Milestoned

 The Chicago What Sox lost their 121st game yesterday, the Detroit Tigers beating them 4-1 to qualify for the playoffs for the first time in 10 years. The Tigers, unlike the Sox, have been tearing it up lately, going 31-11 since the 10th of August. They've also won six in a row and 10 of their last 11.

So there it is, boys and girls: Your yin and yang for today. Or perhaps more accurately, your yin and your yuck.

The yuck, of course, is the What Sox, who now have officially lost more games than anyone since 1899. That was the year the Cleveland Spiders went 20-134, a record for spectacularly crummy baseball that stands to this day.

No one has seen the like of it since, not even the 1962 New York Mets, who went 40-120. They were so legendarily wretched some of their players became household names simply for being, well, legendarily wretched. 

The names were Hot Rod Kanehl and Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Choo-Choo Coleman and Charlie Neal. They were Elio Chacon and Harry Chiti and Roger Craig -- who was the Mets winningest pitcher, even though he led the majors in losses (24) and was second in home runs given up (35).

Sixty-two years later, here are the What Sox. It's too soon to tell if any of their players will be as memorable as Hot Rod or Marvelous Marv, but they're even more memorably crummy. So they've got that not going for them.

This is a team, remember, that lost 20 straight games at one point. That's so bad they're not only 43 games out of next-to-last in their division, they're 21 games behind the next-worst team in the majors, the Miami Marlins. That's so bad if they lose today and tomorrow, they'll finish with 39 wins, which works out to six per month.

Six Ws per month! Now that is some epic fail right there.

If there's any justice in the world, or at least in baseball, it will be the CEO of this mess, Jerry Reinsdorf, who becomes the Hot Rod or Marvelous Marv of the '24 What Sox. In the same way Marvelous Marv is remembered for once being called out on a home-run trot because he failed to touch either first or second base, Reinsdorf should go down in history not only for presiding over the worst MLB team since the 1800s, but for trying to get the city of Chicago to build him a new ballpark at the same time.

Epic fail meets epic gall, in other words. Long may the infamy live.