BeefLoaf steals a question from SoxMachine

Good day friends, it’s your old pal BeefLoaf, today, I’m bringing to you (with permission) what I thought to be one of the more interesting questions that I have heard from fans in a long time (save for the gems that get sent to us on a regular basis for the #SundaySoak and our other videos).  Twitter user Jim Kane tweeted in a #POSox question to the boys at the SoxMachine during the September 17th podcast “Lack of Clarity” that I just thought was something the 108ers are uniquely qualified to answer.  The question is below….

Jim Margalus, the Final Boss of the SoxMachine pirate ship, had some answers for this question, listen here at the 1:02:57 mark…..but, to summarize

Move Section 108 to an area where we can be seen more by the camera

White Sox organization encourage fans to bring in instruments / implements of noise conduction

Foreign baseball, either in southeast asia or in the caribbean have all of these elements of additional sound and fan participation, so why not the White Sox?

Both Oakland (RF as well) and Miami have sections of the ballpark where incessant noise-making is encouraged

It is rare that the 108ers are uniquely qualified to answer any sort of question or have any sort of “expertise” on a subject other than drinking and falling down.  A few notes before we get into possible ideas or solutions for this…the two following things suck terribly and aren’t up for consideration.

The Wave – Look, if you were on the West Coast 25 years ago, the Wave was probably a pretty cool thing.  It probably felt organic and fresh and like you started some revolution to get the entire ballpark to do something almost involuntarily that you started, but its tired now and it lacks originality.  If the Wave was a local tradition and stayed that way, cool, but you realize it is mass produced garbage these days.  Someone, possibly multiple someones will come at me and say, quit being a Scrooge, the Wave is fun, get over yourself.  If the Wave is “fun” for you, I suggest digging in deep on yourself and figure out why this is appealing to you and why you can’t find some other things to gobble up the fun quotient in your life.

The Woo – This actually had some potential, but nah……Ric Flair’s 40 year old Wrestling schtick has recently made its way to White Sox park (possibly other parks, I have no clue), but it went from kinda fun to incredibly fucking annoying in 2.7 seconds.  I think materially, the problem with the Woo is……a) It isn’t done for anything specific, its almost like you are listening to some canine mating call that is just permeating your viewing experience.  It isn’t triggered by a big strike out or a bases clearing double or something like that, some in-game exciting achievement, its just randomly howled across the mostly empty White Sox park making us look even more embarrassing (is that possible?) than we already were b) It isn’t original.  In fact there are so many people / places copying this in a variety of ways that by NOT imitating Ric Flair, you are counterculture.

I know what you are thinking, hey Beef, when are you going to get to the suggestions or ideas….yea, yea, we are getting there.  One other thing of note, there is an old tradition that goes back I think as far as the Winning Ugly days…….

That shit used to be so much fun when an opposing pitcher was junked to sing that, but alas, the smaller crowds and lack of significance of any individual game in a current White Sox season other than “securing a good draft position” makes a once fun tradition slide to the background. Besides, that tradition is primarily being propped up by the team.  We are looking for something “organic” and fan founded…..I got ideas.  Remember, these are just spitballin’, but all are possibilities in the lexicon of #WhiteSox fandom these days.  Everything is currently up for grabs including the media, which I’ll touch on in a later piece, so although most of these are probably never going to take hold, maybe some of them will give birth to something else cool that we’ll all be doing at games when the White Sox start their competitive window (whispers *Whenever that is*).

The Juan Uribe – It’s Wednesday, which is $1 hot dog day, one of the finest promotions the White Sox have held in the last half decade.  Nearly everyone in the ballpark has acquired a $1 tube of fat and nitrates, which puts us in the perfect position for executing the Juan Uribe.  A big at-bat occurs for the White Sox (obviously before the 8th inning because White Sox concessions disappear after the 7th like a travelling carnie show trying to get out of town before you realize the shell game was rigged), anywho, Daniel Palka steps to the plate with the White Sox down 1 in the 5th with 2 on and 2 out.  The crowd unsheaths their $1 tube of magic and waves that bunless wonder in the air, nearly wagging it like a dogs tail to entice a big hit.  Imagine the beauty, the majesty of such an occurrence.  Also, Jerry would be selling extra dogs as NOBODY in the ballpark would want to be without a dog when the Juan Uribe spontaneously started because of acute game conditions.

Technology….Tech-knowledgey – One of my favorite all-time noise making occurrences at a sporting event, was listening to the racing programs at a harness race getting smacked as the horses came down the stretch.  This was Sportsman’s Park circa 1991, when a 13 year old Beef and an 11 year old Chorizy were allowed to place bets on our own (gambling is good for the soul).  Anywho, as the horses came down the stretch, excited bettors would smack the programs against their hands, the seats, possibly some unsuspecting persons voluptous tokhis to get a cacophony noise that blended with the thundering of the horses running towards the finish line was just wonderful.  Well, guess what, in the era of “MONETIZE EVERYTHING” programs are too expensive for most fans to bother with, we have $10 beers to buy, we don’t have that in the budget.  One thing all fans do have is a handheld computer in their pocket, YEA BABY!!!  My thinking here is that when a critical error, ah FUCK IT, any gaff in the field by the opposing team occurs, we WhiteSox fans can fetch out our handy pocket watch and fire up one of the many “ringtones / alarms” that our fine phones have to offer.  Just flipping through my phone, I hear a handful of noises that would work great, but we’d want this to be organic, so we’ll have to wait and see what pops up.

I know what you are saying, the people who listened to the SoxMachine pod where the questions originally debuted are probably thinking, “Jim was talking about music and chanting, what you are talking about is dumb stuff.”…..Okay, fine.

Jim wanted music, the only problem is, White Sox security are fucking NARCs….we detailed in a prior Sunday Soak how they wouldn’t even allow us to bring pizza into the ballpark, you really think they are going to let us bring a Tuba or some shit into the ballpark, furthermore, IF we could somehow work some magic to get something fun like that past security, we have like 20 ideas of crazy things that we think would be funnier, so we wouldn’t waste it on that. However, Chicago is a Blues town and one item that I believe would pass snuff would be a Harmonica.  If we could get a band of Harmonica playing Blues artists into the ballpark (we’d happily have that crew in Section 108 with our maniacs) we could get the feel of some real local music into the park to be played at various junctures in the game.  The sad part is, I think on most nights, you probably don’t even have a dozen musicians in the ballpark and that includes 108’s very own Chorizy-E, slapper of the bass.

It’s a hard and interesting question posed by Jim Kane and I’ll be honest, it is something we should keep at the front of our minds and bring up regularly because there is probably someone out there, who doesn’t even attend games regularly yet, that is going to come with the big swinging idea that bowls all of these over and becomes the hot new thing in White Sox fandom.