SoxFest to return in 2025

Get your pitchforks and torches ready, White Sox fans!

SoxFest will return Jan. 24-25, 2025, according to a news release from the team. Sure, the event is almost a full year away, but this will be the first time since 2020 that fans will get to meet with and question team brass.

In the four years since, the team has been making excuses for not holding SoxFest. They've hidden behind the COVID-19 pandemic, even in 2022 when the overwhelming majority of the American public no longer cared about the virus. 

In 2023, they canceled SoxFest, citing "multiple factors," without elaborating on what those factors were. This year? They didn't even bother to make announcement.

One can only assume the Sox weren't eager to face their fans after a 61-101 season in 2023. Early predictions for 2024 are calling for a similar season -- the current Las Vegas over/under for the Sox win total is 63.5.

So why would the team pick now to bring back this event? Well, for starters, 2025 is the 20th anniversary of the 2005 World Series championship team. It is also the 125th anniversary of the franchise.

The venue, activities and guests for SoxFest will be announced at a (likely much) later time, but expect to see a lot of the 2005 heroes at this event. I won't be surprised if Paul Konerko, Mark Buehrle, Jose Contreras, Jermaine Dye, A.J. Pierzynski, Joe Crede, Aaron Rowand, Bobby Jenks and the rest of the gang are brought back to keep the booing to a minimum.

Less cynically and more optimistically, the Sox have a lot of money coming off the books after the 2024 season. Perhaps next offseason, they might actually make some moves to reshape the roster and give fans hope for the 2025 season. Right now, hope is in short supply for 2024.

Either way, the move to bring back SoxFest is long overdue. Congratulations, team, on finally doing something right.

April 18: the nine-year anniversary of Mark Buehrle's no-hitter vs. Texas

Mark Buehrle

I've long since lost count of how many baseball games I've attended in my lifetime. It's well up into the hundreds, I'm sure.

But the only no-hitter I've ever seen in person occurred nine years ago today, on April 18, 2007, when Mark Buehrle beat the Texas Rangers, 6-0, at U.S. Cellular Field.

I have my ticket stub and newspaper accounts from the game framed on my wall. I could live another 40 years and maybe not see another no-hitter in person, so that night in 2007 remains one of my most cherished baseball memories.

That game was a unique one in baseball history. It still is the only game ever to feature a multi-homer game, a grand slam and a no-hitter. Think of all the games that have been played over a century-plus in Major League Baseball. What I witnessed that night has happened just once -- Jim Thome hit two home runs, Jermaine Dye hit a grand slam, and Buehrle tossed a no-hitter, all in the same game.

I was very, very close to seeing a perfect gamet. Buehrle faced the minimum 27 hitters. The only blemish came with one out in the fifth inning when he walked the washed-up Sammy Sosa, then promptly picked him off.

Sosa was 38 years old at the time, in his last season in the big leagues. He was not a fast runner in the latter stages of his career. I don't know where he thought he was going. In any case, it was a funny moment because, well, Sox fans hate Sosa. He was a bum when he was with the Sox, then made his name with the Cubs (with the help of chemical enhancements), and it was always somewhat infuriating that he was wrongfully considered a better player than Frank Thomas in the city of Chicago. Time has proven that to be false, but it was great to see Buehrle embarrass the perpetually overrated Sosa with the pickoff.

The other image in my mind from that night was the final out -- a weak tapper up the third-base line by Texas catcher Gerald Laird. You heard a groan come up from the crowd as the ball left the bat; it definitely crossed my mind that the ball would die on the grass for an infield single -- it was that weakly struck. But fortunately, Sox third baseman Joe Crede still was in his pre-injury defensive prime at the time, and Laird was a slow runner.

Crede made the play easily, making it an historic and unforgettable night on the South Side of Chicago.