White Sox should embrace tanking, pursuit of being the worst team in MLB history

Nam Y. Huh/AP

The season is still young, but it’s clear that the White Sox’ only entertainment value lies in how low they can go.

So let’s not beat around the bush league:

If they’re going to be awful, why not be the worst ever?

With an 8-26 record, the Sox have a chance to be historically bad. The major-league record for most losses in a season in the post-1901 Modern Era is 120, set by the 1962 Mets, an expansion team. The Sox are on pace for 124 losses. The worst winning percentage in history is .235, set by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics. That’s the Sox’ winning percentage after 34 games.

Let’s do this, Chicago. Let’s revel in a team with an opportunity to become the worst ballclub in modern history.

My recommendation to Sox fans is to sit back and chortle, the way you might delight in a terrifically bad community theater production or in a church choir that sounds like horse stables on fire. If you can’t find humor in this dreadful rendition of the sport of baseball, if you can’t laugh at the ineptness on display, you’re going to burst a vein.

This Sox team has it all – the stock-character evil owner, the hapless manager and the cast of very marginal players worthy of a franchise apparently trying to lose on purpose, which is what rebuilds are. The team’s best players keep getting injured, to the point where something nefarious seems to be at work. A dark lord?

Team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf has been a target of disgruntled Sox fans for decades, and now that their discontent is at record levels, the arrows are sharper than ever. Thanks to the losing, Reinsdorf’s pursuit of taxpayer money for a new ballpark and his unspoken threat of moving the team, what little love there might have been for him has crossed state lines.

The best revenge on the chairman is to laugh at the product, to bear hug the losing and to continue to boycott Guaranteed Rate Field. But mostly to laugh.

No one involved set out in pursuit of being the worst team ever, and I’m guessing very few Sox fans are taking pleasure in seeing their team bounce along the bottom of the ocean. But bounce it does and bounce it will. Nothing and no one is coming to the rescue.

It’s one of life’s inexplicable truths that sometimes feeling bad feels good. And sometimes it’s better to be remembered than forgotten. Outside of some Tigers fans with an unnatural attachment to misery, no one remembers the 2003 Detroit team that went 43-119. But people still talk about Casey Stengel’s 120-loss Mets team, the highwater mark for terrible. In terms of lasting significance, historically bad beats almost-historically bad every time. Let’s keep our eye on the prize, folks.

The Sox have won two games in a row and five of their last nine, to which I say: Stop that.

Their run differential is minus-82, putting them on pace to break the 1932 Red Sox’ record of minus-345. They've been shut out nine times in 34 games, a remarkable thing. Not scoring a run every fourth game or so, well, you can’t make it up.

Sox general manager Chris Getz told the Sun-Times’ Daryl Van Schouwen on Saturday that more trades are possible this season, which means that more young players and more losing could be on the way.

‘‘Similar to the message from last fall and all offseason, we will be open-minded on anything to further set us up for future success,’’ Getz said.

That’s music to the ears of people like me who say, if it’s broke, break it some more. It’s probably a dirge to the people who are already taking the season hard, but I’m suggesting an attitude adjustment. I’m suggesting humor as a means of self-preservation. Don’t accept the prodigious losing as a necessary means to building a winner. That doesn’t always work out, as the Sox’ most-recent failed rebuild proves. Accept the prodigious losing as a means of getting in the Guinness Book of World Records.

New Sox TV play-by-play announcer John Schriffen was roundly criticized for celebrating a victory the other day by whooping, “Say it with me, say it proud — for all the haters — South Side, staaaaaand up!”

I don’t see haters when I hear people laughing at the 2024 White Sox. I see discerning baseball fans. I don’t see haters when I listen to angry Sox fans. I see people who care a lot, perhaps to excess. For those tortured souls, one final exhortation: The only way to get through this season is to let go of it. Remove the typical life-or-death importance you place on a Sox season and learn to find meaning in failure. Look at this exercise as sociology, not sports.

If you decide to embrace the losing, know that there could be some challenging times ahead. The Rockies are 8-26, too, and their run differential is an impressively hideous minus-77.

They think they can take what’s ours?

Now that’s a team to hate.