Papal intercession

 Comes now the word that the Catholic Church has a new Pope, Leo XIV, whose given name is Robert Prevost and who hails from the south side of Chicago. That makes him the first American pope except, perhaps, on the north side of Chicago, which tends to regard all south siders as scruffy ne'er-do-wells.

Anyway, the world quickly learned that Leo XIV, as a proud south sider, is a Chicago White Sox fan, and of course that got me thinking about the current state of the team known in these precincts as the What Sox. This is short for "What the HELL?", which is surely what Sox fans were thinking last year when their team chased history into the deepest chasms of Earth on their way to a record 121 losses.

Now it's another season, and the What Sox are still What Sox-ing. On the morning after Robert Prevost became Leo XIV, I checked the standings and saw, sure enough, the south siders are as crummy as ever. Right now they're 10-28, they've lost four straight, and they've won three fewer games than anyone else in the American League.

A week into May, they're already 15 games out of first in the AL Central.

All of this gets me wondering if somewhere, or maybe several somewheres, a suffering Sox fan sat down and penned the following to their fellow Sox fan in the Vatican:

Dear Your Holiness:

Congratulations on becoming the first American to fill the shoes of the fisherman. As a Chicagoan, I am prouder than I was the day the Bears kicked Patriot booty in Super Bowl XX, and as a fellow White Sox fan I am thrilled beyond measure to have a pope who is one of our own.

I also have a question.

Is there anything within your papal duties/powers that enables you to intercede in earthly affairs? Like, say, the earthly affairs of our cruddy baseball team?

I'm sure, as a Sox, um, Holiness, you're just as dismayed as the rest of us at how our beloved south siders have become the laughingstock of baseball. That damn (sorry, darn) Reinsdorf has wrecked the franchise, and yet he refuses to sell to someone who actually cares about winning. Can't you, as Pope, do something about this? Like, I don't know, issue a papal bull requiring Reiny to step aside?

Forgive me if this sounds sacrilegious. I'm just a third-trick grunt at Illinois Tool Works, and thus am unfamiliar with Vatican etiquette.  But I have faith in a fellow south-sider who surely remembers the 2005 World Series, and the Go-Go Sox of the '70s, and even Disco Demolition Night in '79.

(You weren't there, were you? Sorry, of course you weren't.)

Anyway ... thanks for listening. And speaking of the Go-Go Sox, whatcha wanna bet Harry Caray has already mispronounced your name, ha-ha?

Sincerely,

A Fellow Sox Fan

Yeah, OK. So no one probably wrote this, nor is likely to.

Besides, what makes you think Leo XIV hasn't already taken care of this?

I say this because, while checking out the standings this morning, I noticed something else: The What Sox are no longer the worst team in baseball. 

That, of course, would be the utterly horrendous Colorado Rockies, who stand 6-31 at the moment. The Rockheads have lost six in a row, they're 18 1/2 games out of first in the National League West, and they're even 13 1/2 games out of next-to-last. And they've won six fewer games than the next-worst team in the NL, my reliably cruddy Pittsburgh Cruds.

I don't know about you, but I sense some divine intervention in this.

I sense that even before Leo XIV became Leo XIV, he had enough pull with the good Lord that he got Him to make the Rockheads so bad they'd take some of the heat off the new Pope's favorite team.

Hey. It's a theory.