White Sox sweep Angels to stave off 121st loss, disappointing fans rooting against their own team

Chicago White Sox fans came to Guaranteed Rate Field this week hoping to see their team lose.

The White Sox have been losing all season, of course, and have matched the modern major league record for the most losses in a single season, with 120 of them to date.

But 121 losses? That’s never been done before. And thousands of fans decided they were going to be in attendance the first time it happened.

Then it didn’t happen.

Not that fans didn’t try to coax one more defeat from their favorite team. They cheered on the visiting Angels during the first two games of this week’s three-game set, even booing whenever the White Sox did something right Tuesday and Wednesday night.

And surprisingly, considering the 2024 squad’s track record, a lot did go right. The White Sox swept the Angels, who themselves are one of the worst teams in the league, postponing history once, twice, three times as they head into the season’s final weekend.

As for all that booing from the home crowd?

“I don’t love it,” Garrett Crochet said Wednesday. “That’s all I’m going to say.”

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There are still three games to play, three chances for history to happen. Will that 121st loss finally come against the division-rival Tigers, who are trying to chase down a playoff spot, this weekend in Detroit? Or will the White Sox rattle off a six-game win streak to end the season and merely tie the 1962 Mets in baseball’s record books as the ultimate in the sport’s futility?

As those disgruntled White Sox fans — donning paper bags, angrily chanting and unfurling banners boasting unsolicited business advice for chairman Jerry Reinsdorf — found out this week, that’s why they play the games.

And to their credit, they eventually remembered which team’s jerseys they were wearing. When the White Sox busted out the brooms with a 7-0 blowout win Thursday, the fans gave the team a few nice ovations, first for a seven-run fifth inning, then to recognize Chris Flexen’s superb outing, then to celebrate a win in the final home game until next March.

“It was awesome, especially after the last couple nights,” Flexen said after the game. “Hearing some boos after winning a game has been tough. But to have a real ovation there was pretty special. It was awesome.

“Different feeling today than the last couple days, which was nice. Hats off to them for that.”

Those fans, though, weren’t the only ones who made the trip to 35th and Shields hoping for a certain outcome. Tuesday night featured a relatively massive media contingent, and while much of the extra local attention can be chalked up to an off day for the Bears, there were multiple reporters from national outlets present, too, as they have been in recent weeks to discover what they could about what might wind up the worst baseball team ever.

White Sox fans, including some of those who showed up to root against their own team this week, have seen the fruits of those labors, with national stories gaining plenty of traction among Chicago fans. ESPN has published a couple wide-ranging reports. The Athletic, too. The New York Times Magazine has had a reporter following the team for weeks now.

Those folks have done great work but mostly have discovered what’s been apparent for months: This is a bad team that wasn’t built to win, but at least it has a bunch of good guys on the roster who have created a friendly clubhouse that has handled bad day after bad day with professionalism and a positive outlook.

Such descriptions have spent months falling on the deaf ears of a frustrated fan base concerned only with on-field results and stinging from three straight years of wildly disappointing outcomes. Since a division title in 2021, the White Sox stumbled to an unexpected .500 finish in 2022, lost 101 times during what Reinsdorf called “embarrassing,” “disgusting,” “a nightmare” and “absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through” and have now soared past that number en route to historic levels of losing in 2024.

But the last three days have been different, if only because the results have finally gone the White Sox’ way.

They scored three times in the eighth inning Tuesday for — seriously — their first win when trailing after six or seven innings all year. They got a walk-off hit from Andrew Benintendi on Wednesday, the much maligned outfielder’s third walk-off winner of the campaign. And then came Thursday’s rout, the seven-run fifth standing as the highest scoring inning of the entire season.

With all those new media faces asking questions about how bad this team has been, Benintendi couldn’t help but admit there was a little something more to avoiding No. 121.

“Taking a lot of losses,” Benintendi said Tuesday night, “this feels like a little extra win.”

The White Sox have done a good job of not caring about their hideous win-loss record, or at least not showing that they care. Grady Sizemore, who took over for the fired Pedro Grifol last month, has made it a hallmark to not worry about what everyone else is talking about as he’s attempted to infuse new energy into the clubhouse. Sizemore has been met with almost universal acclaim inside the organization, particularly with the players, who respect his relatively recent career as one of the game’s elite on-field talents.

Chris Getz, the general manager who promoted Sizemore from his ill-defined role as a “major league coach” to interim skipper, had further rave reviews for Sizemore earlier this week, including a reveal that Sizemore was under consideration for the full-time gig, even as he expressed a preference for someone currently coaching or managing for another big league club.

But even Sizemore had to acknowledge that there was something to beating back history with a winning week.

“Those guys are fighters, and they don’t want to see their home crowd upset or rooting against them. And it’s hard not to take it personal,” Sizemore said before Wednesday’s game. “But they’ve been pros. They’re not pointing fingers or getting upset. But yeah, there’s a lot of fight in them, and they take pride when they go out there.

”It’s not going unnoticed, but they’re not letting it distract them from what they have to do every day. Even at the end of the year, in a tough season, they’re showing they still care and they’re still fighting.”

Sizemore might not care about the ugliness of his team’s win-loss record. But he sure cares about winning baseball games. He joked about letting Crochet, whose workload has been restricted in the season’s second half, throw 120 pitches against the Tigers on Friday. And he’s been wearing the same shirt for three days, though he made sure to express that he’s being hygienic about it.

“I have worn the same shirt for three days in a row, even though it was hot,” he said, beaming, after Thursday’s win. “I was sweating like crazy today, but I had to keep it on. … Me and the coaches, I think we all layered up for (Tuesday’s) game, and we’ve been on a roll since. We kept the same shirts going through the whole series.

“I wash it. I wear it everyday. But I don’t want to be smelling, either.”

While perhaps stung as competitors by the home crowd’s treatment this week, the White Sox are well aware of how their fans must feel amid a season of unprecedented losing.

“Obviously, they wanted to see us win more games,” Crochet said. “We wanted to win more games, as well. But throughout the year, they kept showing up, and I respect that and can appreciate that. Wish we could have put together a better season for them.”

They didn’t.

But they did put together three days of winning at season’s end, enough that Thursday’s crowd didn’t resemble the previous two at all. Thursday’s fans got to cheer on a winner after this season’s unrelenting avalanche of losing.

“If we swept the final series of the year,” Benintendi said Wednesday, “that’d be — not funny — but it would give us a little bit of a chuckle.”

As for that all-time record, Andrew?

“Wait one more day. Maybe.”