YOU CAN HAS... SHINGOTIME!!!!!!!!!!!(TM(
speaking of, man oh man, i'll never forget going to a 2005 white sox game circa april 21st or something, and i remember watching them "grind out" a quality 3-2 or 4-2 type victory where they overcame an early 1-2 run deficit, worked counts to set themselves up for some timely hits, and then of course to top it all off you have this magical japanese mascot of a closer throwing 48mph frisbees up there (at least until Mr. MonaVie Himself Dustin Hermanson str8up slugs a 5th/bottle of "the good stuff" and gets his superhero powers (not too unlike popeye) to successfully bridge the gap between SHINGOTIME!!!!!!!!!!!1(TM) and the beginning of the bobby "sausage" jenks era [you now remember ozzie's legendary call to the pen for the "wide load"]
after that game,
i took to my trusty baseball blog and wrote a thing where i made a point to say something like "this is the kind of team that wins championships" and rah rah rah blah blah blah yeah i kinda sorta caled the 2005 white sox? hmmmm.
sinicalypse on April 20, 2005 wrote:
the game was essentially a microcosm of the early season success of the whitesox, aka, the team that i predicted would be THE story in chicago baseball by the time august or september rolls around. [babbler's note: remember that we were coming off of the 2003-04 cubs, and while the 2004 cubs ultimately sucked the big chalupa in the end, there was still a general assumption that the cubs were legit #WeAreGood and therefore they'd be in the postseason/picture for AT LEAST another year or two!]
...
...
the whitesox have a solid pitching staff. buehrle has taken a step or two forward and looks like a bonafide #1 ace right now, then the whitesox have two #3s in freddy garcia and orlando hernandez (im not a freddy fan, my apologies), and hten two #4s in contreras and garland. what's fortunate for them is that when he's on, and historically that's been i nthe clutch, hernandez can turn into a solid #2 or even a sometimes-#1, contreras has the stuff to be a solid 2 or 3 on pretty good rotations, but its all in his head (please check all cranberries' "zombie" references at the door), and garland at full realization of potential could be a #2-#3, i mean, as a #4 he's been a perennial 12 game winner with a mid to high 4.something ERA over the last 2-3 years, but you figure that sometime he'll get better.
that said, its better than having an abysmal ~5 win 5th rotation spot that basically goes like 5-25 all season long, and then after buehrle you've for 4 solid starters that can keep a scrappy offensive team in ballgames long enouhg to win a good % of them.
...
...
it seems that shingo is quite vulnerable to the beatdown after teams get enough looks at him. thus far, his implosions and beatdowns have come at the hands of AL cental opponents, who have seen him the most.
...
...
either way, this whitesox team seems to be enjoying coming out to the ballpark and playing a game everyday, ozzie seems to be getting better as a tactical manager, and the whitesox thus far haven't flat out dominated teams, but htey've scrapped together wins that show that they might have the magical baseball "it" aka the undiscernable x-factor that gets teams over the hump and gets them in a good position to make things happen at crucial junctures in the mid-late innings of the game.
and therein lies one of the big mysteries of baseball: is there truly an undiscernable and undefineable "it" factor, or is that merely hte product of a team doing a whole lot of little things right on such a consistent basis, and htat we're so used to slugging HRs to win games 7-4 then turning around and losing 6-2 in another games, that we just feel its magical when you see a team wit ha different philosophy come out and do all kinds of little/fundamental things right and end up winning ballgames.
...
...
yep, this 2005 season could be the best overall year of chicago baseball that i've seen in my now-fifth-year of keeping a keen eye on the game of baseball. both teams have the capacity to entertain, both have some lights out pitchers, and some offenses not anchored by big traditional feast-or-famine sluggers... and solid bullpens too? wow. this could be the best year in quite some time, and hopefully its not hte best FOR quite some time.
welp, i guess i didn't have that "proper quote" about "this [2005 white sox] team is the kind of team that can win a championship" but i mean.... if you go to that original link up there and skim through the TLDR stuff you can see me noticing and pointing out a lot of the stuff that would go on to be centrifugal to the white sox winning the championship in 2005. i reckon that claiming the whitesox seem to have "that magical 'it' factor" that makes you a legit contender = as close as i got.
i guess i'll just have to settle for
allegedly/supposedly calling the cubs' 2016 WS run all the way back in 2011? seriously the baseball uncle seems 100% damn convinced that i went out of my way to call 2016 as "the year" and he's not letting me "get away with" saying that he's misremembering that mock-starlin-castro-HOF-plaque which had him winning the 2017 NL MVP en route to the cubs first championship (2nd one came in 2022) so uhhh..... i guess sometimes you just gotta let people believe that you're some kind of a genius/prophet? *mj shrug* aka
_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
