Sox Populi - A Chicago White Sox podcast

The White Sox didn’t get Shohei Ohtani, but they did get Chuckie Robinson, so SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and far, far, far west correspondent Will , who’s coming live and in color direct from Honolulu where he’s doing an episode of NCIS: Hawaii, have plenty of good news to talk about. Well, OK, not necessarily good ... but news, anyway. What news? Well, there’s getting a bunch of play...

Tommy Barbee, Chrystal O'Keefe, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, Dante Jones and Brett Ballantini gathered together during the Soxivus season to take on the biggest of our celebrations: The Airing of Grievances. Watch and participate, as we all drag out our pitchforks and stab the White Sox into swiss cheese. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Year 3 of the South Side Sox Soxivus Celebration! We kick off the festivities by looking within, to discover what it is about this team that holds our fandom. (Our companion piece to this podcast is available to read, featuring some writers not appearing on this podcast.) Brian kicks things off, with a Joycean paean about the tragic sensibility of fandom, inextricable from romantic opti...

On the occasion of the holiday, and perhaps before everything is buried in football and turkey and drunken political arguments, Sox Pop 164 assembled with Joe Resis, Brian O’Neill, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach and Brett Ballantini to give thanks for our White Sox fandom. No, really. First and foremost, we all thank you, our wonderful readers and community here at South Side Sox. It’s said ad nauseam, b...

With all the season’s-end awards issued, Sox Pop 163 assembled with Joe Resis, Brian O’Neill, Chrystal O’Keefe, Ryiin, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach and Brett Ballantini to review the good and bad of the 22 SSS prognostications on site before the 2023 season. (Also read our predictions-in-review article to accompany this podcast.) The host takes a victory lap Tip for next year: copy Chrystal Seventh-pla...

The experts are out with their predictions of what free agents will end up where for how much and how long, so the resident non-experts, SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, decide to toss in their two yen worth as well. First, though, while they are admirers of mlbtraderumors.com, the two take time out to have a real big laugh at the MLBTR thought that the W...

On the occasion of having to say goodbye to franchise leaders and stalwarts Tim Anderson and Liam Hendriks, Sox Pop 162 assembled with Joe Resis, Dante Jones, Chrystal O’Keefe and Brett Ballantini. Sadness, and hilarity, ensued. Were either of the cuts, Hendriks or Anderson, a surprise? Push-back from the host, then: Was cutting either player a smart move for the White Sox, from a roster construct...

It’s World Series time, and SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, just naturally talk World Series on the day before it begins, and just as naturally disagree in picking a winner. They also take a look at the rosters of the Diamondbacks and Rangers and match them up with the White Sox lineup to see how many members of the Sox would make an All-Star team also m...

As brusquely noted at the top of the podcast, it only took about 500 of these to find Brett Ballantini finally falling in as the junior in a multi-guest program, as site historian Mark Liptak and duty geezer Leigh Allan hop on to cast their votes on The Worst Year in White Sox History. All three came up with different answers, among at least a dozen solid contenders: Right off the bat, it’s Gut Ch...

SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, manage to first avoid talking about the White Sox by venturing into playoff land and the many odd things that have happened in both leagues, leading off with opinionating on whether having a week off after the regular season was fatal to the Braves, Dodgers and Orioles. Then there’s the comeuppance of the mighty AL East an...

It wasn’t just the last White Sox playoff victory (and, perhaps, one we’ll have to savor for many more years to come), but the ALDS Game 3 win over Houston in 2021 is important to South Side Sox for another reason: It connected Allie Wesel to Jacki Krestel, and therefore Allie to us at South Side Sox! We review the genesis of the buddy comedy of Jacki and Allie, and much more: We intended a compan...

Brett Ballantini, unsure what he is doing hosting a podcast for a 101-loss team, is joined by Joe Resis, Dante Jones and Brian O’Neill, none of them certain why they are sitting around talking about a 101-loss team. For that matter, why are you reading a post about a podcast about a 101-loss team? Well, that said, we’re glad you’re here with us. We’re family, in good and bad times. And given this...

Brett Ballantini, unsure what he is doing hosting a podcast for a 98-loss team, is joined by Ryiin, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach and Malachi Hayes, none of them certain why they are sitting around talking about a 98-loss team. For that matter, why are you reading a post about a podcast about a 98-loss team? Well, that said, we’re glad you’re here with us. We’re family, in good and bad times. And given...

Friends, we’ve made it. This cursed season of White Sox baseball has come to an end. A lot of people wisely checked out early into the season; others, let's call them the masochists, stayed through the bitter end. When I look back on this season and all the games I needed to watch to keep my gig here at South Side Sox, I think about the end of one of my favorite movies. I am in fact Winona Ryder a...

With just six games to go in the White Sox quest to reach 100 losses, SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, look into the question of the ages — does winning one game thanks to a 311-foot opposite-field Pesky Pole nudger and another thanks to the intervention of tropical storm Ophelia mean the baseball gods have determined they want the White Sox to lose a mea...

Friends — baseball is almost over, at least for these two teams. The Red Sox will likely finish last in 2023, worse than .500 at the time of this recording. The White Sox sit in fourth place, just slightly better than the somehow sadder Royals. The Red Sox fired their chief baseball operator Chaim Bloom. The White Sox replaced bad with worse in the firing of Rick Hahn and Ken Williams, only to hir...

Will the White Sox make it to 100 losses? SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, ponder the odds of making the magic number, as the Sox press onward toward the famed century mark. The duo also delve fundamentally into fundamentals, starting with the lack thereof on the part of Oscar Colás and on to the lack thereof on the part of most of the White Sox, with Wil...

Brett Ballantini and Brian O’Neill sat down with to discuss, just a few days since our last podcast together, what’s changed with the abominable 2023 Chicago White Sox. While not much really has, aside from an embarrassing near-sweep at the hands of the Kansas City Royals, Brian does feel worse than he did just a few days ago And yes, Brett’s “numbers rundown” of how bad the White Sox are right no...

The White Sox barely avoided a sweep from the Royals in time to head over to Detroit to face the third-place Tigers. Brandon Day of Bless You Boys joins the show to chat about all things Tigers and helps preview what will likely be an uneventful series.  The pitching matchups are slightly up in the air, as Michael Kopech and Matt Manning have question marks looming over their heads. The Tigers als...

Ah, the Chris Getz era of Sharing Sox begins, as SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, wade into the swamp that is the mind of Jerry Reinsdorf and the resultant morass that is the Chicago White Sox to wonder whether promoting a man who has proven an utter, catastrophic failure in his current post is a sound baseball, or business, strategy. First, though, the d...

Joe Resis, Melissa Sage-Bollenbach, Jacki Krestel, Malachi Hayes, Ryiin and Brian O’Neill sat down with Brett Ballantini to reassess our fandom in light of the pending decision to elevate Chris Getz to Chicago White Sox general manager. Put bluntly, can our fandom survive? Ryiin and Brett are the most broken by the succession of moves made through the entirety of the Rick Hahn Era, but now extendi...

The White Sox are about to face the Tigers and Royals. Blah blah blah. Instead of talking about this team, and some other bad baseball teams in the American League Central, I decided to go in a different direction.  Dollars for Dingers was started in 2019 by the wonderful women over at A Pod of Their Own. What started as something small between friends has turned into a much larger and incredibly...

Rumor has it that while the White Sox have been blah on the field lately, events off the field have been pretty exciting. Thus SSS duty geezer Leigh Allan and his son and west coast correspondent, Will, after due commiseration with and best wishes for Shohei Ohtani, take a few moments to consider all that has happened and all that might. Do they cheer mightily for the termination of Kenny Williams...

Really, this title pretty much says it all, right? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don’t ask us how they got out there among the hoi-est of polloi — actually, Brett did ask! — but Melissa Sage-Bollenbach and her husband and partner-in-ballpark-travels, Shaun, take us through the magical, inaugural Field of Dreams Game, two years ago today: Getting tickets! “Shaun, I’ve got some good news, and some bad news ...” Hey, let’s get in the car and drive four hours to a baseball game! A...