A Happy Place for Sox Fans

As if an outstanding starting rotation and above-average defense (though you would never guess that based on this week) weren't enough to get Sox fans to calm down, Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey provides the best:

You're a White Sox fan, your team is 30 games above .500 and, as it awaits the Yankees' lone visit of the season, you're acting as if what defines this club is the current five-game losing streak and not all the winning that came before it.

Get a hold of yourself, man. Snap out of it, lady.

I don't like saying this, but you're forcing me to: You're acting very Cub fan-like. You're acting as if the cosmic forecast calls for sunny skies most of the season followed by an F5 tornado in October.

Mama said there'd be days like this and Sox manager Ozzie Guillen says there are stretches like this. He's right. It's a long, tough season. John Wayne wasn't as tough as a major-league season.

But some of you don't want to hear that. You've spent the season looking for imperfections. You're the kind of people who see Maria Sharapova and wonder why her hem is uneven.

This paranoia, quite frankly, belongs on the Northside. Although this 4th inning against the Yankees which has featured a botched double play, a blown hit-and-run, and a balk on Orlando Hernandez - second balk called against Sox pitching in three games - is a little unsettling.

And as for Junior?

All of this doubt and fear has coalesced into the Great Savior, the man who will make everything right, the guarantor of the first World Series title since 1917. I speak here of Ken Griffey Jr. (all kneel please).

Griffey is having a very good year for the Reds (.290, 29 homers, 85 RBIs in 113 games), but somebody should probably point out that in the previous three seasons he played in 83, 53 and 70 games because of injuries. And you want to invest millions of dollars in him for the stretch run and years beyond? That sounds very Cub-like too.

Again, where is your faith? This team is built on pitching and energy, not on a monster offense. The Sox are tired but so is every other team at this point in the season.

Never mind that the Sox managed to go 74-44 without him.

Game update: Yankees 3, Sox 0, Bottom of the 4th