Imrem: Chicago White Sox should be happy anyone still cares at all

Let's try to divert our eyes from the Chicago Cubs for a moment and take what might be a last look this season at the Chicago White Sox.

Yes, I know … yikes!

The picture isn't pretty despite a 4-2 victory over Oakland before a relatively meager crowd of 23,030 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon at U.S. Cellular Field.

Yikes because the Sox are five games under .500, and yikes again because they're 26th in attendance among 30 MLB teams.

It has been brought to my attention that I, like many others, have been hard on the Sox lately.

Why is that?

Because we care enough to not forget about them. Either you're hard on them or you ignore them, which would be worse.

It's said that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. Except, then the Sox's fade toward irrelevance would occur in silence, which also would be worse.

As a sports writer, I'm not a Sox fan any more than I'm a fan of any of Chicago's other pro sports teams.

But as a lifelong Chicagoan, I do want all of them to win championships. I want them to be popular among both avid and casual sports fans. I want a troubled city to be proud of them.

For a decade now, the Sox have failed to win enough games, be as popular as they should be or make the locals proud.

Ownership has stubbornly clung to maddening methods. Management has made maddening personnel decisions. Uniformed leadership has led in the wrong maddening direction.

None of this should bother me because it has provided juicy column fodder.

But it does bother me.

I saw my first White Sox game at the old Comiskey Park in the very early 1950s and ever since have considered them an important piece of the Chicago sports landscape.

It's getting to be like they're still here but there's no there here because neither the Sox nor the Cell is compelling enough to inspire local baseball fans.

Sorry, but I'm tired of this franchise being unable to figure out how to be all that it should be.

It's frustrating that a failed manager is still the manager. It's frustrating that the head of the front office has produced two playoff teams this century and none going on eight seasons. It's frustrating that the owner hasn't done anything about it.

The Sox's 2005 World Series title is getting to be a long time ago, isn't it?

Has anyone else noticed that our other big-time pro teams are doing boffo box office and the Sox aren't?

The Bears could sell 100,000 tickets per game if Soldier Field held that many. The Bulls and Blackhawks lead their leagues in attendance. The Cubs are reaching a point where seats next season will be impossible to purchase even if you could afford them.

Yet the Sox keep lowering the cost of a ticket and parking and still can't draw better.

If that doesn't signal that the Sox have plunged to about 10th among the five teams, they're sure headed there.

That shouldn't ever happen to a baseball team in a baseball town like Chicago.

The entire Sox package makes it easy to be hard on them in the hope that someone will be shamed into making dramatic changes.

The White Sox should be scared that there will continue to be fewer and fewer who care enough to criticize them.

For better or worse, I'm still one who does.

Yes, yikes on me!

mimrem@dailyherald.com