To say it was a bad day for Sox is an understatement
And how was your day? I guarantee you it wasn't White Sox bad.
The Whipped Sox, my friends, should have slept through Thursday.
They should have found a time warp past Thursday and exited somewhere far, far down the continuum, in a place where the team, the attitude and the future all have possibilities.
The Sox lost by three touchdowns to the Minnesota Twins at U.S. Cellular Field in a game so colossally bad that if there are such things as game tapes that must be burned, this was them.
Bad pitching, bad fielding, bad hitting, bad baserunning, bad managing. That's how you get shellacked 20-1.
Did I miss anything else?
I did.
There was the humiliation of having a ballpark about as full as a field of carrots -- before the carrots have sprouted.
The Cubs were out of town, the temperature was in the 80s, the clouds had vanished, a light breeze blew from the south, the Sox were playing the Twins -- the hated ''piranhas'' of Ozzie Guillen's verbal creativity -- and the clean, well-appointed park was about half-empty.
There were 23,048 attendees (56.7 percent full) at The Cell, to be precise. And that was before the stench reached full toxicity and even die-hard fans spilled into the streets seeking fresh air.
More?
Yep.
Jake Peavy.
The San Diego Padres' 2007 Cy Young Award winner basically told the Sox they stink.
Did they need that?
About as much as Rosie O'Donnell needs to be told she's not runway material.
Hey, a big backslap to K-Will for even getting this potential trade on the table and fiddling around with it! Know what I'm saying?
You do remember the Cubs were the team that really wanted Peavy during the offseason -- and he really wanted them -- but the Padres and Cubs couldn't work out the compensation, so the thing fell through.
So this would have been a nice middle finger to the crosstown National League team that always hogs the Chicago headlines and attendance figures.
When the Sox came from nowhere to try to get Peavy, it shocked everybody in these parts.
But, uh, maybe general manager Ken Williams should have gotten word from the pitcher himself that he would come to the American League team -- Peavy has veto power over his trade rights -- before figuring out the rest of the equation.
Williams and Padres GM Kevin Towers had come to an agreement, but what the hell did that mean? It was like changing Paris Hilton's lip-gloss color without getting her consent first.
The embarrassment of Peavy's renunciation of the Sox was so profound that it will linger for months, if not years, tarnishing the franchise that just can't seem to get over the hump of second-class status.
The guy didn't even use first-person English.
''As of right now, this is the best place for us to be,'' Peavy said late Thursday, ''this'' being wretched San Diego. ''We made that decision for the time being.''
Is Peavy, like, a platoon?
Oh, this was sad, sad. Dumb, dumb.
I think I understand what Williams and the fragile Sox psyche were trying to do.
The 2009 team is old, slow and wounded by major damage in center field, and it is fading off into an irrelevance that hearkens back to, well, not that long ago.
Sign Peavy -- contrary to chairman Jerry Reinsdorf's professed fiscal sense because Peavy will get about $60 million over the next four years -- and you have pitchers Mark Buehrle, John Danks, Gavin Floyd and Peavy locked up for the next three years, at least.
Shades of the pitching-strong team that won the World Series in 2005.
But what a reach! What a boondoggle!
If Peavy won't come to the South Side, how humiliating.
''It was communicated to me earlier this evening that Jake Peavy is simply not yet ready to make a commitment to join the Chicago White Sox,'' Williams said around dusk.
As readers of this column have been told many times: People, beware the passive voice.
And always beware of b.s.
Like Peavy will change his mind and suddenly say, Yo, Oz, Kenny -- Jimbo's, here I come!
The Sox are in fourth place in the AL Central, six games below .500 at 17-23.
They lost by 19 runs to the Twins, and they were clowned by Jake Peavy.
Tomorrow has got to be better, don't you think?