Interview #29: White Sox fans still exist
Pete Hand, lifelong South Sider and White Sox fan
Intro
Pete Hand is a lifelong Chicagoan and White Sox fan. I met him in February during a golf scramble in Scottsdale right around when I started this project. I mentioned it and he started telling me story after story about the White Sox and being a baseball fan. I told him to save some for an interview, which is the best insight into a White Sox fan you’ll ever get.
Here’s what I knew about the White Sox before Hand (😉): they play in a park, Guaranteed Rate Field, that feels just a bit too cold and impersonal. They are the little brother to the lovable Cubs. And when I was on the White Sox twice in Little League, we found that we could make our hats hilarious to us 11-year-olds with just one little Sharpie edit:
And now I learned that this franchise is in a state of disarray. If it weren’t for the A’s hogging the spotlight when it comes to idiotic ownership, the White Sox would be right there up front. You’ll see vivid examples of these grievances that have been catalogued over the past 40 years of ownership by Jerry Reinsdorf. So we’ll just get into it and take a peek at what’s going on in the South Side of Chicago.
Baseball > Football
Are you from Chicago?
Yes, born and raised on the South Side of Chicago.
So were you born into a White Sox family?
Not really. Most of my family were much more football fans than baseball fans. My mother was actually the biggest football fan, not my father. The grandkids cannot come see grandma during a Bears game because there would be profanity that came out of her that would make a sailor blush. Back when my parents grew up, because they both were raised in the South Side of Chicago, too, the Cardinals played in Comiskey and the Bears played in Wrigley, so you had a territorial issue in Chicago for football and baseball. Then the Cardinals moved to St. Louis and then they moved to Arizona. So their their initial allegiance was to the Cardinals because they would go see the Cardinals at old Comiskey Park. And once the Cardinals left, it took them a little bit of time, but they shifted to the Bears. They liked baseball, but football was really their first love, their first passion.
I feel like Chicago fans are fans of every sport.
Each fan has their favorite team of the four sports. The joke has always been you’re a Blackhawks, a Bulls, a Bears, and either a Sox or Cubs fan. You can't be both. And one thing that would unite Cubs fans and Sox fans is a hatred of the Green Bay Packers. It is very tribal, for lack of a better way to put it, I think is a good way to say it, when it comes to North Side versus South Side. And it's a classic battle of blue collar versus white collar. The Cubs fans are more college educated, the Sox fans are more union, blue collar, carpenters, cops, things of that nature.
Does it still feel that way?
Not as much as it used to. There's been a bleed over on both sides of town. So now you have just as many blue collar fans who are Cubs fans as White Sox versus, you know, maybe not as many white collar who are Sox fans.
Really, the dividing point of when the Cubs took off versus the White Sox had to be in the early 80s when Jerry Reinsdorf bought the White Sox and they decided to create ON TV and Sports Channel. Basically think of NESN, YES Network, the Dodger network; the White Sox tried to do that in the early 80s. But the cable footprint in Chicago, or anywhere, was nowhere to be found. So the Sox lost a lot of fans while the Cubs went on WGN, which became a cable powerhouse. Like the Braves (on TBS), their games were available for everyone to see. So you got a major influx of Cubs fans and Braves fans, which to this day you still see it. Wrigley Field is considered one of the top two or three tourist attractions in the state of Illinois and a lot of that has to do with their cable footprint in the 80s and 90s. And Harry Caray taking his act from the Sox of singing the 7th-inning stretch and all that.
Did you go a lot in the 70s when they were doing all the crazy stuff? Disco Demolition Night, was that the 70s?
Oh my God, yes! My sister was actually at Disco Demolition, and I remember watching the game on WSNS channel 44. It was one of those ones with the rabbit ears where you had to sit and move it for like 2 minutes to get it in just right (note: that’s what she said). And it was a double header that day, and I remember having the game on in our front room. It was summer time and my mom walked in and I'm watching this chaos on the field and she just starts about what's going on! Ohh it's you know, Disco Demolition. Your sister's there! I always remember Disco Demolition just cause of my mom's reaction when she saw it and proclaiming that my sister was at the game.
How old was she at the time?
She had just graduated from high school.
OK, so she wasn't a little kid getting trampled. So did you go to a lot of games when you were a kid? How far were you from the park?
15 miles, maybe. But I was close to the bus. I would take the California bus to 35th St, and the 35th St bus drops you off right in front of the park. So that was when I was a little bit older. When I was younger, my grandmother lived very close to there and several of my cousins did. It would be like a little group together going to the game.
And one of the things the Chicago public schools used to do was straight A’s, perfect attendance tickets. So if you got straight A's or if you had perfect attendance in a Chicago public school, you could apply for vouchers to go to a game. So that was always my motivation to get good grades and go to school was so I could get free tickets to go see the White Sox.
That actually motivated you? I don't think it motivated me when they tried that. So why baseball if you were in a family that was more football oriented? What drew you into baseball?
All the kids on the block played baseball, not football. That had a large factor in it because you could go to the local park and play in pick up games all summer long. And there really wasn't pick up football games per se.
And one of the first memories I have of going to old Comiskey Park was they used to do what was called Picture Day. They would rope off the warning track in the outfield and you could stand on the warning track and the players would come up and take pictures with you. And I still have some of the pictures from when I was a kid. I don't think they've ever done it in the new park. I think the last year they did it was in 1990 in the old park the last week of the season.
Did you play?
I did. I wasn’t that good. I had dreams of playing first base for the White Sox, but then that guy Frank Thomas came along and that was the end of that. I was in a car accident when I was in high school, so a lot of my athletic prowess went away with that. I did play, you know, one of the big things in Chicago is 16-inch softball. So I did play that for a long time afterwards.
My absolute favorite player of all time was Johnny Bench. And the reason being is when I was growing up, NBC’s Game of the Week, guess the four teams that they generally showed back then. Red Sox, Yankees, Reds, and Dodgers. And that's the position I played in Little League. They used to joke that I was Engelberg from The Bad News Bears. But I was like, no call me Johnny Bench.
How did you get involved with the Hall of Fame?
It was because of the White Sox that I got involved with the Hall of Fame. I had been there once when I was a little kid and I really didn't remember much of it at all. I decided to go out and see Frank Thomas get inducted in 2014. I went on the website, did the research and they said, oh, if you become a member, if you spend $250, whatever it was, you can get tickets and have a seat versus being on the lawn for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. I'm like, that's right up my alley. I flew into Albany, rented a car, drove up and the place overwhelmed me how awesome it was. People don't realize Cooperstown... main street is what, three blocks long, four blocks long? It's tiny. It just. I love going into the Hall. I can spend all day in the hall like 4 days in a row and still want to go back for more. You know, there's a couple of restaurants on main street that I absolutely love to go to, Toscana and Nicoletta’s.
And then I started getting more and more involved. I do have a memorabilia collection, so I reached out to them with a couple of items I had in my collection asking if they would be interested in a donation. One of the items I got my hands on that I have donated to them, I got the White Sox hat that Will Ferrell wore in Ferrell Takes the Field. I had won an auction for that. I had some lineup cards from the World Baseball Classic, the Cuba team. A 1933 All-Star Game scorecard, because they didn't have programs back then, just the scorecards.
I've always liked baseball history. I've always been a baseball junkie.
How many stadiums have you been to now?
12, if you include the old ones, it's more like 28. I haven't been to all the “new”, like I haven't been to Philly (Citizens Bank Park), I haven't been to Pittsburgh (PNC Park), I haven't been to to Miami (loanDepot Park).
I've been to the Vet, Three Rivers, Riverfront. Some of them are. Gone now, Tiger Stadium's gone. Cleveland's gone. Old Comiskey's. Old County Stadium in Milwaukee's gone. So the number is a little more padded because I have a lot of the older stadiums in there too.
The Cubs and White Sox went different directions
Have you lived in Chicago your whole life?
I spent a year-and-a-half or so in Tampa for work, but aside from that, yeah, I've been here.
Have you gone through ups and downs with the White Sox? It feels like White Sox fans, I hear a lot about the owner, so I don't know if you're you want to talk about that. Did it make it tough to root for the team when when he's mismanaged the franchise?
I have a complicated history with Mr. Reinsdorf. I've met Mr. Reinsdorf several times. As a person, he's a very nice man. When he first bought the team in ‘81, the first two moves he made were to sign Greg Luzinski and Carlton Fisk. And everybody's going, Oh my God, it's finally going to be different. They won the division in ‘83. It was a glorious time. They lost in the playoffs to the Orioles. Tony La Russa was the manager. And they sort of went downward after that. They won 99 games in ‘83 and you're thinking, OK, this is the beginning. It wasn't. It was sort of like the peak and then you hit another valley.
The Reinsdorf frustration started in 1988 when he threatened to move the White Sox to Tampa if they didn't get a new stadium. As much as I loved old Comiskey, that place was falling apart. They definitely needed the new park. You could see exposed wires. So there was a new park needed, there's no denying that. There's rumors that it was close to being condemned. I don't know how true that is. I've heard these rumors in the past. It wouldn't surprise me, though.
The gymnastics that were performed to get the new park, called Guaranteed Rate now, in the Illinois State Assembly, in Springfield, they were voting on a new stadium and they had to have a resolution by midnight. And it didn't look like they were going to get it. So the governor at the time, Big Jim Thompson, who I believe was a classmate of Jerry Reinsdorf at Northwestern, stopped the clocks so that they could get the vote in before midnight. And so they got the votes, they built the new park.
It opened in 1991 and it was the last of the cookie cutter stadiums. The White Sox don't own that stadium. It's owned by the Illinois Sports Facility Authority (ISFA). And the ISFA, in conjunction with the White Sox, were presented with a couple of different plans for the ballpark. They chose the cheapest plan. One of the other plans that was presented to them, that they passed on, was what turned out to be Camden Yards. So Camden Yards opens in ‘92 and immediately makes New Comiskey antiquated and a monstrosity compared to this beautiful ballpark in Baltimore. And so that was a stigma that the park always. Another stigma was obviously Wrigley Field, on the other side of town. Let me just say this. Wrigley Field, before the renovations had happened after the Ricketts bought the Cubs, was a dump. I don't care what anyone says. It was a dump. They have really fixed it up. I give them credit because they really did fix it up.
Well it was literally falling on people.
Right, exactly. You had the nets overhead with the concrete rocks in the net.
Then in 1994 the Sox have one of the best teams I've ever seen. They won the division in ‘93 and lost to the juggernaut that was the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS. In ‘94 they have the best team. You have Frank Thomas at the peak of his powers. You have a great pitching staff with McDowell, Wilson Alvarez. Alex Fernandez. You have Roberto Hernandez as the closer you go and get Julio Franco to provide protection to Frank and he was doing just that. And Darren Jackson's playing right field. It was a great team. Would they have won the World Series? I don't know, ‘cause the Expos were an amazing team that year.
But Jerry being one of the leaders of the strike, one of the driving factors of it, him and Bud Selig, a lot of fans to this day still hold that against them and have not gone back because of the strike. They have held that against Jerry for all these years. He denied his own team the chance to go to a World Series because he was in a fight with the Players Union… in Chicago, which is a heavy union town. So you could see where the dislike is building for him.
The team was never the same when they came back from the strike. It was like they just lost it. Then there was the white flag trade in ‘97 where they were three games out of first place at the trade deadline, and Jerry goes on record saying if you think this team can beat Cleveland, you're mistaken. And he traded a bunch of players at the deadline. In ‘93 and ‘94, the Sox had the chance to change the dynamic in the city when it comes to baseball because the Cubs were awful. And the Sox finally had their chance to steal some market share from the Cubs, and they pissed it all away with the strike.
Nationally, it feels like most of the 1994 strike animosity is gone. But you're pointing out that it seems like it's lingering. Is it mostly ownership-related? Like, he's got to go and then we'll forgive?
It's directly related to him because he was one of the driving forces of the strike. If he wasn't one of the driving forces behind it, I don't think the backlash is nearly as bad. But him having a good team, him being a driving force behind it, it's sort of like, you know, you took it away from us, is how some people felt about it.
I need to know why you still go. I can't think of anything that you've told me, I mean, part of it is, I think the White Sox fans are kind of like Bears fans. They like to revel in how bad things have gone. But you have legitimate reasons too, but 1994 was baseball saying, screw the fans. What brought you back that time?
I love the game, to be honest with you. I've gone to every home opener in the new park. It is a streak that I had started before ‘94. It is something that I really maintained throughout even though the number of games I went to in ‘93 and ‘94, I didn't hit those numbers again until like 2004, 2005. I would go to Opening Day, then I might go to like three or four more games a year, and it was generally when I was given tickets. The reason I decided to go back is because ‘93, ‘94, I was finishing up college. So most of my time spent there was on weekends when I didn't have class at night or I could sneak in a day game. And I love the game. But it just took me a long time to get over having the World Series stolen.
I bought season tickets before the 2005 season started. I got incredibly lucky on the timing. The reason I bought the season tickets is because I had paid off my student loans and I had extra income. OK, and I'm like, you know what, I’m gonna buy season tickets.
I thought long and hard about canceling my tickets after last season. The reason I didn’t is not so much for the team, but it's the people I sit with. We've become almost like a family. You sit and you hang out with, you BS, you joke, you have a good time. It's like a a great distraction from not only what's going on in your world, but also like the product on the field, too.
What’s your favorite memory as a baseball fan?
Overall, the greatest game, the greatest memory I ever had is game 2 of the 2005 World Series.
Is that when AJ Pierzynski ran to first after a strikeout?
Pierzynski stealing first base was in game two of the American League Championship Series. I was at that game, too. And that might have been my favorite until game 2 of the World Series, because that's the game where Konerko hits the Grand Slam in the 7th inning to give them the lead, and at the end, Scott Podsednik hits the walk-off home run to win the game in the bottom of the ninth. I just remember walking down the right field ramp with my girlfriend at the time saying, this is over, they're coming back for a parade and feeling ecstatic and also sort of like sad about it.
Sad from the perspective of, I wanted to see them clinch (at home), and one of the biggest regrets in my life is, on October 26, 2005, the morning of October 26th, I drove by Midway Airport. I almost turned off into the parking lot and went in and bought a ticket to Houston. I didn't do it. So I've kicked myself for that a lot of times for not doing that, to go see them win the World Series. If I get the opportunity again, I'm going.
So when the White Sox ended their own World Series drought of 88 seasons in 2005, did that bring any fans back?
It did in ‘06. They won in ‘05 and it was unexpected. It was one of those flash in the pan, one year wonders. You had guys have career years, you had a bullpen that had a career year. You know you had Neal Cotts and Cliff Politte in the bullpen, who pitched out of their skulls. They found Bobby Jenks on the scrap heap, which turned out to be an incredible move. Tadahito Iguchi was the 2nd baseman who they never saw play in person, they just scouted him on video and they got lucky.
When they won the World Series in ‘05, you were hoping that this would be the turning point where all the sins of Jerry's past could be forgiven, right? But the damage, it was so deep and it had been done for so long, a lot of people still couldn't get past what he did in the past. They came back and won the division in ‘08 in a one-game playoff against the Twins that Jim Thome wins with a moonshot home run. But Tampa just spanks them in the playoffs. And after that, the Sox just went downward from there.
Baseball feels like a never-ending battle of a fan’s love of the sport pitted against their disgust with their team’s ownership. It’s been going on since professional baseball began, and most franchises have had some run of frustration at some point. But the White Sox are going on 30 years, with one fluky World Series in 2005 to briefly tide them over.
It sounds like the breaking point is nearing for even their most diehard fans. Obviously, you have the A’s going through their messy divorce with Oakland and plenty of words have been written about that. The Marlins never even really had fans to lose. Kansas City seems to be trying to actively piss off their fans. But the White Sox are right up there. Let’s hear a little more about that…
A Mounting Pile of Bad Press
Didn’t someone get shot there last year?
I'm at the game and a friend of mine who was a Chicago police officer texted me in like the 6th inning. Hey, you know, SWAT is on the way to the ballpark. I'm like, what do you mean, SWAT’s on the way to the ballpark? Is there something going on outside? No, two fans were shot in the park.
I'm like, what do you mean two fans were shot? Two fans were shot and he tells me the section. Section 160, 161. So I'm looking over and you can see there's something going on over there, but you don't know what. And then other people start getting texts from people they know. So that night they had a “Tribute to the 80s” concert scheduled for after the game. It was like Tone Loc, Vanilla Ice, you know, and there's a lot of fans there who really want to see this.
So first off, they don't evacuate the stadium. But I'll get to that in a second. So the game ends and they're wheeling the stage out onto the field. And they announce due to technical difficulties, the concert has been cancelled. Like, why are you bringing the stage out if there were technical difficulties? So you walk out of the stadium and there are police everywhere.
You need crisis management here. You need a crisis management team to handle this. They acknowledged that there was something that happened, and they said the shots came from outside the park. Using the logic of where they told us the shots came from, it's like the JFK magic bullet theory. The bullet would have to go 10 city blocks, up over the scoreboard, and come down into the section and hit people when the wound goes across, not down. (note: or perhaps a Magic Loogie?)
The only time they've even acknowledged that this happened was at the introductory press conference for (new GM) Chris Getz. Jerry gets up and speaks to everyone and says, oh, the police have authorized me to say that the shots came from outside the park and everyone and their mother goes, that's ******* bullshit and we know. It. And they still to this date (March 11), they still have not reported what really happened and fans are going, are we going to be safe there? How do we know we're gonna be safe? There's a lot of stories about people who actually got a gun into the park, and the gun went off in the park by accident. And they won't touch that subject, and that's another part of the reason why they are so despised. Because they think the fans are idiots.
I don’t remember much about my visit to Guaranteed Rate, but others have mentioned they didn’t feel too safe there.
I'll be honest with you, the South Side of Chicago gets a terrible rep. There is an area in the South Side of Chicago, it is undeniable that there's a lot of bad stuff that happens in that area. It's like 5, 10 miles from the ballpark. But the stigma is, it's always the South Side of Chicago. And where are the White Sox? They play on the South Side of Chicago, so it's guilt by association. What I used to tell people, when Mayor (Richard M.) Daley was in office, for a large part of that time, he lived at 35th and Lowe, which was about five or six blocks from the ballpark.
I'm like, this is the safest area in the city of Chicago because the mayor lives right down the street. See that police station right there? That was put right there because of his father, actually. The stadium butts up against the Dan Ryan Expressway. If you go on the other side of the Dan Ryan, it gets sketchy. It's a fair assessment, but if you stay on the west side of the Dan Ryan, you're OK because there was a police presence. Chicago as a whole, it's gotten gotten worse, crime-wise. The train line, it’s called the Red Line, it connects Wrigley and Guaranteed Rate, it drops fans off basically at almost the doorstep of each.
You stay on the red line past those points, especially going south, yes, it gets dicey. There is no denying that. But it's a stigma that happened and there were stories about gunshots from the projects into the seats in the upper deck when the new stadium was being built. Those projects are gone, they've all been torn down.
So it gets somewhat of a bad rap. Honestly, they don't help themselves. Because you had the goon incident where two drunken idiots came out on the field and beat the crap out of the Royals coach (Tom) Gamboa. Things like that don't help. Like the gunshots last year were just a much worse extension of the Gamboa thing because fans are going, what are you doing to stop this? And they're not saying anything.
It feels like you're a fan because you've always been a fan and enjoy being with your friends. But the White Sox, until they get a new regime, you're just kind of like, we'll go but…
I'll be honest with you, they make it very hard to be a fan. The ballpark experience, for people who drive there, it leaves a lot to be desired because they don't know how to o traffic management. And that goes not only to the White Sox, but it also goes to the city of Chicago traffic Management team. They don't know how to route cars in and out. There's always backed up traffic and everything else and you.
If you get a good sized crowd there, not even a sellout, sometimes you have to wait 20-30 minutes to get into the stadium because they make you empty your pockets to go through metal detectors. Instead of upgrading them to the ones where you just walk through. It's things like that that just keep piling on and piling on. And you're like, come on, guys.
Do you have a breaking point with this team?
I would say I am 98% there. And the reason I haven't reached it yet is because, like I mentioned earlier about the people I sit with becoming a family and all that. When the invoices came out for season ticket renewals, we all have a text chain together. The question was posed to everybody: are you renewing? Yes or no? A couple people said no, but the majority said yes and I'm like, OK, I'll renew. If more of them would have said no, I would have been gone.
It sounds like it's going to get worse before it gets better. Do you think more of these people are going to bleed off over the next year or so?
I believe so. Three of them live in the neighborhood, they walk to the game, so I don't see them necessarily bleeding off, but the other ones, yes, I do. I'm pretty close because to your point, it's only going to get worse before it gets better.
That’s where I started to realize the problems with the White Sox and ownership aren’t just in the baseball operations side. It’s an actual safety issue. What’s crazy is that no one may ever know where that bullet came from. As of February it was still a mystery: Chicago police could give final report soon on White Sox ballpark shooting.
I had forgotten about the incident with the Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa, but that was a big story when it happened: William Ligue and son attacked Tom Gamboa at Comiskey Park.
What I got out of this interview was that there’s a disconnect between ownership and fans. Ownership sees the Cubs and their massive nationwide fanbase and is desperately trying to be them. Instead of owning their identity and carving out their piece of a population of 10million in the Chicago metro area, they’re trying to be something they’re not. They’ll never be the Cubs, with that Lovable Loser identity they used to have before 2016, with Ernie Banks and “Let’s Play Two”, with the historic Wrigley Field with ivy on the walls.
It feels like this happens in every two-team city. The Mets will always be second to the Yankees. The Angels can’t be the Dodgers no matter how much they try to force us to keep calling them the Los Angeles Angels. The A’s didn’t have the capability to keep up with the Giants, who used their fancy ballpark to lure in tech money. There’s always going to be the little brother franchise, it’s just that in today’s corporate world where everyone is run the same way by a bunch of MBA clones out of Ivy League schools, no one knows how to connect with their fan base.
If I were the White Sox, I’d own my blue collar roots and give a forgotten demographic of fans something to identify with. Why does everything have to be luxury boxes, import beers and valet parking at a ballfield now? Let people come to the park for a Saturday night game, have a couple beers with friends and catch a game without taking their life savings.
It didn’t sound like the White Sox really needed to do all that much to keep fans happy. But greed and jealousy took over and they’re now at a low point of fan interest… while simultaneously begging for a new stadium. That about sums up the fan-owner relationship these days.