Let it be written. Let it be known. On September 23rd, 2021 at approximately 4:00 PM local time in Cleveland, the Chicago White Sox won the American League Central Division title and ensured themselves a playoff spot for the second consecutive year. This marks the first time in their history the Sox have managed to make the playoffs two years in a row. It's been a LONG time coming but for those of us who witnessed today it was worth the wait.

It hasn't been an easy slog, though the division title has been a foregone conclusion for several weeks now. Cleveland traded Cesar Hernandez to the Sox at the trade deadline pretty much surrendering and admitting they weren't going to catch our Boyz this year. However the Sox promptly took that surrender and sat on it, playing .500 ball over the remainder of the year while fighting niggling injuries and roller coaster offensive output while trying their best to walk the fine line between resting players and locking up the division. Mission accomplished at last. Well at least in part. There's still another week+ to go and then come the playoffs themselves. Right now that's a big mountain, but at least the team appears to be finally getting healthy with only Ryan Tepera currently still unavailable from the expected playoff roster.

The game itself was never in doubt. Tim Anderson led things off with a solo shot and then tacked on another 3-run blast in the second after both Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez added solo shots of their own. By the time the smoke had cleared the Sox were up 7-0 after 1.5. The offense didn't add anymore, but the pitching was solid and Tony LaRussa wasn't playing games. He yanked starting pitcher, Reynaldo Lopez in the 4th when he started struggling with control and gave up his second solo shot to close the lead to 5. The Sox brought in Garret Crochet who gave up a single but then got a double play grounder to end the inning. After that, it was bring in the late inning...

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott penned those lines more than two hundred years ago. If I hadn’t learned that already, I would’ve thought he was writing about Tom Ricketts and his courtiers in the office tower looming over Clark Street. You know the place: 125,000 square feet of corporate glitz at Waveland and Clark on the former site of a coal yard. And it faces the $200 million hotel across the street that was previously a McDonald’s parking lot.

Add to that the new commercial building on Addison that replaced a string of locally owned storefronts. And don’t forget the acquisition of most of those three-flats behind the outfield that serve now as party rooms. If Chuck E. Cheese adopted a baseball theme, you’d have the model for “Wrigleyville.” Quotation marks are appropriate because there’s no neighborhood by that name – it’s more like Brigadoon or Camelot: not a place, but a state of mind.

All this avarice brought to mind those lines from Scott’s poem. The Cubs aren’t a ballclub as much as they are an ATM for the owners. The team pulled off a World Series win, boasted of a dynasty, and when the team’s fortunes waned the owners focused on their other fortunes. Instead of putting money on the field, they’re fielding money in a sportsbook building while cutting the team payroll in a series of disemboweling trades.

I have to admit it’s fun to watch air leak out of the Cubs’ hubris balloon. We’re Sox fans and we lived through several years of a rebuild, which to Rick Hahn’s credit he never tried to deny, unlike Jed Hoyer’s double-talk about it being different now. Yeah, it’s different, all right.

As I write this, the White Sox are decisively winning the interleague series against the Cubs. Steve Greenberg wrote in the Sun-Times, “There are ships passing in the night, and then there are the Sox and Cubs. One team an ocean liner steaming for the deep...

Welcome to the new WSI Forums. Sadly, due to the passing of FarWestChicago we had to let the old site fade away. Honestly this is fitting. West was the driving force behind the old site and with his passing, his work should go with him. We were unable to transfer the old content due to major tweaks that were made to the code on the old site that would have led to a lot of broken code and no functionality if we had tried. Some of the moderators remain and we ask that you continue to treat them with the respect you have in the past.

While the content is lost, the spirit lives on. You will find this site very similar to the old one in functionality and BONUS! the smilies work again. We were even able to rescue most of the old tags and smilies from the old forums so hopefully it will feel like home. Yes the language filters still exist and we still ask you not to try to evade them. We want to be a home for anyone, even younger members who want to talk Sox Baseball. Politics is still not allowed other than in the special hidden forum you have to ask to join. ...