A reflection on the White Sox and why we love losing streaks | News, Sports, Jobs

Chicago White Sox fans cheer during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vasquez)

As we approach the final third of the 2024 Major League Baseball season, one topic has captivated fans across the country like no other.

I’m not talking about Paul Skene’s meteoric rise to the top of the Cy Young race as a rookie or Aaron Judge’s dominant campaign for his second AL MVP award. I’m not talking about the Cleveland Guardians’ surprising run for baseball’s best record or Bobby Witt Jr.’s leap in his third year. Instead, I’m talking about the Chicago White Sox’s slide to the bottom of the standings.

Coming into this season, no one expected the White Sox to set the world on fire. Their +25000 odds of finishing the season as World Series champions in the preseason were only better than the +50000 marks of Oakland and Colorado. Their projected win total of 61.5 was also third-worst in the league, ahead of those same two teams. All of this to say, we all knew the White Sox would struggle this season.

But what was most surprising was the extent of the defeat. It is not the first time that a team that was already bad has not performed well enough. What was striking, however, was their remarkable ability to find a way to lose. From June 22 to July 6, the White Sox lost 14 games in a row.

The first losing streak raised some eyebrows, but they remarkably overcame it with a 20-game losing streak that began July 12 and lasted until they finally snapped it Tuesday with a 5-1 win over the Oakland Athletics, who were 47-67 entering the game. The win left Chicago tied with the 1988 Baltimore Orioles for the longest losing streak in the American League and finished just two losses shy of the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies’ 23-game losing streak.

To give some context on the length of that streak, Joe Biden was still the Democratic presidential nominee the last time the White Sox won a game before Tuesday. As Twitter user Jay Cuda pointed out, the moon also made a full orbit around the Earth in the time it took the White Sox to win another game.

For context, if every game in the White Sox’s two losing streaks had been canceled, they would still have the worst winning percentage in the majors at 33.7%, behind Oakland in the American League at 41.4% and Colorado and Miami in the National League at 36.2% and 36.4% respectively.

The interesting thing about streaks like the White Sox’s is that losing games causes fans to lose interest, but being historically bad rekindles it. On Monday, before the skid was broken, I went online and checked the price of the White Sox home game against the Cubs on Friday night. The game had the potential to set the record for the longest losing streak in modern major league history (since 1900) at 24 games, and tickets started at $96. The next day’s game against the same team had tickets starting at just $11.

Some might say it’s just the nature of rises and falls. People like stories, and watching a team lose 20 games in a row is, at the very least, a story. However, winning streaks rarely attract the same attention. The average basketball fan could probably tell you that the Detroit Pistons had the longest losing streak in the NBA last year, losing 28 games in a row from October 30th through December 30th. Could they tell you who had the longest winning streak?

For those wondering at home, the longest winning streak in the NBA last season was 11 games, held by the league champion Boston Celtics and the Houston Rockets.

The Celtics finished the season well ahead of the pack, with 64 wins that put them 14 games ahead of the Eastern Conference regular-season runners-up, the New York Knicks. The Rockets, however, were a mediocre team. They finished the year with a 41-41 record and missed the playoffs in 11th place in the Western Conference. As such, their 11-game winning streak stands out as a much bigger aberration than that of the last-place Pistons, who went on a string of losses. Still, the Rockets’ streak never garnered as much attention as the Pistons’.

Even taking the local angle and watching the Twins daily, does the average Minnesotan know that the Twins’ 12-game winning streak in May is still the longest in baseball this season?

In the end, what really matters is schadenfreude, a German word meaning pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. With only 12 teams making the playoffs, two winning championships and one claiming the title, most baseball fans know in advance that they won’t see their team win anything significant.

Cinderella stories are what make sports special, in many ways. Even when we see our teams fall to fourth or fifth place in the division, there is always a little ray of hope in the back of our minds that tells us: “All they need to do is sweep each of the next four series and we’ll be back in the hunt for that final wild-card spot.”

It’s the same reason we watch SportsCenter’s Not Top 10 on Sunday mornings. Hoping against hope isn’t enough, so it’s good to be thankful for what you have. As we watch the Twins continue to battle for a postseason spot with the Kansas City Royals and Boston Red Sox, the White Sox’s streak brings some levity to the season. Win or lose, regardless of where we see our team ending up, it’s good to take a moment to realize that it could be worse.

At least we didn’t grow up with the White Sox.