All who follow Major League Baseball can’t get over the dreadful season suffered by the Chicago White Sox, who arrived here on Labor Day and immediately lost to the Orioles, 13-3.
For the Sox, this was known as an ordinary game. By official count, they’re on their way to the worst season in all of recorded baseball history. The existing mark for futility, set by the 1962 New York Mets in their first year of existence, was 40 wins and 120 losses.
Counting Monday’s loss, these Sox have already lost 108 games and still have 23 left to play.
Those ’62 Mets were so awful, they prompted the great Jimmy Breslin to write a book about them. He overheard Mets manager Casey Stengel mutter one day, in complete exasperation while examining his entire roster, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
The line became the title for Breslin’s bestselling book about the Mets.
But before Baltimore fans get too cocky about our ballclub being a far better team than the Sox, maybe we should all recall the 1988 Orioles. Yes, these White Sox are awful. But the ’88, the O’s set a record and plunged the whole town into a state of disbelief that might never be matched.
Those Orioles lost the first 21 games of the season without winning any.
Remember?
On Opening Day, they lost to the Milwaukee Brewers, 12-0. When the losing streak went to six games, they fired the manager, Cal Ripken Sr., and replaced him with former slugger Frank Robinson. The losing went on.
And on.
When they lost their 15th straight, again to Milwaukee, Brewers’ broadcaster Bob Uecker quipped, “When they finally win, they’ll get a phone call from the president. But it’ll be the president of some other country.”
A few days later, Robinson got a phone call from President Ronald Reagan, extending good wishes. The O’s immediately took the field and gave up nine first-inning runs to Kansas City without getting a batter out.
People drove their cars with their lights on during daylight hours in a show of support that looked funereal. In Glen Burnie, a psychic healer blamed the losing streak on a collective team guilt. A local bookmaker, checking the odds, said someone who bet $100 for the Orioles to lose on Opening Day and then parlayed the winnings with each successive loss would have been up $13 million by the middle of the streak.
A local radio disc jockey named Bob Rivers vowed to stay on the air until the Orioles won their first game. He figured, “How long could this go on?” Before it was over, there were doctors checking Rivers’ blood pressure every hour, listeners sending him bouquets and “Free Bob Rivers” T-shirts on sale around town.
In July and August, this White Sox team played 51 games and lost 44 of them. They’ve lost at least 19 games every month. The day before they arrived here to play the Orioles, the Sox finished a home stand in which they went 0-and-10.
Big deal, 0-and-10 to finish August.
Try opening an entire season with 21 straight losses. We did it here (and, the following year, nearly won a division title.) Were we depressed at 0-and-21?
Nah, it was beyond depression. It was more like awe. Something this special only comes along once in a lifetime (we hope), and all anybody could do at such a time is sit back and admire the damned thing.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home.”
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