2005 Chicago White Sox: Local and national media cover the breaking of another so-called curse

ESPN Radio Chicago Sports Anchor and Talk Show Host Tom Shaer and Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk after Shaer MC’d the August 7, 2005 unveiling of the White Sox’ statue of Fisk at then-U.S. Cellular Field. (Courtesy of Tom Shaer)

 

In 2005 I was a sports anchor and talk show host at ESPN Radio in Chicago after decades on television and radio in that city.

When the 2005 White Sox began play, virtually no one noted that the franchise was entering the 88th season since it last won a World Series – and there was certainly no talk of a “curse,” though the scandal of the 1919 Black Sox still somewhat haunted the franchise’s history.

The crosstown Cubs had two seasons earlier blown a three-games-to-one lead in the NLCS and their championship drought now stood at 96 years, continuing the “Billy Goat Curse,” which the media furthered.1 Only months earlier, fans across the world were breathlessly caught up in the Boston Red Sox finally ending the media-created “Curse of the Bambino” with their first fall classic triumph in 86 years.2 But the longer starvation of the other Sox? Not newsworthy.

In the preceding 15 seasons, the White Sox had almost always finished with more wins than the Cubs, usually by a wide margin. That period also began with White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf finally getting his team’s television broadcasts on equal footing with the Cubs as each team was carried on free TV by WGN and the same regional [cable] sports channel. The better records and vastly-improved exposure created new fans and more-equitable daily coverage. The Sox were slowly narrowing the popularity gap with the Cubs; a title-winning step forward would rapidly accelerate that progress.

Coming off a mediocre 83-79 record, the White Sox were definitely not expected to win the division. A wild-card consolation prize? Maybe. Manager Ozzie Guillén made few promises, but we sports reporters sensed an implicit promise that he and his team would be interesting. While the not-yet-ready-for-the-Hall of Fame Dusty Baker dodged and whined during media sessions for the disappointing Cubs, Ozzie, who never met a microphone he didn’t like, was a breath of fresh air. He combined blunt comments with just enough wacky things. The man got our attention daily, and the Sox could always use more attention.

I had known Ozzie since his rookie year of 1985, so none of this was a surprise. But it was interesting to see him grow as a leader, brilliantly taking the daily pulse of his team and finding a way to use his sizable ego and the spotlight to maintain a somewhat positive image for his team as its lead in the American League Central Division shrank from 15 games on August 1 to only a game-and-a-half over the Cleveland Indians with just eight games left to play.

Veteran Chicago baseball reporter Bruce Levine is the only person to broadcast pregame and postgame coverage for the flagship radio stations of both the White Sox and Cubs championship teams. He witnessed the manager’s daily performances for the growing print and broadcast horde.

“Ozzie did his best Casey Stengel impression and regaled everyone for an hour each pregame,” Levine recalled. “His players said he kept the pressure off them, especially when they blew most of that big division lead. Ozzie was always, in his own mind, honest after games. If he thought his guys needed to be better, he said so. He complimented both his team and opponents. He famously called the 2004 Minnesota Twins ‘piranhas.’”3

White Sox General Manager Ken Williams had a decent relationship with reporters but there existed a healthy mutual skepticism over four years of averaging only 83 wins. However, Williams aggressively made many, many acquisitions for 2005 that we would later praise, as those players contributed so much.4 He retooled with speed, pitching, and toughness instead of plain power.

Among the five – yes, five – new starting position players, A.J. Pierzynski was always a fun interview. Of six new pitchers, my personal favorite was the modest Cliff Politte, whose wry humor and self-deprecating manner belied his spectacular success in middle relief (67⅓ IP, 2.00 ERA). When Bobby Jenks took over the closer role, another character emerged.

To the surprise of everyone, the White Sox broke from the gate strong and were 53-24 through June. With the North Side Cubs barely above .500, the NBA Bulls contending but disappointing, the NFL Bears lousy for three straight seasons, and the NHL Blackhawks even worse, the South Siders owned Chicago’s sports coverage.

Space in newspapers was allotted more to the winning team, nightly TV highlights were Sox-heavy, and talk shows focused on them – with not winning a World Series in the previous 87 years becoming more a part of the reporting. Walk-off home runs and other game-winning base hits plus a few strokes of luck provided plenty of highlights to fuel the media bandwagon hurtling forward.

ESPN-1000 was the network-owned all-sports station and flagship of the White Sox Radio Network. I spent a lot of time at games and off the job with play-by-voice John Rooney, one of the best in the business, who is now going on two decades as lead radio voice of the St. Louis Cardinals. The excitement in the broadcasts of “Roons,” who had been doing the Pale Hose for 18 seasons, really hit home with the fans. They were caught up in this resurgent team.

There remains an age-old rule of “no cheering in the press box,” but while we all stayed professional, the quiet pleasure of covering a winner was unmistakable. For some, there was also a measure of emotion because only cold, uncaring people would not want the best for players or coaches they’d known for years. We all encountered more than our share of jerks but there are more good people than bad in baseball. On the 2005 White Sox, I pulled for Paul Konerko, Frank Thomas, and hitting coach Greg Walker.

Though not a publicity hound, “Paulie” was as classy as they came. Still very unassuming, he now smiled more after games. It was cool to see him have another great year (40 HR, 100 RBIs) and finally reach the pinnacle in his seventh season in Chicago and approaching a decade in the major leagues.

Thomas could be difficult but he was really just a big kid and I knew his sensitive side. The often-ignored sad fact of the magical 2005 season is that the greatest hitter in the history of the franchise was limited by injuries (including another fractured bone in his foot) to only 34 games and didn’t play after July 20. Still, “The Big Hurt” slugged 12 homers and drove in 26 runs – fantastic numbers in a mere 105 at-bats as the White Sox went 24-10 with him in the lineup.

Before an interview during a postseason celebration, Thomas had tears in his eyes and said to me, “I’m not really part of this. I didn’t do much.” I assured him that in a season when the team found itself barely hanging on with little more than a week remaining, his teammates and smart fans knew his numbers had been vital. I hoped he believed me.5

Months later, the White Sox released Thomas and he got nasty, criticizing the front office numerous times. For a good while, GM Williams never responded but finally blew his stack after still more knocks from the departed slugger during the next spring training.6 The rancor then and in earlier years was all on Thomas but Reinsdorf, the owner, later had a statue of the Hall of Famer installed at the ballpark, retired his number, and brought him back to the Sox payroll as a team ambassador.

“These players belong to the fans,” Reinsdorf said privately. “Frank’s achievements were not lessened because he got mad about the contracts he signed. He was a truly great hitter.”7

Walker was a gutty, hard-working man. Quiet, he appeared to have little to say but interviews with him included excellent insight ever since he was a key contributor on the 1983 division-dominating White Sox team that brought the organization out of the amateur eras of previous owners. “Walk” told me often during 2005 why particular hitters were succeeding but he wouldn’t take any credit. In an on-field interview after the final World Series game in Houston, he surveyed the celebration around him and proclaimed his “blind loyalty”8 to the White Sox. The love was not unrequited.

After the locals lost 10 of 14 games including two of three at home against the second-place Cleveland Indians and had only that slim 1½-game lead, I arrived early to cover the home contest vs. Minnesota on Friday, September 23.9 The Jerry Reinsdorf I encountered on the field obviously realized his team did not then look World Series-capable.

“If we don’t at least go deep into the playoffs, all the good things from this season will be forgotten,” he volunteered.10 It seemed he was looking to just hang on and somehow find an improbable path to the ALCS.

However, the White Sox stormed back to retake control of the pennant race with eight wins in their last 10 games. In contrast, the Indians lost all but one of their last seven and the first-place Chicagoans finished with a six-game cushion.

Veteran sportswriter Mark Gonzalez came to Chicago in 2005 as the Chicago Tribune’s White Sox beat writer.

“The biggest thing was they never lost their hold on first place. … Some people were waiting for Ozzie Guillén to explode, but he took a lot of pressure off his players. I recall him sending Dámaso Marté home early but brought him back four days later to get big outs in a key win. [Later] Ozzie did his best managing in the playoffs but I think that got overlooked,” Gonzalez said. 11

41-year Chicago sportscaster and lifelong Sox fan Rich King felt, “Some fans and media gave up but most kept their heads. Good thing, because the team rallied when it mattered and never looked back.”12

The fans, now in off the ledge, were downright giddy. The media reflected that, even behind the scenes. An episode in the newsroom of my old Chicago TV station, WMAQ-Channel 5, is memorable.

On Sunday, September 25, the White Sox were still leading by only 1½ games. While they continued their series with the Twins, the Indians were in Kansas City. One of those lucky breaks for the Sox occurred when Cleveland’s Grady Sizemore (2024 interim manager of the South Siders) lost a fly ball in the sun which scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning.13 I was visiting friends in the Channel 5 newsroom and was astonished to see everyone, including nonfan types, on their feet screaming at TVs, cheering for Kansas City!

“Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey (1981) accidentally became the 2005 team’s de facto theme song after Pierzynski and others had mockingly requested it during a July night out in Baltimore. White Sox Senior Vice President Scott Reifert found Journey frontman Steve Perry, by then 56 years old, and invited him to the postseason.14

But a fan-favorite tune from long ago actually emerged first that season. “Let’s Go-Go-Go White Sox,” the song by Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers for the 1959 American League pennant winners, was resurrected by ballpark scoreboard operations director Jeff Szynal with editors Justin Tuazon and Roman Farias. They created a music video and used it at the right time: the walk-off June 18 victory in the Dodgers’ first series in a White Sox ballpark since that ’59 Fall Classic.15 The Sox scored four runs with two out in the ninth inning including Pierzynski’s two-run homer as exclamation point.

The song preceded another last-at-bat win the next day and was thereafter played at big in-game moments. Soon, “Let’s Go-Go-Go White Sox” was heard on radios in Chicagoland and sung by fans too young to have originally known it. National and local media covered the story and people grabbed every remaining record from the sole store owner who had bought them up years before.16

The playoffs and World Series were a blur. The 11-1 record was so unexpected, at once exhilarating and mystifying. Remember, the Red Sox team that these Sox swept in the first round was the defending World Series champion.

After the final game in Boston, two broadcasting colleagues and I happened upon an impromptu party thrown together for White Sox staff following the unexpected sweep. Executive Advisor and former GM Roland Hemond and Senior Executive Vice President Howard Pizer invited us in. I’ll never forget the diminutive Roland shouting to the room, “Tonight, Boston belongs to the White Sox. The Chicago White Sox!”

Major League Baseball issued more than 1,300 credentials for the World Series.17 I and other local reporters were sought by national television as guest “experts.” All of a sudden, this 87-year dry spell was sexy; most of us wisely did not call it a “curse.”

When the even more unexpected sweep of the Houston Astros ended with a groundout to shortstop, John Rooney exclaimed on radio, “Out, out – for a ‘White Sox winner’ and a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!”18 Everything had come together.

One of the many warm moments from the on-field celebration and aftermath came when Reinsdorf quietly asked Paul Konerko’s father, Hank, “Isn’t it nice when we see our kids do well?”19

The parade was surreal. All six Chicago TV stations and two cable channels aired live, continuous coverage, as did numerous AM radio stations. I was positioned at a tremendously crowded intersection – all downtown blocks on the route were teeming with humans, countless rows deep. People everywhere. Incredibly, I made direct eye contact with Greg and Carman Walker as their bus passed.

Later, I high-tailed it to the podium site near the Chicago River and happened to be standing next to the executives’ bus as Reinsdorf and his son Michael disembarked.

“Eighty-seven years,” the chairman said. “Eighty-seven years is no curse but it is a long time. We bought the team 25 years ago and it feels like we’ve all carried those years, especially the fans. I’m happy for them.”20

The media got it right when the Baseball Writers Association of America named Guillén American League Manager of the Year. But as Gonzalez still notes, “It was a slap in the face when the other general managers voted Mark Shapiro of Cleveland as The Sporting News Executive of the Year over Williams.”21

So the White Sox had finally come in from the cold. At last, at long last, they were full partners. It was nice to see. The little secret no one admits in the relationships between sports teams and media is that each side needs the other. Teams crave free publicity and media outlets need content every day. Reporters shouldn’t be cheerleading but it sure is better when everybody can enjoy an outcome.

TOM SHAER is a former television and radio sportscaster who worked in Boston (seven years) and Chicago (24 years). After a second career as a media consultant and government affairs specialist, he is semiretired and living in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife, Lisa. His two grown children and two grandchildren are big baseball fans, though the youngest grandchild doesn’t yet know that because he is less than a year old.

 

Notes

1 When his pet goat was denied entry to Wrigley Field for the 1945 World Series, owner Sam Sianis of the Billy Goat Tavern claimed a hex on the Cubs, saying they would never win it all as long as his goat remained banned. But, in fact, the Cubs did let Sianis family goats into the ballpark numerous times beginning in 1982 (for ABC-TV’s Real People) and including multiple postseason appearances through the 1998 playoffs (covered on local TV news). Still, the “Billy Goat Curse” was perpetuated for 34 years into the 2016 World Series by the media, which helped the publicity-wise Sianis family grow their tavern business to six locations. They have since added two for a total of eight.

2 There sometimes is confusion about the language and number of years involved in droughts, streaks, and “first since” events. The last Red Sox World Series title had been in 1918. Thus, 85 years passed before the season when Boston, in the 86th year, finally won its next World Series championship. Otherwise, that drought would have extended to 86 years without a title. See SABR’s book on the 2004 Red Sox season: Sox Bid Curse Farewell: The 2004 Boston Red Sox, edited by Bill Nowlin (Phoenix: SABR, 2004).

3 Email and text-message interviews with Bruce Levine, November 2024.

4 See Jim Margalus on “How the 2005 White Sox Were Built,” in this volume.

5 Author interview with Frank Thomas, October 16, 2005.

6 Mark Gonzalez, “He’s an Idiot,” Chicago Tribune, February 26, 2006; Associated Press, “GM: ‘He Better Stay Out of White Sox Business,’” ESPN.com, February 27, 2006.

7 Author interview with Jerry Reinsdorf, July 31, 2011.

8 Pat Boyle interview with Greg Walker, Comcast SportsNet Chicago, observed by the author, October 26, 2005.

9 See Michael Marsh’s writeup of the September 23 game elsewhere in this book.

10 Author conversation with Jerry Reinsdorf, September 23, 2005.

11 Email interviews with Mark Gonzalez, November 2024.

12 Interview with Rich King in Scottsdale, Arizona, November 26, 2024.

13 Staff writers, “AL Beat: Sizemore Loses Fly Ball in Sun; Cleveland Falls,” Seattle Times, September 26, 2005; Associated Press, “White Sox Extend Lead,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 2005; Andy Call, “Indians Try Not to Think About Great Collapse of ’05,” State Journal-Register (Springfield, Illinois), September 13, 2007.

14 Interview with Scott Reifert, October 17, 2024; email interviews with Scott Reifert, October 2024. Jeff Howard’s article “Grinding and Believing” in this volume offers more on the subject.

15 Email interview with Jeff Szynal via Scott Reifert, October 18, 2024; Andrew Pentis, “Stadium Songs: Chicago White Sox,” ESPN.com, July 24, 2012.

16 Interview with Scott Reifert, October 17, 2024; email interviews with Scott Reifert, October 2024.

17 Interview with Scott Reifert, October 17, 2024.

18 WMVP-AM recording of the broadcast. Surprisingly, the Chicago Tribune substantially misquoted Rooney when printing it across two pages in its special coverage the next day.

19 Author real-time observation, October 26, 2005, and author review of postgame videotape, September 2024.

20 Interview with Jerry Reinsdorf, October 28, 2005.

21 Email interviews with Mark Gonzalez, November 2024.