recognition of my appreciation of the people who work for you and why I owe my summer to the White Sox. I have never had a bad time at the Cell, in fact when I am in the gift shop or at the concession stand, I regularly strike up a conversation with the workers; this particular game was an exception though.

My story starts in the spring when I (finally) started rooting for the White Sox hardcore as in paying attention to the games, transactions, news, etc. It had been two years since that happened (back when I was in high school). Anyways, it even gave me my career goal, which since I'm in my third year of college, needed to happen.... become a sports writer. I started following the Sox Machine blog (Jim even let me write a few recaps), along with yours and Chuck Garfien's and even signed up for Twitter to get the game updates since I'm often at school or work during games.

 But the reason I truly owe my season to the White Sox is because after four years, it gave my Dad and I something to talk and laugh about. When I was a jr. in high school, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since made a full recovery but it definately took its toll on the relationship between me and my Dad because all of a sudden, there was nothing light hearted that we could talk about.

Until this summer. It took my dad about a month to come to terms with the fact that his little girl was now a Southsider (he was born and raised a Cub fan and although he was pretty diehard, he was realistic enough to know when they were bad and stop watching). After that month though, he and I would talk more than we had a long time. He made sure he knew who the players were and what they accomplished so that we could talk about it when he got home from work. When Buehrle threw his Perfect Game, I was in Ohio visiting some friends. Without me even calling to ask him, he taped the recast of the game and the next day bought all the papers and surprised me with them. The night Konerko had his three home runs, we were at that game. He had been telling his bosses that I was a huge Sox fan and wanted to be a sports writer, so they gave him the tickets to that game and we went with my cousin and my uncle. It was funny because every time Paulie hit a home run, he would clap but he would tease me by not standing up because he was a Cubs fan. It was cold that night, and he kept offering to buy me a sweatshirt since I didn't have one with me. I kept saying that I was ok and that it wasn't necessary (mostly because I knew how much they were) and we went home that night with a lot of laughter and memories and the promise that we would do it again next year.

Unfortunately, there won't be a next year because my dad passed away very suddenly in his sleep on September 3rd. It was an incredible shock to everyone, but especially myself because a few days earlier, I had painted my room with him and we talked about the Sox game that was on while we painted. The next night, Thome and Contreras got traded and we talked about that. The last conversations we had were about the Sox. All I could think about the day he died was how I should have let him buy me that sweatshirt, because then I would have that final memory with him. The story has one final twist though. I was supposed to go to a game the Sunday after he passed with my friends, and at my Mom's insistence, we did. Before we left, my Mom and I were going through some of his stuff, and we found some money. She gave it to me so that at the game I could buy that sweatshirt. I had Upper Deck seats but could not find a sweatshirt that I liked in the gift shop there. I asked the lady working there, Ann if I could go down to the big store on the main level. Both Ann and her superviser (I apologize because I don't remember her name) were sympathetic and the superviser escorted me downstairs where I found the sweatshirt.

Now that I have this last gift from my dad, I will never be cold at a Sox game again. Ann brought a smile to my face in a time where that didn't happen much and I truly am greatful for her compassion, just as I am thankful for the summer that I had with my dad that led to many final memories. I stuck a scorecard and a pencil with my dad as a reminder to him of the summer and I figure that while I know he is watching over me, he will also watch over the Sox. So the next time an error is made, a fly ball is dropped or  the ball just takes a funny hop, think of it as my dad smiling down on the guys, but also having a little fun with them because they turned his daughter into a Sox fan.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this. It truly is great to be a Sox fan.

Kate

PS, forgive some of the repetition, writing this was much harder than I thought it would be.

 

The big guy in the White House hasn't given up hope ...

click here to hear President Obama's comments from this weekend

Sox lineup tonight:

Pods 8, Beckham5, AJ 2, PK dh, Kotsay 3, JD 9, Q 7, Getz 4, Ramirez 6.  Hudson pitching.