Readers and X followers often offered condolences to me for having to cover the White Sox in 2023.
“How do you watch this every day? I feel bad for you,” was a common sympathy email or social media post.
I’ve covered bad Sox teams before, so I’ve got experience to lean on. But this one didn’t lack for story lines, so it was never dull.
Firings, brawls, clubhouse drama and a shooting at Sox park bellowed above the steady, low rumble of the team’s bad defense, swings and misses and poor pitching, keeping things interesting.
The 2023 season was filled with story lines for the White Sox, but none of them were good, aside from closer Liam Hendriks beating cancer. Even that warm story missed its storybook ending when Tommy John surgery halted Hendriks’ comeback after five games.
After general manager Rick Hahn gushed about his new managerial hire, the unknown and unproven Pedro Grifol, the former bench coach of the Kansas City Royals, bad and weird things unfolded with regularity from April (seven wins, 21 losses) to November’s farewell to popular and highly regarded broadcaster Jason Benetti.
In between, Tim Anderson struggled, brawled, got TKO’d and was shown the door; traded players spoke out about a bad clubhouse culture; highly paid players were shipped out via trades; Ken Williams and Rick Hahn — shockingly — were fired; Tony La Russa resurfaced as an adviser, and two fans were mysteriously struck by bullets in the stands.
On the team’s path to 101 losses, general manager Hahn and vice president Williams, mainstays in the loyal regime of Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf who won a World Series together in 2005, were fired on Aug. 22. An hour before the news release that no reporter saw coming as the Sox prepared to play a Tuesday night home game against the Mariners, Hahn was on the field casually talking to a reporter, seemingly unaware of what was about to go down.
Two beat writers dining in the Bard’s Room dropped their forks and hustled to the press box, where Chicago Tribune writer Lamond Pope and I looked at each other in dismay and started typing.
Three nights later, during a game against the Athletics at Sox park, a bizarre and still-unsolved mystery shooting that injured two fans in the left field stands became national news. I was off that night but watching on TV and following X. I texted our freelancer, James Fegan, at the ballpark, “Never a dull moment.”
Weeks passed after the season with no updates from police or the team about where the bullets came from.
After top players Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Joe Kelly, Kendall Graveman, Reynaldo Lopez and Jake Burger were unloaded for prospects before the July 31 trade deadline, traded veteran relief pitcher and new Yankee Keynan Middleton claimed there was a culture of loosely followed rules in the clubhouse.
“I don’t know how you police the culture if there are no rules or guidelines to follow because everyone is doing their own thing,” Middleton said.
On the day Chris Getz was introduced to replace Williams and Hahn, Reinsdorf invited a select group of about a dozen media members to his office before the news conference.
I was among them, seated in chairs set up in two rows in front of the 87-year-old chairman’s desk. Flanking the desk sat Getz, legs crossed, wearing a suit, listening in.
“It was absolutely the worst season I’ve ever been through,” Reinsdorf said, talking publicly for the first time in years. “It was a nightmare. Embarrassing. Disgusting. Just awful.”
Anderson, the face of the team’s discarded “Change the Game” campaign, had his own nightmare season, resulting in what would have been unthinkable at the outset — his club option for $14 million getting declined.
Anderson got off to a good start, but sprained his left knee when veteran infielder Hanser Alberto botched a rundown in Minnesota on April 10, causing Anderson to scamper to cover third base, where Matt Wallner slid over him.
Anderson traveled with the team while he recovered, but marital issues weighed heavy on him. As one teammate told me, “The game is hard enough when you’re struggling on the field. When you have problems at home at the same time, it’s brutal.”
My relationship with Tim was good, but he pushed my hand away and left his locker area after a game at Detroit’s Comerica Park when I asked him about a costly misplay. It was a fair question. Later Anderson would tell me that “we’re cool,” but the infielder, usually the life of the team in the dugout and on the field, withdrew both on and off the field from teammates and media.
When he squared off in a left-handed boxer’s stance against Jose Ramirez to fight near second base in Cleveland on Aug. 5, it was a snapshot of Anderson’s season — anger, emotion, frustration, and ultimately embarrassment, when Ramirez knocked him down and woozy with a punch.
After witnessing 2023 from beginning to end, Sox fans and even members of the media like me — who bend over backward to stay at arm’s length from the fray — know how he felt.
