The Ozzie Plan

I was reviewing tonight’s action and I wanted to check the Chicago game notes and the Tampa Bay game notes just to see how badly things have going for those two clubs of late. 

I pulled up Chicago’s first and was shocked, shocked I tell ya to read right there in the Official Media Notes (handed out to the Official Media prior to the game) that "the Chicago White Sox have won seven of their last nine games…"

So, I looked at Chicago’s game-by-game results and sure enough, they had.  This recent turnaround in their fortunes had escaped my attention entirely.

I thought they were doing really bad.  And for a while, a month to be precise, they had been. 

This badness, it seemed to come out of nowhere.  Prior to their game on May 21, Chicago was over .500, at least, with a record of 21-20, 4.5 games out of first place. 

They thereupon conspired to lose all but eight of their next thirty games (8-22)and had, as of June 24, dropped to 29-42, dropping 14.5 games out of first place.

It was at about this point, late June, that I lost track of the Pale Hose and assumed they were still forever blowing pretty ballgames, but, there it was in tonight’s game notes: Chicago were the winners of seven of their last nine. 

Now it was time to check in on the Devil Rays.  I went to their Official Media Notes to see just how badly things were going for them and boy, oh, boy: It’s going awful.  They had this 22 year old kid outfielder who was supposed to be the next Mantle (tied for the rookie homer lead they day they cut him loose) but they had to let him go because he threatened to kill his wife by leaving an "it’s on dawg" death threat on her cell phone and she gave a tape of it to the papers and they transcribed it and now everybody who reads the St. Pete Times which is everybody in southwest Florida knows exactly what the guy meant: he was telling his wife he was going to shoot her.  It all sounded a bit too Rae Curruth-ish, if you know what I mean. You can’t have guys like that around on your ballclub.  His name will come to me. 

Anyway, while that’s going on, Chicago comes in and Chicago wishes it was for a forty-four game series, not just four, because they win them all.  They are in fact, the first four wins by Chicago in this whole "we’ve won seven of the last nine" thing they got going on before the game tonight with the Orioles.

Now, the Devil Rays, they take that four-game losing streak of theirs and head to Cleveland where they lose all four and then they go to Boston and now they’ve dropped games back-to-back at Fenway and that means a ten-game losing streak is intact for them if you count that whole mess up. 

And to think I thought it was in Chicago that things were going the worst.

Now, the Chicago’s did lost to the Baltimore’s tonight: 9-6. 

So now, with that Baltimore loss, Chicago has won seven of their last ten games.  Not bad, but not of much importance, either.  Since hitting the low point in the 8-22 slide and rebounding to win seven of the ten games since, the White Sox have gone from 14.5 games out of first place to…drumroll, please…13.5 games behind.   And they are a mere two games ahead of Kansas City in the race for last.

And to think that when the 2006 season began the White Sox were the Wolrld Champs and had a lot of people thinking they were going to do it again in ’06.

And now this, a battle for last place. 

The White Sox are offering on their website an "Ozzie Plan" where you can buy seats for the rest of the season at reduced rate.  They had packages for as low as $167. 

I think Chicago’s at the point where the "Ozzie Plan" management has in mind is firing his butt and getting somebody else in there.  I do not think Ozzie Guillen survives the season.