The Chicago White Sox have a new pope
My faith is tentatively restored.
WHITE SOXIST POPE
I have a confession to make. This isn’t something I reveal to casual company — it’s normally too humiliating to admit. But I think it’s time Ryan Email Club readers (numbering in the tens by now) know the truth: I am a Chicago White Sox fan.
It’s embarrassing enough to admit that I’m a baseball fan. Baseball, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a field sport where grown adults wear matching costumes with special hats and run around in circles trying to tag each other. Needless to say, it is a compelling indignification to behold.
I have been transparent about my appreciation for baseball. However, my attachment to the White Sox is less heralded — for understandable reasons.
The White Sox were once a proud and gritty rounders squad, capable of holding court with a majority of top-flight teams. In 2005, they even won one of the most prestigious annual baseball tournaments in the world.
But since those glory days, my faith in the team has gradually devolved into a numb, cynical indifference. Last season marked a grim turning point: My White Sox were so historically bad — losing so much that they lost more than any other baseball team ever — that I started to actively root against them. The losses feel more meaningful than the wins now.
Really, watching the White Sox lose feels like validation for my subsequent decades of middling misery. Over the years I’ve grown apart from the team I was raised on, both in fervency and in physical distance. (Distance is perhaps a rational choice in the face of such persistent betrayal.) It’s hard to align myself with a corrupted institution seemingly incapable of change and improvement. As the team scandalizes itself day after day, my dull pain opens to the world’s cognizance. Finally, the callous canonry shepherding the White Sox toward irrelevance can suffer the same sense of shame they’ve instilled in me.
My malignant feelings towards the White Sox seemed irreversible until yesterday. A sliver of pride peeked over my soul’s horizon, and a meek voice hearkened me back from the darkening void. The voice whispered, “God loves the White Sox, and He loves you.”
The White Sox have a new pope. Pope Leo XIV, confirmed lifelong Chicago White Sox fan.
Suddenly, the White Sox feel closer, more personal to me now. Pope Leo (his friends call him Bob) grew up in the same southwest Chicago suburbs where I was raised. He knows the difference between deep dish and tavern style pizza. He knows that a pop is something you can get from a vending machine. He knows you wear gym shoes for recreational activities. He knows what the Dan Ryan is, and why it must be avoided — except to access Chicago White Sox games.
I am heartened to see a White Sox pope cut from the same commoners’ cloth. It gives me hope that maybe this irreplaceable social fixture can be renewed. Admittedly, my life experience girds me against the prospect of a letdown, but for now I’m holding a prayer candle to the small, shriveled part of me that retains Hawk Harrelson’s shibboleths.
Perhaps God really is on our side. Truthfully, I’ll feel more assured after Jerry sells the team.
Click Roulette
The below links match one of the two descriptions provided for each. Click at your own peril!
CLICK HERE FOR LINK ONE. This is either:
Shocking footage of Pope Pius V applying ketchup to a hot dog.
Foamy drinks screaming into the void.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK TWO. This is either:
Shocking footage of Pope Clement IX cutting thin-crust pizza into triangle slices.
A British child angrily complaining about the price of an ice cream.
CLICK HERE FOR LINK THREE. This is either:
Shocking footage of Pope Julius III trying Malört, grimacing, and dumping it into a kitchen sink.
A photo of a gigantic baby.
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