Losing can be a beautiful thing. That's the message I took away from a New York Times report on the Chicago White Sox's historically bad season, which has seen the team match the 1962 Mets' record of 120 losses — a record they may have shattered by the time you're reading this. Times writer Sam Anderson details how the White Sox have "explored the full spectrum of losing," like "the way a jazz saxophonist probes every note in a scale." They've gone down in squeakers and in routs, on sunny days and in the rain, and in games in which the entire team played like All-Stars and in one where the White Sox "hit their catcher in the groin with the baseball three separate times in a single inning."
Despite those many humiliations, a group of dedicated fans continues to show up in Section 108 of the White Sox stadium to gripe and (occasionally) cheer. Those loyalists say they're now rooting for an all-time loss record; one is selling T-shirts that declare, "We witnessed history." Meanwhile, the players themselves have shown remarkable grace, Anderson writes, a willingness to talk about losing and then "stride forward into the next potential loss."
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