The instinct is to want White Sox manager Pedro Grifol fired today, but only because yesterday is no longer possible. He’s the captain of this sunken ship, and someone among the waterlogged needs to go. That’s how it works in sports. His continued employment is an insult to our sensibilities.
A Grifol dismissal might feel good for a few minutes, but, really, what would be the point? It wouldn’t change a thing. A new manager wouldn’t make a roster lacking major-league talent any more major-league or any more talented. A switch wouldn’t make chairman Jerry Reinsdorf any less in charge.
Grifol did call out his players for being “f---ing flat’’ after a loss to the Orioles a couple of weeks ago, and what’s a manager’s job if it isn’t to make sure his team is physically and mentally ready to play? In many other circumstances, what Grifol said would have been a fireable offense. In this circumstance, a firing would have been merciful. Mercy is too good for this team.
What needs to be done is the opposite of the knee-jerk obvious.
Grifol’s punishment should be having to see this debacle through to its last drop of misery. Having his name attached to the entire 162-game season is only right. It will live on, like public humiliations tend to do. Casey Stengel had to live with the ignominy of being the manager of the 1962 Mets, who lost 120 games, the most in the modern era. But at least Stengel had won seven World Series titles with the Yankees. Grifol should have his reputation Super Glued to this team, which has a good chance of breaking the Mets’ record. That ’62 team was an expansion club, by the way. This sorry excuse for a team doesn’t have that excuse. Or any excuse.
Commissioner Rob Manfred isn’t going to remove Reinsdorf as owner, though I suppose it can be argued that, with all the losing, Reinsdorf isn’t acting in the best interests of baseball. He actually is causing a lack of interest in baseball, but that probably doesn’t rise to the level of an ouster.
Many Sox fans have stopped going to games at Guaranteed Rate Field, and others have denied ever knowing there was a team on the South Side. ‘‘What’s a White Sox?’’ they say. Their absence might seem like a stiff penalty for Reinsdorf, who likes money, and for general manager Chris Getz, who would like Reinsdorf to spend more money.
But it doesn’t seem like enough pain and embarrassment for the higher-ups. You would think that having to listen to Sox broadcaster John Schriffen, who thinks he’s on the team but isn’t, might bring home the totality of this farce to the powers that be, but I don’t think it has. If Reinsdorf didn’t roll his eyes after Schriffen’s description of the Tommy Pham-William Contreras confrontation at home plate on June 2 (‘‘We ain’t takin’ that from the Brewers!’’), then Reinsdorf’s eyes can’t roll.
The Sox are on their way to being historically awful, yet I don’t think we’ve given them their doo-doo.
So how to hold ownership more accountable?
I’ve proposed that the Sun-Times run a daily ‘‘Race to the Bottom’’ chart, chronicling our antiheroes’ pursuit of the MLB loss record. It would be a regular reminder to Reinsdorf that, as much as he might want to ignore what’s going on, he can’t. It would keep fans informed and free them from the tyranny of math, of the burden of trying to figure out whether the Sox are still on pace for the record. Some readers have asked for such a chart.
A 6-4, 10-inning loss Sunday to the Red Sox put the Sox’ record at 17-49 (.258). They have a real shot at breaking the single-season record for losses, especially with the likelihood that they’ll be sellers before the trade deadline.
A couple of other lows that are within reach and, thus, chartable:
• The modern-era record for worst winning percentage is .235, set by the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics.
• The 1909 Boston Doves finished 65½ games out of first place. Two and a half months into the season, the Sox are 26 games behind the first-place Guardians in the American League Central.
So, a daily chart, right?
Alas, like a typical Sox outcome this season, my suggestion has been shut out. I write. I don’t lay out the newspaper or edit it, and I’ve been told in no uncertain terms to stay in my lane. Actually, I was told in that exact certain term: ‘‘Stay in your lane.’’
But can we who seek truth be muted? Should we be made to sit when all we want to do is spread our wings and fly? Must we be chart-shamed?
No.
Don’t fire Pedro. And get the traffic cone out of that lane.
