O’Donnell: To cheer or not to cheer – that is the question for the casual White Sox watcher
BEING A WHITE SOX FAN NORMALLY MEANS seldom having to say that you're hopeful.
That strand of hard core has come with benefits past though.
Among them:
· No game-time traffic jams on West 35th Street;
· Better chance of retrieving a foul ball amid the empty seats at Rate Field;
· Avoiding lines and most other human contact while digging deep to buy a $7 bottle of water or a $20 Campfire Milkshake 2.0.
FROM 2023-25, THE TEAM'S THEME could have been “Send Talent, Wins and Money.”
That was the three-season span when the Fail Hose lost 324 games.
A number like that probably would have taken Jerry Reinsdorf and Co. out of consideration for a publicly funded stadium even in as carp-friendly a fishin' hole as Hammond, gateway city to Chesterton.
NOW, OF COURSE, A NEW DAY has dawned on the South Side.
Will Venable's killer Sox are “the best story in baseball,” according to multiple respected observers.
They close out a weekend series Sunday vs. Justin Verlander and the No-Towners from Detroit.
That'll serve as prelude to a three-game set against the visiting Guardians beginning Monday night.
Revived Anthony Kay is scheduled to pitch and sway in the opener for the happy homies with the AL Central lead on the line.
That CHI-CLE brim-to-brim will carry east to the Fourth of July weekend with four more showdowns scheduled at Progressive Field in the sights of the trendy Ohio City neighborhood.
SO THE WHITE SOX HARD CORE WILL REMAIN DUG IN, just as they did five years ago when Reinsdorf blew up a positive cycle by staying far too loyal to the ghost of Tony La Russa.
But what of the casual Sox fan, the type who parachutes in once or twice a decade when the going seems good down Bridgeport way?
Is it much too late for hellos?
THE SPECULATIVE ANSWER WOULD BE that 2026 is proving to be a notably kookie year in sports.
The New York Knicks won an NBA championship. The Bears' deadline-free stadium “search” appears more open-ended than the branded bibliography of James Patterson.
THE MOON, THE STARS AND THE CALL-UPS hovering over the 2026 White Sox hint at some strange cosmic wheeling.
So see them in October?
For the parachuting hopeful, it would be a rare harvest of talent, wins and $20 Campfire Milkshakes 2.0.
* * *
TIM WEIGEL DIED 25 YEARS AGO THIS WEEKEND, on Father's Day 2001.
That number is incomprehensible. As was the final battle of the sports media star's life, a surreal struggle with brain cancer that lasted 53 weeks from diagnosis to end.
Weigel's exit also concluded the competitive phase of the greatest era ever in nightly Chicago television sportscasting.
THE GRAND RIVALRY WAS BETWEEN Weigel – a Yale graduate ('67) - at WLS-Channel 7 and WBBM-Channel 2's Johnny Morris, a crisply telegenic star ex-Bear and son of a plasterer (“Gus”) born in Greece.
Chet Coppock was briefly part of the fray from 1981-83 at WMAQ-Channel 5. Mark Giangreco gathered the reins after Coppock's guillotining at Channel 5 and later cleverly submarined Weigel at WLS-Channel 7 — with the acquiescence of station chief Joe Ahern and some key talent — in 1993.
WEIGEL IMMEDIATELY RESURFACED at WBBM-Channel 2 and it was he and Giangreco all alone contesting the lead in the stretch to his final days.
(Morris retired from full-time duty at Channel 2 in 1992 and all assignments in 1996.)
Giangreco's abrupt exit from Channel 7 in 2021 capped the amazingly colorful decades.
Morris was the natural. Coppock brought memorable self-parody. Giangreco was the wise strategist.
And Weigel, to the many lives he touched, was a gift from God.
STREET-BEATIN':
Chicago Fire FC president Dave Baldwin and chief marketing officer Dan Moriarty have been masterful in spotting local TV ads during Fox's blanket coverage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. (No local sports owner is more deserving of success than self-financing Fire chief Joe Mansueto.) …
Hard not to notice the presence of Isiah Thomas and absence of Michael Jordan at the dedication of the Obama Presidential Center. Unless it's NASCAR, His Royal Whereness? may be the toughest “get” on the American pop cultural landscape. (By comparison, Taylor Swift is becoming the new Regis Philbin.) …
“The Score” (AM-670 & FM-104.3) lolled along at 12th in the latest Chicago Nielsen Audios but is still more than doubling the all-ages audience of ESPN-AM (1000). It remains amazing that George McCaskey and Kevin Warren keep their radio play-by-play rights on the dormant AM-1000; perhaps swap-mart WJOB-AM in Hammond is next up. …
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.