My 5 favorite White Sox teams (during my lifetime)

When I got up this morning, it was 2 degrees with a wind chill of minus 17. There is somewhere between two and three feet of snow covering the ground here in Crystal Lake. Pitchers and catchers haven't reported yet (for most teams), Opening Day is still seven weeks away, and the news cycle is slow right now for baseball.

So, I figure what better time than to fill space with a pointless list?!

With that in mind, I present to you (in reverse order) my five favorite White Sox teams of all time. Keep in mind, this list only includes teams from my lifetime (I was born in 1976). Also, these are not necessarily the best or most successful Sox teams I've watched; they are just my favorite ones:

5. 1983: I attended my first Sox game as a 5-year-old in 1981, but the first year I really have good recollections of was the 1983 season. The Sox won 99 times and took the American League West by a record 20 games. I can still recite the everyday lineup: Rudy Law, Carlton Fisk, Harold Baines, Greg Luzinski, Ron Kittle, Greg Walker (or Tom Paciorek), Vance Law, Scott Fletcher and Julio Cruz. They had a 24-game winner in LaMarr Hoyt and a 22-game winner in Richard Dotson. Unfortunately, they lost the ALCS, 3-1, to the eventual World Champion Baltimore Orioles. Game 4 was lost 3-0 on an extra-inning home run by Tito Landrum. The Sox had Hoyt lined up to pitch a decisive Game 5, so there was a good chance they would have gone to the World Series if they had just won that Game 4. Broke my 7-year-old heart.

4. 2000: This was a fun season for two reasons. First, the Sox hit the living snot out of the ball that summer. Even if they were down five or six runs, they weren't out of the game. Magglio Ordonez had 32 home runs and 126 RBIs, and he was just the second-best hitter on the team. Frank Thomas had one of his best seasons: 43 homers and 143 RBIs. He should have been MVP, but the award went to cheating Jason Giambi instead. The Sox had three others with 21 or more home runs: Carlos Lee, Jose Valentin and Paul Konerko. The other reason this season was so much fun was because 95 wins and an AL Central title were totally unexpected. The Sox were coming off three straight losing seasons and weren't expected to do much, but they made the playoffs. Unfortunately, injuries to the pitching staff and a sudden offensive slump caused them to get waxed by the Seattle Mariners in the ALDS.

3. 1994: Another season of what could have been. A strike canceled the last month and a half of the season, plus all of the playoffs and World Series. It was heartbreaking because the Sox were so good and had a great chance to win it all. They were in first place with a 67-46 record when the season abruptly halted. Thomas was having his best year. He was hitting .353 with 38 homers and 101 RBIs through 113 games. Makes you wonder how it would have turned out for Thomas had he been allowed to play those last 49 games. What a terrific middle of the order the Sox had in '94, with Thomas, a resurgent Julio Franco and Robin Ventura in his prime. They had the pitching, too, with a rotation of Jack McDowell, Alex Fernandez, Wilson Alvarez and Jason Bere, who was having his best season that summer. Still kills me that we'll never know how the '94 season would have played out.

2. 1990: The last year at old Comiskey Park. Once again, this was a memorable year because the White Sox had surprising success. In 1989, the Sox lost 92 games and finished dead last in the American League West. In 1990, they sent the old ballyard out in style with a 94-win campaign. They had the second-best record in the league. Unfortunately, they were in the same division as the 103-win Oakland A's, and this was before the days of the wild card. The Sox missed the playoffs despite having a terrific year. The lineup was almost void of stars. Fisk and Kittle were probably the two most recognizable players. Ventura and McDowell were young and not yet household names. Thomas and Fernandez were called up in August and still unproven. Bobby Thigpen did have a career year as closer, posting a then-record 57 saves. But this season was remarkable because the Sox were greater than the sum of their parts. The theme for that summer was "Doing the Lil' Things." The Sox pitched well. They played defense. They ran the bases smartly. They got timely hits. And, oh, they went 8-5 against those mighty Oakland A's. Unfortunately, nobody else in the American League could stop Oakland, which eventually won the pennant.

1: 2005: Duh. What other team would be No. 1 on this list other than the 2005 World Champions, who eased the pain of generations of failure? The Sox were wire-to-wire champions of the AL Central. They won 99 games. They ran through the playoffs and World Series with a record of 11-1, an accomplishment that is still underrated and understated, even here in the Chicago area. Guys who were castoffs from other teams (Scott Podsednik, Jermaine Dye, A.J. Pierzynski, Dustin Hermanson) came to Chicago with chips on their shoulders and played great. The team produced countless iconic moments: Podsednik's walk-off homer in the World Series. Konerko's grand slam that same night. Four consecutive complete games in the ALCS by pitchers Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and Jose Contreras. Then, there was Joe Crede's magnificence with both the bat and the glove in the playoffs. For one season, this was a great baseball team. Not a good team, a great team. How the hell can you top 99 regular-season wins, plus 11-1 in the playoffs? Well, you'd have to win 100 in the regular season and go 11-0 in the playoffs. Good luck with that.

49 days until Opening Day. A new season is coming soon, I promise.