Nothing speaks to the essence of the human experience in quite the way that two convergent goals coalesce in the same desired result, which is a typically circuitous way to get to this weekend's big event—the Detroit Tigers trying to kick all the available Chicago White Sox arse on offer.
The Tigers have become the most lovable team in baseball, because an ignored group coming from 10 games back of a postseason berth it had no right to dream about to two games ahead with three games to play is always delightful, even before getting into the wonderful name salad of its lineup cards. A team with a Tarik, a Colt, a Riley, a Parker, a Spencer, a Wenceel, a Justyn-Henry, a Jace, a Dillon, a Keider, a Brenan and a Beau merits a place in October baseball.
But the thing that makes this doubly desirous is their final scheduled opponent, the Chicago White Sox. The Sox are sitting obstinately at 120 defeats, one short of the modern (read: since 1900; never forget Our Beloved Spiders) record for defeats in a season, and even White Sox fans have been dissatisfied with their sudden burst of initiative, booing each of their walk-off wins Tuesday and Wednesday over the unbearably rancid Los Angeles Angels. They bought tickets to see the record-breaking L, and back-to-back Ws are just two more fingers in the eye to a fanbase that hates its future even more than A's fans hate theirs.
The numbers may change this afternoon in the final Sox home game against the Anaheims, but it matters not. Every White Sox loss makes this worse and therefore better. It is not coincidental that according to one of ESPN's moneygrubbing side hustles, the secondary ticket market column in the daily schedule, Friday's game has the highest priced bargain ticket of the entire weekend. On this Thursday, A's-Rangers and Dodgers-Padres might earn more attention, but they aren't the weekend, and Tigers-White Sox is something better—a miracle team facing a miracle team at the other end of the plumbing, as everyone who watches roots for the same result. See, we can unite as a people. It just takes the right issue.
-Ray Ratto
Photo: Quinn Harris/Getty Images
