No one said it would be easy: for White Sox fans, Chicago hope is a wasted emotion again - and the trade with the Giants proves it

Sporting News, The, August 18, 1997 by Chris Jenkins

When Robin Ventura hit a game-winning double in his first game back with the White Sox last month, I was overcome by something every Chicago baseball fan should avoid: Hope.

Twenty-three seasons, and I haven't learned a thing.

The White Sox have produced only two playoff teams during my lifetime, and both of those clubs were vanquished. To put things into their proper, sickening perspective, even Cubs fans can make that modest claim.

A disheartening realization, for sure. As a Sox fan, it's always reassuring to know that even if your team misses the playoffs, you can still take potshots at the hapless Cubs and their misguided followers.

And that has been extraordinarily easy of late. While the Sox built the American League's best regular-season record during the 1990s, Cubs fans continued to pin their feeble hopes on the likes of Tuffy Rhodes and Anthony Young. But recent Sox personnel moves have made it clear that when it comes to baseball futility, these two teams are clearly in the same ballpark. One with obstructed-view seats.

Make no mistake about it: When you mention Cubs, Sox and World Series in the same breath, you've got a severe case of baseball halitosis.

The Cub's World Series struggles are well-documented, buth the White Sox haven't fared much better. Consider this: When the Sox won their last Series, the Red Baron (Baron von Richthofen, not Rick Sutcliffe) was wreaking havoc on Allied planes. We're talking World War I.

And we all know what happened two years after that. the fix was on in 1919, and the 1997 fire sale is merely the most recent manifestation of the curse that has been on ever since.

But better judgment and Black Sox hex be damned, I couldn't help thinking a healthy Ventura could boost this year's team into contention, Sure, the Sox had their problems, but so did the Indians. With a little surge, the door to the A.L. Central was wide open. And, as they say, anything could happen in the playoffs.

Right?

That's crazy talk, according to the team's owner. Jerry Reinsdorf, who tried to break up the greatest basketball team in history, dismissed the Indians' 3 1/2-game lead as insurmountable (in late July, no less) and dismantled the pitching staff and , in essence, the team.

Na-na-na-na. Na-na-na-na. Hey-hey-ey, goodbye.

Forget disco demolition, butterfly collars and Ken Harrelson's stint as general manager. This is a new low for the always-promising but perennially disappointing White Sox, baseball's answer to the Ed McMahon sweepstakes. Congratulations, John Q. Soxfan! You have a chance to win the pennant! And like Ed says, you can't win if you don't enter. The only problem is, Reinsdorf decided it wasn't worth the effort to put all those little stamps in the right places. Comiskey Park instead became a clearinghouse, distributing talent to whichever team might need it and asking little in return. Reinsdorf says the faxes have been flying in and 80 percent are supportive of his moves. Which only proves that Indians G.M. John Hart has a fax machine and spare time.

It didn't always look this bad. Like most seasons in recent memory, there were many reasons to be optimistic about the '97 White Sox. When Reinsdorf heaped money on Albert Belle, he spoke about making up for the World Series that most White Sox fans -- including this one -- feel they were cheated out of when the strike ended the 1994 season for the division-leading Sox. Reinsdorf, because of his stance in the negotiations, deserves a lot of blame for the labor dispute, and to hear something bordering on an apology was encouraging.

But in disarming the team -- he got six minor leaguers form the giants for any credibility he might have bought back.

OK, in the interest of fairness, he was right on in comparing the acquisition of those San Francisco prospects to drafting Horace Grant and acquiring Scottie Pippen in a draft-day trade. Like Horace, the Sox won't be around come playoff time. And like Scottie, we will all be coming down with migraines soon enough.

"Some people forgive, but they don't forget," Hernandez told a Chicago reporter a few days before getting shipped out. "Fans want a team that is going to contend. And I don't think you can rectify it by having a team that's contending and then dismantling it."

As noted pundit Marge Simpson would say, "Well, duh!"

One thing is certain: Lopping off salary in all the wrong places isn't going to win any of us back.

Who really cares? you ask. The Sox don't have any fans anyway, you say.

Not true. Comiskey's upper deck didn't always look like the mezzanine at a Pat Boone heavy-metal concert. In fact, we packed the place in 1993 for a team that didn't rate with John Kruk's Phillies on the likability scale but was fun to watch and won a lot. They fell short of the Series (those Phillies didn't), but we all felt our guys were on the rise, perhaps one key player from glory.

That key player turned out to be a key event -- the strike, which hit so hard at 35th and Shields. Knowing baseball is an institution far greater than the idiots who run it, I came back right. But I represent the minority of Sox fans will be cautious about investing -- emotionally or otherwise -- in any team until it shows it has a chance.