Dear Lip Man:
I feel your pain.
Once the White Sox are in your blood, it's permanent.
I was suspended for the first three months of the season and my life was in many ways actually better off. I read more, watched movies and t.v. shows, spent more time with my family.
I started following the Padres and contributing at Gaslamp Ball, just because baseball has been with me my entire life and even when I am not following the White Sox closely, I'll follow the minors or the draft or the College World Series or even watch a Little League game. It was a coping mechanism, just like the only way I could tolerate the 2013-2019 period of White Sox baseball was to start following the Royals (I lived there in KC from 1997-2007) because I knew they were going somewhere eventually, as they played such an exciting type of baseball (like the Cardinals and Royals in the mid 1980's)...one that almost no longer exists today, and is inarguably the exact opposite of today's three outcome game you're constantly referring to.
I love to watch the rookies especially, in the past....Puig in 2013 (that's when we started to be terrible and I had to find other aspects of the game besides getting upset about Adam Dunn, Kenny Williams or Robin Ventura), the Royals, fantasy baseball for most of this season. I've enjoyed watching Tatis, Jr., play very much....in some morbid way, I think it was bmaggs that said it, that was supposed to be OUR White Sox. Tatis, Jr. and Machado...the #1 or #2 farm system in baseball overflowing with pitching talent (what COULD have been had we doubled down in the Luis Robert signing year and spent another $25-30 million), what will likely to be the addition of a frontline starting pitcher utilizing the depth of their minor league prospects from 1-50.
Every White Sox fan should have a place here. We've all struggled with how to be "ideal Sox fans" in this era...and it has taken a toll, in terms of arguing about how a fan should act or behave. Obviously, right now, there's a mix of optimism and negativity with the 50% in the realistic/pragmatic middle, although that 50% (the silent majority) often just lurks or isn't as vocal or tenable because a reasonable position isn't as tenable on an online message board.
Your passion for White Sox history and especially the decade of the 1950's/60's/70's is (or at least should be) always welcome, and I've enjoyed reading your thoughts and picking up things from archived interviews of the past. Baseball, if it's nothing else (remember, the average fan today who ranks baseball their favorite sport is 57), is about shared memories with our fathers and families, playing catch in the backyard and "going to the big city" and sitting there is the stands at places like Old Comiskey or Wrigley Field and keeping score by hand...in the age fifteen years before cell phones started to take over our lives, just the sights and sounds and smells, the unforgettable crack of the ball off the bat of a great player that just had a different tone or of a rising fastball audibly sizzling through the afternoon sunlight.
In the end, it's a game. It's neither life nor death, there are bigger issues in the world that we can no longer talk about in a civil fashion without both sides demonizing the other...I've always said the one thing about the White Sox I was proudest of was that fans came from all walks of life, all socio-economic groups and we had diverse teams and diverse fans as well, we were certainly not a typical Wrigley yuppie crowd there to oggle "babes in the stands" while drinking our Buds with our fraternity friends, but actually went to the park faithfully because of our team and the game played in front of us.
I'm sticking with it because I believe in the dedication to his craft of Madrigal (who's as close as we're ever going to get to Nellie Fox), the raw talent of Luis Robert...no matter what I think or feel about the front office, it's not going to change my allegiance to the name on the front of the jersey, even as the names on the back ceaselessly change over the decades.
All we can do is be ourselves, write what we feel...and realize no matter what, there's going to be a lot of people that might not like what we write, how we write...what we write about it, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't express ourselves as long as it does no harm to others. You need tough skin around here, and it's hard not to fight back when insulted or ridiculed or fill-in-the-verb (I did it again on Sunday after someone was snarky). Once upon a time, there was a Chisox.com board about 15 years ago with NCORGBL (my bigger enemy) and SAT46...who was a fan of White Sox history and the names of the past, just like yourself. You remind me of a much saner version of him...but reading those names and hearing those stories of the past or this day in Sox history always brought a smile to my face.