Divine Intervention
At the season’s halfway point, the Pope’s team sits atop the AL Central.
There’s still quite a way to go until what will likely be the most anticipated sold-out game on the Chicago White Sox schedule this season, the August 11 match-up with the Cincinnati Reds, or Pope Hat Night.
According to Alyssa Meyers at Marketing Brew, Mike Downey, senior director of marketing and promotions for the Sox, appears under no illusions about the significance of honoring the team’s most famous – and least fallible – fan.
“It’s really hard to comprehend how historically amazing that is,” Downey said. “This tradition that’s been passed along through history for 1,500 to 2,000 years, depending on how you interpret it, intersects with the White Sox. That’s just an incredible, crazy thing.
“The White Sox celebrated Pope Leo on multiple occasions last season, including holding a mass to honor his election and installing a plaque at his World Series seat, and Downey said he wanted to do more marketing surrounding the pope this year. His team immediately thought of doing a Pope Leo bobblehead but tragically couldn’t secure the necessary NIL rights, he said.”
“Hopefully we will at some point, but I think the pope had bigger and better things to focus his time on, so I don’t blame him for that,” Downey said.”
That’s good to know, I guess.
Back in April, when the Sox were in need of, shall we say, some spiritual healing, chief revenue officer Brooks Boyer told The Athletic that Downey and his team “literally throw everything against the wall” when thinking about promotional opportunities. “Any oddity, they research it, and he was convicted on this one.”
According to Sports Business Journal, the Sox “attendance has rebounded amid their on-field turnaround.” The team is on pace to draw two million fans this season for only the second time since 2011, while Dan McGrath at Crain’s Chicago Business writes that after putting up with despair, “White Sox fans must now tolerate hope.”
“Just two years ago, the team set a franchise record “for ineptitude” by going 41-121. They exceeded that win total in game No. 80 this season. Likewise, they have “already surpassed last season’s meager attendance figure” of 927,315.”
If the playoffs started today, the Tampa Bay Rays and the surprising White Sox would be in line for first-round byes but, as Anthony Castrovince writes for MLB.com, the American league is, um, there for the taking.
“The so-called “Junior Circuit” has never looked more junior. It’s on pace for its worst collective winning percentage (.483). (Of course, a sub-.500 winning percentage only became possible with the advent of Interleague Play in 1997.)
“But in great difficulty lies great opportunity (or so we tell ourselves). Right now, even the worst teams in the AL can at least try to talk themselves into being two good weeks away from the playoff race.”
Redemption works both ways?
As Ken Rosenthal wrote this week at The Athletic, putting the Holy Father in a room with the man once voted “the most hated man in baseball” probably only works if it’s AJ Pierzynski. The former White Sox catcher presented the Pope with the game ball from Game One of the 2005 World Series, at which the pontiff, then just Robert Prevost, was famously caught on broadcast footage.
“I was at Game 2, too. But nobody knows that. They didn’t find me,” Leo is reported to have told Pierzynski.
On Monday, the visiting White Sox notched a rare victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the opening game of a three-game series at Camden Yards, just the second Sox win in the previous 17 games against the O’s.
With the hopeful return from injury of Munetaka Murakami, the Sox look set to build on the momentum of having three 20-home run hitters before the All-Star break for the first time since 2006. According to WhiteSoxRoundtable, Miguel Vargas is one dinger away from joining Murakami and Colson Montgomery on that mark.
“The last time the White Sox had three players with at least 20 home runs at the All-Star break was in 2006, when Jermaine Dye, Paul Konerko, and Jim Thome accomplished the feat. Thome had 30 home runs at the break, Dye had 25, and Konerko had 21 (per Scott Merkin). Those went on to finish the season with 42, 44, and 35 home runs, respectively.”
See Also:
The Pope And Nellie Fox (From December 2025)
The South Side’s Very Own… (From May 2025)
Take Me To Church (From May 2025)
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All Stars, All The Time
The second phase of voting is now under way for the July 14 All-Star Game starting line-ups, and will remain open until noon on Thursday. Before the ASG, NBC hosts Star-Spangled Sunday on July 4 weekend.
Meanwhile the latest power rankings from The Athletic heading into the break give a good overview of how the second half might unfold, as well as the implications for the upcoming trade deadline (August 3).
Elsewhere, there have been some stellar performances…
And some maybe not so great.
Meanwhile, in last night’s game in Sacramento, Max Muncy was starting at third base and batting seventh for the visiting Dodgers; while Max Muncy was starting at third base and batting seventh for the Athletics.
Max Muncy, of course, came out on top.
See Also:
Hey Now, You’re Not (From July 2025)
Halfway Home (From July 2025)
Fantasy World (From March)
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Before A Fall
The San Francisco Giants organization seems to be going out of its way to keep their Pride Night debacle alive.
There were restrictions on radio questions for CEO Larry Baer, while the interview with Buster Posey – the team’s president of baseball operations – is actually painful to watch…
Parker Molloy has a good recap of how things escalated in her piece ‘Keep it baseball related’.
She writes:
“The players could have celebrated God’s covenant on any day they liked. Instead, they did it on Pride Night, on the rainbow cap, on the 10th anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre, the night a gunman murdered 49 people at a gay club in Orlando.
“That was the situation in front of the Giants the next morning.”
Molloy also argues that White House reporters and political journalists generally could learn something from the persistence of the beat writers who have been covering the story.
See Also:
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Tickets, Please
The Red Sox game against the team that were still called the “Devil” Rays on June 28 2001 (top right ticket) was the second time I’d been to Fenway Park. (My first visit was in 1997). This time I was attending a conference at MIT and the organisers had arranged for a group of us to go to the ballgame.
It ended up a tight one, with Tampa edging it 4-3 and, appropriately enough since we were in Boston, Joe Kennedy started for them and pitched six innings before Jesús Colomé came on to get the win. Derek Lowe took the loss for the Red Sox.
One thing I remember was that because it was the Red Sox centenary year, I bought a hat which, many years later in Belfast, I got signed by Senator George Mitchell, who among other things is a big Red Sox fan.
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No Game Notes again this week as I’m still in Belfast until after the July 4th weekend. (I’ll also get caught up with Reading The Field next time too).
The following week the Cubs are at Camden Yards for a three-game series and then we’re into the All-Star Break.
Here’s a link to Game Notes for this season so far.
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As always, thanks for reading.
During the regular season I try to write a baseball-related post and a politics wrap each week. I do my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.
There’s a full States of Play archive here, and a ‘Just Baseball’ index for this season here.
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Finally, if you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.
You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.
Here’s how it works:
You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it’s published.
The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it? And then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?
I’ll round out the other questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, as well as anything else you might like to talk about. It’ll finish up with your thoughts on where things might be headed. Obviously, you’ll get final approval before it gets posted.
Sound good? Drop me a note. I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully see you at a ballgame.
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