For one last time in Our Year of the Utterly Hapless 2024, our staff gathered for a mothership podcast. This time around it was Brett Ballantini hosting Chrystal O'Keefe, Joe Resis and Dante Jones. The program runs broad but obvious: Looking back at the horrors of 2024 and ahead to what may be different in 2025.

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We made our season predictions for the fourth consecutive year over at South Side Sox, and for the fourth consecutive year, a different writer took the crown.

And this year, in fact, the crown is worn by two prognosticators — the veteran Year of the Hamster, and newcomer Enrique Silva.

We have a comprehensive rundown of the twists and turns of our 2024 predictions over at SSS, but here are some highlights of the podcast that Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, Joe Resis and I did addressing them (and, I suppose, the moribund White Sox postseason and future):

Have a look at the podcast at our the Sox Populi YouTube channel (and don’t be a flake — subscribe!) and/or listen on Megaphone below.

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Before crashing into White Sox matters, duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, indulge in postseason palaver — especially happy on Will’s part because he got to take part (very small part, but part nonetheless) in the team that won it all. So, much of the discussion is about the complete — and very happy — collapse of the Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series. Yea, verily, that inning showed that even the White Sox are occasionally better than teams much better than they doth occasionally perform. (Will had a sort of defense of Yankee ineptitude, in that coaches always tell teams never to give an opponent four outs but never say anything much about giving them six.)

On White Sox matters, the big news is of course the hiring of Will Venable to be the latest to try to convert sows’ ears into Bottega Venetas with the materials he’s being handed to manage. The duo are amenable to giving Venable a big opportunity to show he can get the Sox to play like major leaguers are supposed to play, and just hope he’ll get them to quit playing stupidly even if they don’t play well.

On other fronts, there wasn’t much to say about the the Sox not picking up the option on Yoán Moncada, which was inevitable, though a sad reflection on hopes of the last many years ... and a lot to say about whether to tender Andrew Vaughn, what would seem to be an easy decision being hampered by the big question of who else the Sox have to play first, the answer to which you probably already sadly know.

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Soon after the story broke of Jerry Reinsdorf possibly selling the White Sox, thereby sending waves of glee throughout Chicagoland, duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, try to figure out if Reinsdorf had the information leaked in order to try put pressure on politicians to plunge public billions into a monument to himself, or if he just had it leaked (to somebody on The Athletic who has no Chicago ties) because he hates the news media and wants to see them make fools of themselves believing it.

Whatever the cause, it would be hard to believe under any circumstances. But that a potential buyer group is headed by Tony La Russa best bud Dave Stewart, who just happens to want to bring pro teams to Nashville, which Reinsdorf likes to toss into conversations about leaving Chicago, makes it worthy of an SNL skit.

And would Reinsdorf consider selling without making sure every possible bidder gets a shot? Nonsense. Naytheless, fun to talk about.

Too bad we can’t put a poll at the end of this to see how many people believe the ploy.

As for actual playing of baseball, the duo delve into the playoffs with predictions, but mostly with kudos to ex-White Sox pitchers who are doing so well. That naturally leads to a serious discussion on how unscary Carlos Rodón looks without any beard (per Yankee rules) and whether Michael Kopech’s new beard looks like he should do an off-season road tour with ZZ Top.

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The long road to ignominy is over for the White Sox, but the long road to parsing the reasons for their total failure lives on. Duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, examine the recent national media analyses and yell a hearty, “Amen, brothers!”

The two agree it would have been handier if the big shots had torn into Jerry Reinsdorf and how he runs his mess of an organization a little earlier, preferably several decades earlier, but better late than never and all that. They tear Reinsdorf apart from every conceivable direction, and rightfully so — much fun, but to any avail?

They then venture into The Athletic’s take on another team, how the Kansas City Royals brilliantly and abruptly turned things around from 106 losses to the playoffs and raise the question of whether that’s possible for the White Sox. (Hint: The answer is a big “Noooooooo” — see Reinsdorf articles above.)

Then there is a jolly venture into the future, one of barely competent holdover players, possible trades of Luis Robert Jr. and Garrett Crochet, many solid pitching prospects, and basically nobody to play behind the pitchers. All leading up to guesses at how many games the White Sox will lose next year.

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Friends, we've made it to the final series of this abysmal and historically-bad season. I feel like Winona Ryder at the end of the 1989 classic "Heathers" if you can picture that.

The White Sox started the season against the Tigers, and Walker came on to chat about the Tigers. It's only fitting that the White Sox end the season the same way, and I finish off the second season of Visiting Dugout with Walker back in the hot seat. Oh, and Garrett Crochet opening the series.

Here is what we talked about:

You can follow Walker on Twitter and over at Football Absurdity.

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On the occasion of the White Sox matching the 1962 New York Mets — yes, an expansion team — at 120 losses, the most since 1899, Brett Ballantini and Melissa Sage-Bollenbach got together to assess our club, past, present and future.

Have a look at the podcast at our the Sox Populi YouTube channel (and don’t be a flake — subscribe!) and/or listen on Megaphone below.

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Chrystal and Grey chat about the upcoming series in San Diego.

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Duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, naturally venture onto the subject of an article in The Athletic titled “The Owner Who Thinks He Knows Everything” (guess who), but first Will has a report on attending the White Sox game in Anaheim on Wednesday night (Loss 116).

The report? How little the Sox even warm up on the field before a game compared to other teams. How unconcerned the players in the dugout seemed during the 5-0 loss (Will was four rows behind them). How awful Luis Robert Jr. looks at the plate, even against an Angels pitcher who led the American League in earned runs surrendered this season. How the Sox even made errors in trying to be fan-friendly, when both Miguel Vargas and Nicky Lopez tried to toss Will a ball after an inning and threw to an Angels fan instead.

And as for the long article in The Athletic, it was a nice consolidation of things most White Sox fans already knew, like what a jerk Jerry Reinsdorf is, what a tightwad he remains in important spending categories, how backward his ideas about baseball are, how his personnel decisions guarantee a terrible team, etc., etc., etc. But the lede in the article was new to both of us — the plane.

Seems that while 29 major league teams charter planes with enough first class-type seats for all the players and staff, Reinsdorf has the White Sox fly on a dated aircraft with a total of six first class seats, and the rest coach. Coach! For sometimes very large people whose physical condition is worth millions of dollars to you. Sure, you don’t like to fly coach but you do, and we don’t like doing it either but we do, but that’s not the same — witness the 29 teams who put out a little extra money to potentially save tens of millions in player performance.

But that’s Reinsdorf. And those are the White Sox, who grind on toward officially having the most losses in history. And who already weren’t going to have any good free agents or respected management people join the team until Reinsdorf is gone unless they overpaid by at least 100%. But now that word spread about the plane, it may be 200%.

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In the eighth episode of the Ladies' Night podcast, Hannah LaMotta, Delia Ritchie, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, and Allie Wesel discussed several topics related to our beloved — or despised, depending on the day — South Siders. Whether you're a die-hard White Sox fan or not, there's something for everyone. So, sit back, relax, and grab your favorite beverage because the girls hit a home run conversing about all things baseball, including:

Have a look at the Sox Populi YouTube channel (and don’t be a flake — subscribe to the channel!) and/or listen on Megaphone below.

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