Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Chicago White Sox 6
Shohei Ohtani cooks the South Siders for his Boys in Blue debut
Happy Tuesday, White Sox fans, and happy Shohei Ohtani is a Dodger day! I hope you’ll join me every Tuesday for White Sox game coverage this season, and my promise to you will be the one that’s endured through all my seasons here: I won’t bring any toxic positivity or toxic negativity in the 2024 season, because that garbage sucks to read.
That said, my White Sox offseason break was probably just like yours and included a lot of headshaking and sighing with every move announced in the Great Offseason Clearance Sale. Writing about baseball creates an inescapable spiral of doom when the team is being led by a bunch of greedy disappointments in suits, so my goal this season is to enjoy baseball again without pretending that the horrors of the White Sox Front Office™ don’t exist. We’ll acknowledge, relentlessly rip on, and move on. Sick burns and high-effort Jerry-trolling graphics will be our copium. We won’t pretend things don’t suck when they do, and if things are cool, we won’t get lost in the mire, either. We’ll make this fun, White Sox fans.
Much to my chagrin, today’s game wasn’t on cable in Chicago. Nor was it on Hulu, Amazon Prime, AppleTV, YouTube Premium, or Paramount+, even though I’ve downloaded and subscribed to all of those streaming services for the express purpose of watching games. This game was on FuboTV, which costs an absurd amount of money per month (the same price as cable), so I opted to watch it for free on whitesox.com, which was spotty at best. Is there any end to how many streaming platforms and apps we need to watch games this season? Is this getting worse, or is it just me?
Before today’s game even started, whitesox.com forecasted the game in the search bar:
Yes, this is South Side Sox, but damn, I can’t deny the excitement around two-time American League MVP Shohei Ohtani’s first game as a Dodger, especially when the result doesn’t hold any weight on the regular season. Ohtani was greeted with a massive swell of applause for his first official Los Angeles Dodger at-bat, and over 40 million viewers watched him from Japan at 5 a.m. as Garrett Crochet struck him out.
During his two innings, Crochet threw fire, facing a stacked lineup of intimidating badasses. He smoked Mookie Betts, Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman to open the game, greeting them with a 1-2-3 first inning. After giving up back-to-back singles and throwing a wild pitch, Crochet was pulled with two outs in the second, which was a longer debut than anyone thought he’d have.
To celebrate Crochet’s new role as a starting pitcher, the White Sox Front Office™ paid him some extra attention during the offseason in an attempt to draw in younger fans.
That’s a little artificial for my tastes and kind of thirst-trappy. Luckily, once the new look bombed with test audiences, Garrett was returned to his original form through five grueling rounds of offseason plastic surgery. It’s a wonder he’s still throwing heat.
The White Sox offense wasted no time today, with Nicky Lopez hard-smacking a double, followed by another two-bagger by Eloy Jiménez, allowing Lopez to score. The Dodgers answered with a run in the third, and the game remained tied at 1-1 until the fourth.
The White Sox offense looked focused, and after an Eloy Jiménez single (his second of the day), followed by an Andrew Vaughn double, Paul DeJong hit a missile right into the bullpen, putting the White Sox ahead 4-1.
All was quiet until the fifth, but not because the streaming video was going out and glitching (it was). With two outs, a full count, and a runner on second, Ohtani dinged a 390-foot donger, cutting the White Sox lead to 4-3, giving everyone who could watch this game on actual TV the show they wanted.
In the sixth, veteran Chad Kuhl, whose résumé includes pitching for the Pirates, Rockies, and Nationals, made his South Side debut with an efficient two innings. Here is a little backstory on Kuhl - he signed with the White Sox in the offseason after not renewing his contract with the Washington Nationals due to his wife’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. He wanted to stay by her side, and for that, I’m nominating Chad Kuhl as interim New Face of the Chicago White Sox of the Week Because We Don’t Yet Have One. You’ve earned your Chadifying, Chad.
The White Sox added another run to their lead in the sixth, making it 5-3, where the score would stay until the final out of the seventh when reliever Andrew Pérez let the Dodgers tie it up at 5-5.
In the eighth, the Dodgers loaded the bases and scored on a sac fly before Chris Okey hit a three-run home run to take their first lead of the game, 9-5. The Sox fought back in the ninth, and Colson Montgomery’s RBI single kept the Good Guys afloat. The game ended 9-6, but the White Sox looked good on all sides and didn’t stop fighting.
Watching what Chicago has cooking in the 2024 crockpot has filled me with neither dread nor hope. Our guys look well-rounded and balanced, with a healthy offensive lineup. The boneheaded moves of management will hopefully be kept to a minimum, and we need to cross our fingers for better trainers and team doctors to avoid the landslide of coughing or walking injuries we saw last year.
Let’s take this White Sox season game by game, make fun of the clowns in the front office together, and stay on this wild ride as fans for another year. After all, our tax dollars paid for at least a part of the team, and maybe they’ll even pay for a new stadium that no one asked for. Sell the team, Jerry.
It’s good to be back.