Past players relate to White Sox tough '24 season

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- The 2019 Detroit Tigers finished with a woeful 47-114 record, dropping precipitously after a 16-18 start.

That squad from Motown isn’t frequently talked about in terms of the worst teams in Major League Baseball history. Not with the 2003 Tigers and their 119 setbacks in the same organization.

But Gordon Beckham, the 2008 White Sox first-round Draft pick, played his final season with the '19 Tigers, and he understands how difficult it becomes to lose at such a regular pace.

“It was awful. I didn’t get over that season until December,” Beckham told MLB.com during a recent interview. “I was a utility guy who was supposed to be the veteran and kind of keep guys up in the clubhouse and in the dugout and teach, and that was just a really difficult season.

“I can’t imagine worse than that. It’s not a lot of fun to be stranded on an island which is the big league season. You better show up and do the right stuff.”

Beckham has now witnessed worse as a part-time 2024 White Sox television analyst for the NBC Sports Chicago broadcasts. The South Siders hold the AL modern era mark (since 1901) for the greatest number of losses in a season, and they have matched the 1962 Mets for the overall most dubious honor with 120 defeats.

The White Sox begin their final three-game homestand tonight against the Angels, and they then go to Detroit for three games this weekend to face a team with playoff aspirations. The White Sox need a 6-0 run to avoid setting the single-season mark for futility at 121 defeats, having not won more than four straight games in 2024.

Steve Sparks, who is in his 12th season as the Astros' radio analyst, knows a thing or two about baseball success from being on the call while the Astros have made seven ALCS trips and four World Series appearances since 2017. He also knows about losing baseball, finishing with a 0-6 record over 42 relief appearances for the 2003 Tigers before being released by the team on Aug. 27 and signed by the A’s on Aug. 31.

The knuckleballer was one of the older guys on that team, and he was trying to give daily purpose to younger pitchers such as Jeremy Bonderman, Nate Cornejo and Mike Maroth. That job was not easy in the face of constant defeat.

“You almost had to give yourself a pep talk on the way to the ballpark,” Sparks told MLB.com. “This is me personally. I’m 37, 38 years old. I’m going to go out there and run the bases as hard as I can to try to help these other guys on the team.

“I was just telling myself be professional. These guys are paying me good money to go out there and be a professional and be as good as I can. Not only as a player to be as good as I can whenever I got a chance to pitch, but to be a great teammate. That was important at that point to try to help guys along, some of these young guys on the team who I knew would have pretty good careers going forward.”

These stories of past baseball woe reinforce a couple points involving the White Sox. There is positivity still emanating from what clearly is an exceptionally strong White Sox clubhouse. Young parts of the core are learning and gaining valuable experience.

But anyone who is part of such losing ways knows how difficult it is to deal with this sort of public failure, especially in the intense and constant presence of social media, whether they talk about it or not.

“It feels like you are getting punched in the gut every day,” Beckham said. “They show up to the park, they are pros. They better show up to the park and do that or they won’t be there for very long. It’s just always when you go out there and your pitching staff does well and you don’t get any hits, or you get a bunch of hits and runs and the pitching staff doesn’t do their job.

“So they are probably doing the right thing. They are showing up and putting in the work like every big leaguer does, but at the same time, it’s a massive amount of frustration that just piles up.”