Interview #37: The Sox Machine
Josh Nelson with the leading independent White Sox blog and podcast
INTRO
Josh Nelson is one of the voices of the popular White Sox website Sox Machine as well as the podcast of the same name. He has been covering the White Sox in some fashion for around a decade now and along with business partner Jim Margalus. In 2024, the site has grown and brought in enough revenue to hire a dedicated beat reporter, James Fegan, formerly of The Athletic.
We talked about being a White Sox fan, covering college baseball, the future of sports journalism and the increasingly complicated task of covering a sports team, which now includes city and state politics, clubhouse drama and more. He is the second White Sox season ticket holder I have interviewed so far, for the “previously on 24” recap, here’s Pete Hand’s interview:
You can check out more of Josh’s work here:
Website: Sox Machine
Podcast: Sox Machine Podcast
Twitter: @soxmachine_josh
Being a Fan
Are you from Chicago?
I am not originally. I was born in Texas, moved a lot as a kid, did a lot of growing up in Wisconsin and then moved to Chicago late 2011.
Were you always a White Sox fan though?
Yes, part of that moving around a lot as a kid, we lived in Champaign, IL for a time and that is when Frank Thomas started to emerge. So 1991, as a small child, I was fascinated by Frank Thomas and he became my favorite baseball player and I watched the White Sox. They had the tagline back then, “Good Guys Wear Black,” so I still remember that. And the ‘93 White Sox are like my team, like every kid and every sports fan remembers their first team and all the players that are on that roster, and that's the ‘93 White Sox for me.
I shook his hand once and it almost broke my hand. (note: cool story, Graig)
He was massive.
Do you have a favorite baseball memory?
I think my favorite baseball memory is Paul Konerko's grand slam. Game two of the 2005 World Series obviously is very special because it's raining, it's wet, it's cold. Astros reliever (Brad Lidge) comes out of the bullpen and the very first pitch, Paul Konerko hits a grand slam. On the biggest stage, the biggest thing you could do as a hitter, and it was just such an awesome feeling. And then the way that game ends. Scott Podsednik did not hit a single home run during the regular season, he hits a home run in the first round of the playoffs against Boston. And against Brad Lidge, who gave up that monster home run to Albert Pujols, blows another game for the Astros because weak-hitting Scott Podsednik takes him yard. The unexpected happened. That's my favorite baseball memory is that particular game, and every White Sox fan loves that game as well. They remember everything about that game, but those two moments especially, Konerko’s grand slam and the Podsednik’s walk-off home run.
How long have you been a season ticket holder?
Since 2021. We moved into the neighborhood. We are in the infamous section 108, which is not quite bleachers, but it wraps around the right field foul pole.
What makes it infamous?
What makes it infamous is, there is another White Sox blog, they're called From the 108, really good friends with them. Their tagline is “Beer, Baseball and Bullsh*t” and they are very heavy on the bullshit. It's become the party section; many people have tickets in that section, everybody knows each other and, especially when the White Sox are not good, it is a fun place to watch a game because you end up just chatting with people that you like and that you're friends with.
Just talking about whatever, oftentimes not even about the game, or we're just mocking what is happening on the field. So that's why I say it's infamous, because every White Sox fan now knows what section 108 is, and there are just people who randomly show up to section 108. We have no idea who they are, but they just wanted to experience what it's like watching the game from that perspective.
How has it been this season so far? (note: at the time of this recording the White Sox had a 7-13 home record, but then won 3 of 4 over the Guardians at Guaranteed Rate Field over the weekend. As of last night they are now last in MLB with a 15-40 record)
It's been fun. I compare it to going to your local dive bar and you know everybody there. That's the way it's been, like you know you're not going to have the greatest time of your life going to the dive bar, but you're going to have an enjoyable time while you're there. Even though the White Sox have been godawful at times, it has made that experience more bearable. Like, why am I going to the game? Because my friends are going to be there. Lately, though, they have been winning at home, which is a very nice change of pace and it just makes that feeling even more enjoyable, where you're high-fiving everyone around you in this section, and that's not normal.
I've noticed when teams are bad for a long time and then they get good, everyone's a lot closer, it's like, we've all gone through it together.
That moment that resonates the most is when Leury Garcia hit that three-run homer in game 3 of the American League Division Series back in 2021. Because the Astros were ahead, they had a five run lead and then Yasmani Grandal hit a three-run homer. But it felt like a funeral, like everything that the White Sox was building up, everything they dragged fans through with the rebuild, and the awful baseball, missing COVID, couldn't go to game… It's a blackout, sold out, really cool pregame festivities, and you're down five-to-nothing and this could be the last game of the season. When Garcia, out of all players, hit that three-run homer, that's the loudest I've ever been at Guaranteed Rate Field where that pent up aggravation and frustration was just released. The White Sox ended up winning that game and then I was in attendance for the next game, which was a complete laugher, like the Astros won more than by more than ten runs. It was not even close.
(Garcia had 5 home runs in 2021, continuing the tradition of light-hitting postseason heroes for the White Sox)
But yeah, lately with these wins, it's more of a well, this is a pleasant surprise, like, oh, my gosh, they're hitting home runs now. Andrew Vaughn, as we record this, finally hit his first home run of the 2024 season. So I don't know if it's necessarily pent up frustration, just more pleasant surprise.
Is being around your friends at the games the reason you keep going right now?
It's the reason why we continue to renew our season tickets. What's happening on the field, what's happening off the field for the White Sox, I would say we're really not even there for the White Sox. We keep renewing because our friends keep renewing, so out of peer pressure, we continue to go to White Sox games.
Sometimes it's very frustrating, even from the perspective of covering the team, but I still love the game. I still love the sport and when you do have really interesting teams that come in, like the Cincinnati Reds visited Chicago earlier this season, you get to see Elly de la Cruz. Later this year, the Los Angeles Dodgers are going to be visiting Chicago, and I'm sure those are going to be very well-attended games. But for the White Sox, I don't know I will remember half of the roster in five years. That's how forgettable this roster can be, even though I cover this team.
When I talked to Pete, I learned that being a White Sox fan sounds a lot like being an A’s fan. Bad ownership, non-competitive team, stadium drama.
Yeah, and I have a little bit more insight what's happening behind the scenes. This is a really weird period to be a White Sox fan. Unfortunately for you, being an Oakland A's fan (note: I am not an A’s fan, more of an A’s witness), you have resolution. This is it; they're going to Sacramento. There's some type of resolution between the city and the fan base and the Major League Baseball team; it's a very sad resolution and heartbreaking.
For the White Sox and the White Sox fans, I think everybody understands that we're coming to an end of an era. But the people that are in charge of the Chicago White Sox, specifically Jerry Reinsdorf, thinks that he is trying to be the good guy here and get something set up so the White Sox do not leave Chicago. He has this fear that if he sold the team today, whoever bought the team would leave Chicago. And he also has this fear that if he passed away tomorrow, his sons would organize the sale of the team; that they would be willing to sell to someone who would move the team out of Chicago. So Jerry Reinsdorf starts trying to be the “good guy” here and try to keep the White Sox in Chicago. But he believes the only way he could keep the team in Chicago is moving the team from the neighborhood that they have resided in for 124 years.
He went on record saying that the White Sox cannot be competitive financially with the top spending teams in Major League Baseball by staying in the Bridgeport neighborhood. I now live in Bridgeport; my wife and I bought our house in March of 2021, and when that became known with that comment from Reinsdorf, he burned every single bridge that was left remaining between the neighborhood and the White Sox. So much to the point that Reinsdorf moving to the South Loop, the end game is finding a new fan base. He's not exactly thrilled with the current fan base because from his perspective as a businessman, you guys don't come to my games today and you probably will not come to my games tomorrow, so why am I still headbanging against the wall here trying to get you to come out to the stadium when I've been fighting this fight for four decades. There is a new plot of land closer to downtown Chicago and maybe that'll give me an opportunity to reach out to a brand new fan base.
And the opposite of that, the current White Sox fan base looks at Jerry Reinsdorf and says, you're 88 years old, tick tock. We can wait you out. When you add in the politics of trying to get this new stadium and building relationships with people who report on state politics down in Springfield, the capital of Illinois, the last I heard is that Jerry Reinsdorf, and even like the Chicago Bears are trying to get a new stadium, they need 60 votes from the Illinois Senate to pass a resolution to be able to free up one of the government agencies to borrow enough money so that both teams can build their new stadiums.
What I was told is that the White Sox don't even have six votes, let alone sixty. So Jerry Reinsdorf's grand vision, his grand plan, right now in 2024 is dead on arrival. And I don't know what he's going to do if he doesn't get the new stadium. He's just going to lounge around in his suite smoking cigars when he's not supposed to at his baseball stadium. It’s not even his baseball stadium, he rents it; it's technically the state of Illinois’ baseball stadium, but he acts like it's his own. And in a lot of ways, the White Sox still operate like it's the late 80s, early 90s. It's really frustrating. But again, everybody knows that this is an end of an era. White Sox fans that want the team to remain in Bridgeport, they may win because Jerry may not be around by the time that he finds politicians who are willing to give him money to build a new stadium in the South Loop.
Do you think without Reinsdorf there is enough support to stay in the neighborhood?
For city residents, they look around Bridgeport and they see a bunch of empty parking lots. Bridgeport is a neighborhood that is growing in Chicago. There is sprawl all coming from Chinatown, so the demographics of the neighborhood have greatly changed. It's an ever-changing demographic for the neighborhood. The Ramova Theater just opened, and we have these massive parking lots that sit empty. If the White Sox want a ballpark village, they can build it in their current backyard. They could take a couple of parking lots and build what the Cincinnati Reds have outside of their stadium or what the Atlanta Braves have now with The Battery by their stadium. They could do that today. It's just Jerry Reinsdorf does not like Bridgeport. It’s as simple as that.
If Jerry Reinsdorf is no longer the chairman, I've heard whispers that there are people that could drum up enough money and enough investors to buy the White Sox that would be willing to keep the White Sox in Bridgeport and develop those parking lots and invest more into the neighborhood. This is the current situation between the White Sox fans and the White Sox organization. It feels like the White Sox don't want their current fan base. That's a tough business model, especially when you're going to be at that stadium for at least the next two to three years even if you get the funding and the approval to start building a new stadium.
So now you're covering government sessions and meetings as a baseball fan?
We have to right, because at Sox Machine, we cover everything that involves the Chicago White Sox. I know people love when politics and sports mix. We knew that the stadium lease at the current site expires after the 2029 season. So we've been covering extensively on the stadium side because it's going to have huge ramifications on the future where this franchise is going to be.
My number one takeaway from my interview with Josh was just how much more involved being not just a fan, but also a member of the media, is these days. We’re talking knowing the team, the fan base, the prospects, the front office. That’s all expected and easy. If you love the sport and the team, you’re naturally invested in those aspects of the team.
But now, all too often, politics gets shoveled on top of that. I’m not talking about the phony outrage debate of the day (I think it’s Harrison Butker now?) I’m talking about having to track votes, city council attitudes, ballot initiatives, etc. All because your out-of-touch billionaire owner, who has done just the bare minimum in terms of fanbase and community outreach, suddenly wants your votes and dollars for a state-of-the-art, billion-dollar stadium complex that the majority of fans will never fully enjoy. You can insert your personal owner here and it still makes sense, just happens that Jerry Reinsdorf is the White Sox representative.
What I always wonder about these public stadium deals is… if we do vote to pass something like that (or the local government does it against our wishes), how much do we actually benefit? The luxury suite level that added $300million to the price tag? What percentage of the fan base will ever even get to sniff one of those boxes? What percentage even want to? The 108 sounds way more fun than the United Airlines corporate box.
On Being a Member of the Media
How long have you been with Sox Machine?
So I originally was part of Southside Sox with SB Nation, and then my business partner, Jim Margulis, he's been blogging about the White Sox since 2005, he was managing editor at Southside Sox. And then on January 1st, 2018, we decided to go independent and rebooted Sox Machine. This past year, James Fegan, who has been previously with The Athletic as the Chicago White Sox beat reporter and a member of the BBWAA, joined us to be our beat reporter of the Chicago White Sox.
When you were writing for SB Nation, you were more focused on baseball, right? So what has that been like trying to get into Illinois politics, which is full of notorious characters?
It's a learning experience. The questions that I'm asking oftentimes when I'm chatting with people is from an angle of, I don't know how this works, please explain to me how this works. And there's how it should work and there is actually the way it does work.
So with both the White Sox and the Bears right now, there's this hotel tax in the city of Chicago. And there's a state agency that was created to help build the current stadiums that the White Sox and Bears are in. When they set up the state agency, the state government put a restriction on how much that state agency could borrow in bonds to help with renovations. Well, what the Bears and White Sox are asking for is to continue to have that 2% hotel tax, but allow the Illinois Sports Facility Authority (ISFA) to be able to borrow more than what their current limit is. I mean, we're talking being able to borrow $4billion and pay that off over 30 to 40 years. That's a pretty substantial bond that would be needed to build what both the White Sox and Bears would like to do. And then there's talk about making it a special sales tax exemption area.
I don't know the inner workings of politics, especially when it comes to Chicago and Illinois, but when I'm speaking with people, it's like fact gathering because our readers, many of them, live in Chicago, many live in Illinois. So there is an aspect of where it impacts them as a resident of this state that they have been very interested as well.
So what keeps you motivated to do this work that you're doing now? You started it for love of baseball and the team. A lot of people would be worn out by what you've been covering for the last three or four or five years.
That's a good question, and I've been getting this question a lot lately. I love White Sox fans. I think White Sox fans deserve the best type of coverage when it comes to the team that they root for. It wasn't that long ago, I believe 2017, when the Chicago Tribune suddenly didn't have a beat reporter for the White Sox. Is anyone going to ask the questions that we have about the team and how this team works? So I've always had this mentality of, nobody else is going to do it, I'll do it. And I've been lucky enough to meet up with Jim Margulis, who has that same personality, and James Fegan as well, who now gives us access that we have not had in previous years. The fact gathering and getting the information and the analysis is about a team that is not very good, but there are White Sox fans that are still interested. I still believe every baseball team should have a site like Sox Machine that cares deeply about a fan base’s love of a particular team and covers the ins and outs of that organization. Every team in every sport should have that level of coverage.
Take it a step further. I love the community aspect. Even though this team is awful, we do plan yearly road trips. So this year we’re hosting a huge tailgate in Milwaukee. There's going to be 300-plus White Sox fans that’ll be making the drive up to Milwaukee and we're going to tailgate before the Brewers completely crush the White Sox. But we're going to have fun because it's just like Section 108. Misery loves company and we aim to be good company. In July we're going to be going to Kansas City and we're going to plan something with the Negro League Museum, do a tour there, learn about how Chicago played a huge role in the establishment of the Negro Leagues. I just feel like every professional sports fan base should have the opportunity like this. Not only does it like meet your requirements of learning more as a fan, but also helps you love the team. Whether the team loves you back or not is up to the team, but at least it helps with your fan base and justifies why you continue to follow this team every single day.
I have that “nobody else is gonna do it” mentality, too. But now it’s gotten me stuck in some roles I’ll never be able to get out of.
Right.
Do you network with sites from other fan bases?
Yes, yes, I do.
Do you get jealous that some of them only have to cover baseball?
Royals Review, they do a great job covering the Kansas City Royals, they just had what we what we're going through. But there was actually a vote in Kansas City. So yeah, they had to cover that election. Very contentious, especially in the comments section of their post. They had no choice but to cover that cause it's news that impacts the future of the Kansas City Royals and where they're going to play.
Yeah, locally, regionally, nationally, especially like MLB.com and Fangraphs and The Athletic. The group chats and the DM's and the text messages can get quite saucy, off-the-record type of stuff that we don't want to put out there. But yeah, everyone's talking to each other all the time.
What were you doing before you started at Sox Machine?
Yeah, I helped run a production house in Chicago. Commercials, medical videos, I mean, I went to college for this. This is our 11th season podcasting together about the White Sox. There was some frustration with the White Sox pre- and post-game radio shows that there was a recommendation, just in the comments section like, Southside Sox should have a podcast. And just based on my experience, I was like, I know how to do that. I could actually launch this. It was a small project that became a much larger project that became a hobby that became a paid hobby that became a job over the years.
How often do you do a show?
At least twice a week. When the team was really good, we did a lot more. We did wake-up calls and stuff like 10-minute podcast episodes catching up for everybody in the day previously in case you didn’t get a chance to watch the White Sox, and the other news around baseball.
So what's a typical work week like for you now?
That's a good question because it has changed a great deal. we're posting 2 to 3 articles a day on site, plus two podcasts a week. I also cover the MLB draft for us. I'm part of the National College Baseball Writers Association, so I cover college baseball. I also am a voting member for their awards and their All-American nominees. Jim's writing something, James is writing something, I'm doing multimedia stuff in the backend so when we have enough clips I'll make videos and do podcasts. It's easily 40 hours a week.
The behind-the-scenes stuff is exhausting.
Yes, I think that's the part that anyone is trying to get into this like, oh, I want to write about baseball or I want to podcast about baseball; it's not as easy as just buying the equipment and then just start talking. It takes a level of pre-production, especially post-production as well, to make something good that people want to subscribe to and continue to listen to.
How do you avoid being burnt out? So many people try podcasting and they give up before they make it five episodes.
That's a great question. I will find other people to talk to. I will find other topics to talk about. If the White Sox become mundane or repetitive you have to do that to be able to keep things fresh. I mean it's a challenge for everyone. It's even a challenge for myself. So just gritting your teeth, grinding through it helps sometimes, but also don't be afraid to be creative and do something off the beaten path and talk about something else. You never know. Maybe your audience too could use a distraction from what is Chicago White Sox baseball daily.
How did you get into covering college baseball?
So in 2018, when the White Sox were bad and they were really struggling with first round picks, and if they're going to be in this rebuild, well then all of a sudden the Major League Baseball draft carries more importance. And when I looked around on how things were covered from that perspective for the White Sox, I just found it to be very lacking because nobody watched college baseball. There's a lot of regurgitation of the stuff that mlb.com, especially like with Jim Callis and Baseball America. So I decided to just thrust myself into college baseball to learn about college baseball with the angle of: I'm watching this from a viewpoint of the MLB draft and trying to learn as much as I can about that level and how they develop to see which players would make the White Sox better.
I am learning so much about the sport, and it's been great because college baseball is trying to do everything that they can to help prepare players on their team to take that next step in becoming professional ballplayers. Building pitching labs, building hitting labs. I would argue some colleges have more advanced technology and more advanced developed development methods than some Major League Baseball teams. They're better at developing 18/19/20-year-olds than Major League teams are… or some Major League teams are. So that's also helped me develop a stronger sense of knowledge about the game of baseball today, and how the sausage is made.
For a lot of baseball fans, they see somebody that does well in the minor leagues, they reach the major leagues… will this player be good or not? They don't care or have the time to figure out how they got to the minor leagues, like what did they do in high school? What did they do in college? What got them there? Some baseball fans only care that you got there. Some baseball fans really want to know, tracking and covering that journey for them. Even with some of the recent draft picks for the White Sox, especially Andrew Vaughn, I covered a lot of Andrew Vaughn's junior season at Cal. We have all of those reports that I had when he was at Cal before he got drafted by Major League Baseball. And then we've been covering him every single day since he's been in Chicago as well. We have fully captured Andrew Vaughn's journey of how he went from one of the best college baseball players to getting drafted in the top five with the White Sox.
We went into a lot more of the college baseball part of his duties, which was very interesting. It’s crazy the path he took to become not only someone with journalism sources in the state capitol, but also a member of the NCBWA for college baseball. He started out covering his local MLB team and those threads he followed led him to get invested in the worlds of Illinois politics and collegiate sports. When I asked how he avoids burnout from covering such a dysfunctional team, I think this is part of why he manages to keep the fire going. He’s never bogged down by one big thing at a time, getting to take a breath by checking out prospect rankings or stadium drama or maybe an actual winning streak every now and then.
On Getting a Foot in the Door as a Blog
Kenyan Middleton came out and said the whole team was a mess last year. Did you notice that?
Noticed it on the field that there was something wrong. We didn't have access into the clubhouse. If we had James Fegan last year on our staff, I think we would have gotten more insight that there's something going on, but clearly there was just a disconnect from what the White Sox were saying that they were attempting to do and what they were actually doing on the field.
So we're watching the White Sox on the field, you could tell something wasn't quite right. But Keynan was the canary in the coal mine. Man, that was a wild two weeks because he says that, that's a big news story, everyone's talking about that. Couple weeks later, Rick Hardy and Kenny Williams are fired.
I wish more Major League teams were open to the idea, especially when it comes to digital media, that if the Baseball Writers Association admits a blogger or digital media member into their association to be more open to work with digital media outlets like Sox Machine and the other baseball blogs that cover this team and been covering your team for years, if not decades, at this point, to be more open to work with them and give them that type of access because they have a dedicated fan base which you both share.
Have you gotten more access as well? You said you got a beat writer now, how has it been trying to get in the door as a non-traditional media outlet?
Incredibly tough. Baseball is more closed minded about this than the NFL, NHL, and NBA by far. I give credit to the Chicago Blackhawks and the Chicago Bears. They have been admitting more digital media members into the press box to cover their teams, especially on game days, and giving them access. I see it as a way to continue to promote your product and to promote your brand because the fan base goes to these types of sites and these reporters are asking questions that the fans have on their minds.
My commentary is more just for Major League Baseball and the sport as a whole, because the Baseball Writers Association could do a much better job of admitting digital media members into their ranks. It's just a very old way of doing business. When comparing to the NFL and NBA, to use a Star Wars term, those two leagues seem to be traveling in hyperspace right now when it comes to digital media, where Major League Baseball and the NHL are just lagging.
Do you feel you have to, not walk on egg shells, but be more professional than other media types? The slightest mistake and they could just say, oh it’s just a blog, take their access away given the reputation of the medium in its early days.
Yes, you have to be more conscious of how you cover the team and the quality of your work. No, the Writer’s Association is not opening more doors. I just think there's a lot of old school newspaper people who are in the leadership of the BBWAA. You have a lot of younger members who are trying to open doors because they came from blogs before joining other outlets and being hired full time. We should continue to expand, we should have more members. We're not going to allow every single blog, but there are some that have been legit for a long time, that we use as resources all the time, that should be part of our association. Then you'll just have old newspaper folks who've been in the newspaper industry for decades being like, nah, no, we're not interested. So it's been difficult.
Who do you work with regarding getting better access?
Yeah, the BBWAA, because the BBWAA and Major League Baseball have a handshake agreement, maybe needed more than a handshake agreement, they have an agreement that if you're part of the writer’s association, you had access to covering the team. You still have to work with the team in finalizing that access, but you have access. You have a lot of writers who are in their 60s that would like to retire, and they're going to be replaced with younger writers that need to be more forward thinking. They probably should have a department that makes recommendations every year in new or existing digital media outlets that should be invited to join the association.
What are your 5-year-goals with Sox Machine? You’re looking at possibly an owner change, completing a rebuild, and this stadium situation.
We would love to keep James. That type of access has greatly improved our coverage of the Chicago White Sox on Sox Machine. So that's goal number one. Goal number two may be even expand, especially on the multimedia front to bring in a couple extra people so we could do more videos, we could do other digital media because it's just so much for one person to do.
And then finally, cover a good Chicago White Sox team. We only got one season of that. It was fun in 2021; 2020 was just weird for everybody covering baseball from home. But it would be nice to cover a good baseball team, but to your point, there's going to be plenty to cover when it comes to Chicago White Sox, many interesting things. It does put pressure to excel in your writing and your podcasting and your video work to convey what is happening and do a good job of reporting the facts. So if we can keep what we have currently, maybe expand and generate a larger subscription-supporting base, an overall fan base is our goal in the next five years. We don't have any plans on folding up shop.
So when you made that transition to this being your career, what was that first year like? Did you think that it was going to be what you are now?
That's a good question. I knew it was going to be busy. I just didn't know what kind of team that you would be covering and just how silly you could get, just like eye rolling some of the drama just how messy the Chicago White Sox are and how that impacts you. The way that we have to cover the team, the things that we talk about with the White Sox are vastly different than people who cover the Los Angeles Dodgers. And sometimes I’m envious of them, and I'm jealous of them. But to them, it feels repetitive sometimes. Because it's always covering great teams and then when they don't do well in the playoffs, the sky is falling. Where for the White Sox, the sky is falling because a reliever got traded and exposed all the crap that's happening in the clubhouse. So we are clearly not covering the same quality of organization. That's what I was not expecting. It's just how much of this stuff off the field that you're covering as to on the field.
Do you have any jealousy towards the well-run organizations? Who even is a well-run organization?
Yeah. All the time, all the time, because especially with the teams like the Dodgers and Braves, they believe in analytics. They believe in the advanced methods, they believe in technology. They invest in those areas more than other baseball teams do and their fan bases have adapted and accepted those advanced ways of playing the game of baseball. That hasn’t been the case for the White Sox. It's fine if you don't care about analytics and you just want to enjoy the game of baseball and just watch the top talents and top athletes play a sport that you played as a kid.
But if you're asking the questions of, why do the White Sox sign these guys? Why are the White Sox drafting these types of players? What are the White Sox doing that other teams are not doing? Or what are the best teams doing that the White Sox are not? When you get those types of questions, you have to understand what other teams are doing. You have to understand how analytics work. You have to understand how the advanced technologies and the new labs work because that's what the other teams are doing. That's giving them a winning advantage over your favorite baseball team. And then White Sox fans roll their eyes like WAR, what is it good for? And exit velocity? Who cares? Just hit ‘em where they ain't.
So that's where I'm sometimes envious is that the top teams have been so good for so long that eventually the majority of their fan base I would say has accepted that, yes, this is the way to be a winning baseball organization where we're still fighting that battle. It is getting better. I think more and more every single day, White Sox fans are noticing that there is a huge discrepancy between how the White Sox run an organization and what the Dodgers are doing even though they share a spring training facility.
What is it about baseball and the game that keeps you a fan? You've gone from lifelong fan, playing, blogger, now this is your job and that's obviously much different. What is it about baseball that you love, that you're passionate about, that you're making it your career now?
I just love the beauty of the sport. There’s no clock. I love the rules. I love how you can get into these lulls of the game, and especially last night between the White Sox and Guardians, both pitchers were doing quite well. They got through two innings in 20 minutes because they're locked in, the pitchers, and it just seems like there's never going to be a base hit. And then boom, like a firework, like this instant pop, a home run is hit, and the instant excitement that you have. I love that about the game and just how amazing it is to watch people play this game, throwing this hardball at a catcher and the magic it feels like today as a hitter, I don't know how major leaguers hit anything with the way that things are thrown at them today with the velocity. The sport continues to fascinate me; it is my favorite sport just because you got nine guys on the field working together to get the other team out. And as a hitter, when you're on offense, it's you against the world it feels like. And as a fan, watching this all come together, it just makes them really special instant moments that makes it worthwhile sitting for 2.5 hours.
Baseball is dragging its feet on the shift in media coverage from newspapers and television to social media and websites. With newspapers continuing to shrink (or worse, get purchased by billionaires), sites like Sox Machine should be embraced, not shut out. But then you see how the league, media rights holders and, most likely, the lawyers are constantly pulling down content while then wondering why they struggle with certain demographics.
Adding a beat reporter with years of experience gives more credibility. And getting the added subscribers the extra access provides only enhances the reader experience. Plus, having Josh, who is talented on the mic, working podcasts, is a kind of one-stop shop that every team needs. Of course, for poorly run teams trying to hide their incompetence, maybe the more they can sweep under the rug the better. But a team like the White Sox is a content machine, just look at this headline from the past weekend. The gift that keeps on giving:
White Sox draw harsh words from manager Pedro Grifol