Obama Swings And Misses When Asked To Name Favorite White Sox: What Does That Tell You?

The question didn’t seem all that difficult. Washington Nationals broadcaster Bob Carpenter asked a certain “White Sox fan” who moved from Chicago to much nicer digs in Washington D.C. last year to name his favorite Pale Hose player. President Obama danced around the question, said that he actually followed the Oakland A’s growing up in Hawaii, declared that the Cubs had some good players too and ultimately let the subject drop uncomfortably. Perhaps this was just another example of our perpetually tongue-tied president trying to work without a teleprompter net, but one rather doubts it.

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As someone born and raised on the south side of Chicago, I’ve been a White Sox fan since my father first bounced me on his knee in the left-field bleachers in the 1960s and let me steal a sip of his beer when mom wasn’t looking. I’ve been a die-hard White Sox fan ever since. But I went to games at the old Comiskey Park, while the president apparently sat in the stands at someplace called “Kaminskey Park,” wherever that is. Presumably the teams that played there weren’t all that memorable.

Baseball fans argue endlessly about the best players to hit the diamond for their club. Nobody who has followed a team, even casually, has a problem rattling off a long list of favorites. The biggest difficulty involves narrowing the list down to one. The president lived in Chicago from 1991 through 2008. In that time, the White Sox roster included: Frank Thomas, the greatest hitter in team history; current manager Ozzie Guillen; perennial all-star third baseman Robin Ventura; Cy Young award winner Jack McDowell; the always reliable Paul Konerko; World Series MVP Jermaine Dye; control artist extraordinaire Mark Buehrle (to whom Obama spoke on the telephone after Buehrle’s perfect game last year!); and our incorrigible backstop, A. J. Pierzynski. Those are merely the names that happen to roll off the top of my head. The most famous White Sox fan in America couldn’t come up with one – just one?

The president’s apologists will likely claim that he was thrown by the “while you were growing up” qualifier contained in Carpenter’s question. Perhaps he was. But, even in that case, you’d think he might have mentioned a few A’s from his childhood, like Bert Campaneris, Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Gene Tenace, etc., before rolling on to name his favorites among the White Sox who took the field during the eighteen years that he lived in the Windy City.

That would have established his bona fides as the baseball fan in general, and Pale Hose fanatic in particular, that he purports to be. As it was, he didn’t and the reason he didn’t, one suspects, is that he couldn’t. That’s not surprising. When it comes to being a die-hard White Sox fan, the president’s pin-striped jersey appears to be as empty as his business suit.