'The Wreck of the White Sox' by Tom Braxton

With the Blackhawks wrapping up their third Stanley Cup in six years, I haven't had much time to watch or write about the bad White Sox baseball we've been seeing the last few days.

The team is on a five-game losing streak and hasn't scored a run (or had an extra-base hit) since the second inning Sunday. Rather than analyze the nonsense of the past few ballgames, we will instead commemorate the latest losing streak with a poem from my friend, Tom Braxton.

To the tune of  "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot ....

The legend lives on from old Bridgeport on down
To the mills on the sands of The Region.
The game, it is said, often ends with the dread
Of an autumn spent fretting and reachin’.
With a bench of new guys whose talents comprise
So much more than the Sox had last season,
But that team of new hope slid down a hard slope
That the Central Division was greasin’.

The team was the pride of the weary South Side,
Coming back from too long in the cellar.
As big-leaguers go they looked better than most
With a team looking good if not stellar.
Concluding some deals, Rick Hahn, he now feels
That champions are what he’s collected.
And without many wins when we’re ten weeks in,
Could it be the rebuild we’ve expected?

The whiffs and duffs made an ominous sound
Of a team coming loose from its moorings.
And every fan knew, as Hahn must know too,
‘Twas the curse of Navarro returning.
May became June and the team was in swoon
When the streaks began piling up losses.
As the weather grew hot fewer tickets got bought
To the chagrin of Rick Hahn and his bosses.

Does anyone know where the love of fans goes
When the team blows through millions of dollars?
Writers say that worst case they’d have made second place
If they’d only replaced Tyler Flowers.
They might have bad eyes or they might have the yips;
They may have bought their own bravura.
And all that remains are the aches and the pains
And the blinking of Robin Ventura.

In a musty old bar on South Halsted they sang,
In voices exchanging their theories.
The beer bottles clanked and together they drank
To each man from the ’05 World Series.
The legend lives on from old Bridgeport on down
To the mills on the sands of The Region.
The game, it is said, often ends with the dread
Of an autumn spent fretting and reachin’.