The Record!
By 
The Chicago White Sox lost their major league-record 121st game Friday night, falling 4-1 to the Detroit Tigers.
The White Sox broke the post-1900 record of 120 set by the New York Mets in 1962 in their first season. The overall record was set in 1899 by the Cleveland Spiders with a 20-134 record.
The closest any team had come to New York’s record was the 2003 Tigers, who won their final two games to finish with 119 losses. That remained the American League record until the White Sox hit 120 on Sunday in San Diego.
I had gone from cheering for the record to a bit of benighted hope that the Pale Hose would somehow manage to avoid history. The players themselves clearly wanted to win, at least in the last week or so. But it was not to be. Several folks sent me this piece on the dwindling species “ChiSoxicus Americanus:”
Over the course of the 2024 season, the White Sox have explored the full spectrum of losing the way a great actor uses every corner of the stage, the way a jazz saxophonist probes every note in a scale. They have lost nobly, tragically, cleverly, inspiringly and deflatingly. They have lost late at night and early in the afternoon, in soggy rain and on crisp sunny days. I have seen perfectly professional losses that could have gone either way — but of course didn’t — and games that should have been stopped, for cruelty, in the fourth inning. I have seen the White Sox lose in front of huge roaring crowds at Fenway Park and also, back home, in their own nearly empty stadium. (On a sunny Tuesday, just before game time, I once counted 199 people sitting in the vast sea of outfield seats — and when the announcer finally said “Play ball!” the applause sounded like someone had just done a magic trick at a church picnic.) I have seen the White Sox hit their catcher in the groin with the baseball three separate times in a single inning. I have seen the White Sox lose because three fielders ran into each other like clowns. I have watched a bloop single flutter and fall, like the first leaf of autumn, delicately onto the outfield grass, at the most devastating possible moment. I have seen games in which Chicago’s hitters looked like All-Stars but their pitchers looked like impostors, and games where it was vice versa, and games in which they all played great but the ball just bounced the wrong way.