Can Chicago sports land a happy moment on South Side?
The Bears' fourth-quarter collapse on Monday night was especially painful, because the Chicago sports world is so desperate for positive developments.
The Cubs are in good shape to make the playoffs, but somehow lost the ability to score runs. The Sky is finishing off a dismal season and it feels like fans should brace for yet another of the team's best players asking to leave.
The Bulls and Blackhawks are getting ready to start practice, but expectations are low for both United Center tenants. The Bulls over/under is 31.5 wins, the Blackhawks is 68.5 points.
That magical opening drive by Caleb Williams and the Bears seemed like something to celebrate. But the Ben Johnson era began by blowing a 17-6 lead at the end of three quarters against Minnesota.
J.J. McCarthy, how could you do that to us?
Considering the state of Chicago sports, it was appropriate that the place to go for a feel-good story was the South Side, where the White Sox happened to be 34 games below .500, but just finished a 6-1 road trip against Minnesota and Detroit. Eight more wins and they'll avoid 100 losses.
“Great road trip for us,” manager Will Venable said. “We talked about how we're going to finish strong.”
The White Sox have made an improbable offensive turnaround this season, going from pretty much the worst-hitting team in MLB before the all-star break to top seven after. The arrival of shortstop Colson Montgomery is the biggest difference, but fellow rookies Kyle Teel and Edgar Quero are also among the second half OPS leaders.
None of those three experienced the record-setting 121-loss season of 2024. Outfielder Brooks Baldwin did. While the Sox were losing at a pace previously unknown to humanity, Baldwin sat in the clubhouse, looking like he could have joined any high school team in the country and not be asked for a birth certificate.
“The camaraderie we have in the clubhouse is a lot better,” Baldwin said before Tuesday's game against Tampa Bay. “There's a lot of stuff to look forward to.”
The Sox figure to run it back next season with the same group of position players, give or take a Luis Robert Jr. There's reason not to get too carried away about the offensive potential of this group, though — the example set by the team up north.
The White Sox having five players in the top 80 or so in OPS in the second half is reminiscent of what the Cubs did in the first half of the season, and their offense has fallen off a cliff.
Teel greeted former White Sox pitcher Adrian Houser with a home run to center field in the first inning. Meanwhile on the television monitor, the Cubs were up to their old tricks. Bases loaded, no outs in the first inning, then bases loaded, one out in the third and just 2 runs scored.
What passes for suspense with the Cubs these days is seeing how far rookie pitcher Cade Horton can get before hitting his 75-pitch limit. Against Atlanta, he finished the sixth inning at exactly 75 pitches, then manager Craig Counsell sent him back out for the seventh and 12 more pitches. Desperate times call for desperate measures, apparently.
The White Sox brought their top two draft picks to Tuesday's game — shortstop Billy Carlson, who brings a very Southern California personality to the table; and outfielder Jaden Fauske, who attended Nazareth Academy, the same school as Minnesota Vikings QB McCarthy. Bad omen? Good omen? Hard to tell.
“I went to dinner last night. To see the city all lit up at night was super awesome,” Carlson said. “I came down here for medicals right after the draft, but didn't really get to venture out or anything like that. It was super cool last night to see the city and see how beautiful it is.”
Another out-of-state resident discovers Chicago is not, in fact, a murderous hellhole. That's a win, I guess?
The vaunted Sox offense did not live up to its billing against Houser. But trailing 4-2 in the sixth inning, Venable was ejected for arguing a bad call on a pitch to Lenyn Sosa, who singled anyway. Tampa Bay then pulled Houser and brought in a left-hander to face Montgomery, who drilled the first pitch he saw into the right-center field gap for an RBI double. He then scored the tying run on a single by Andrew Benintendi.
Alas, the White Sox lost 5-4 on a seventh-inning home run by Tristan Gray, a player they traded to Tampa for cash on July 26. Former Ray Curtis Mead tried to answer in the ninth inning, but his fly ball landed on a track.
In Atlanta, the Cubs finally cashed in with the bases loaded in the eighth inning. Matt Shaw delivered a 2-run single and the Cubs got a bonus run on an error to win 6-1.
The good times are back, but surely won't last long.