Here's an entry mostly directed towards my twitter friends who are not as fluent in Swedish as I am. I originally planned for a vlog-entry but I chickened out. Maybe when it's time for spring training?
My first full Sox-season is at an end. I remember watching about 15 games of spring training before I even got to the actual season. The games were not much fun but there is really no room to be picky in March (I even took in a game on the radio between Phillies and Florida State just to hear a few at bats by Juan Pierre, THAT'S how desperate I was!) . It ended up being another 50 Sox-games this season and I have some fantastic memories.
First of all, this season wouldn't have been half as fun without all the Sox-fans on twitter! I started this season spending some time on different forums and just randomly reading a blog every now and then. Quickly I switched my forums for twitter and started subscribing to every White Sox blog that I could find. Waking up every morning to find out that Sox won (hopefully) made my 45 minute trip to work so much better. Checking my phone for tons of blog post and hundreds of tweets was just fantastic. I remember getting contacted by Matt Adams in June during my sister's wedding and I agreed to be interviewed on Southside Showdown. No sure how much I had been drinking at the time of accepting this offer but it worked out nicely. From the bottom of my heart to all of you guys on twitter: Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this season from the other side of the Atlantic ocean!
Second... and as much as this was a fantastic moment, it's also painful to think of today... but Philip Humber somehow managed to pitch a perfect game in April. At the time (and probably still is even though it had little effect on the season) it was the best thing I have ever experienced in all of sports, comparable only to a few Swedish Olympic gold medals in cross country skiing. During the perfect game I was very active on Facebook as I had not really figured out how good twitter was by then and I remember worrying about my heart as I kept walking back and forth in the apartment during every commercial brake. I mostly spent my time hating Philip for the rest of the season, very very odd...Third: I have learned to understand so much more about baseball in general, and White Sox in particular, this season, and I have even been doing some research on my own. Whenever I'm unemployed next time I'm going try and finish my essay (or short book) on Eric Erickson, the only really successful Swedish baseball player ever. He never played for Sox (mostly for Senators, and some for Tigers) but he's an important yet unknown corner stone in Swedish sports history.
This brings me to a question that I would like to direct to the White Sox community. I looking to fill this fall and winter with a lot of reading and I would prefer if this reading was centered around White Sox baseball. Are there any really good books out there about Sox, based around any decade or even the whole 1900's, or specific players, or whatever, that you could recommend to me? Please give me your best advice, I'm missing a lot of history and just watching Field of Dreams over and over doesn't really cover it... :) Feel free to leave your thoughts below as a comment, I need to survive the winter!
With this said, thank you White Sox and everyone on blogs, twitter and forums for a FANTASTIC season that didn't get us to the play-offs but was still remarkable in so many ways. And Alex Rios, I don't hate you anymore!
