So, the Chicago White Sox looks like not just the worst team to date in the 21st century but in baseball history, too. As the seasons end, summer fades, and autumn leaves begin to drop, the White Sox are on their way to recording the most losses in the history of America’s National Past Time.

Normally, most baseball fans root for records to be broken. Think of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, a mark that stood until Barry Bonds bested Aaron (although we still don’t know if performance-enhancing drugs made the difference), or Cal Ripken’s victory lap in Camden Yards when he passed Lou Gehrig in consecutive games played. The nation even cheered when Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s record for most hits in baseball history.

Americans, especially rabid baseball fans, love the pursuits, probably because we have a deep affection for the player and partly because we all have a little Walter Mitty in us, which project onto our beloved athletes. That’s not the case for the White Sox’s record.

Image: The 1962 Mets (cropped). YouTube screen grab.

If they have the longest losing streak ever, they’ll erase the record of one of the most beloved teams—albeit a bunch of big-time losers—in baseball history, the 1962 New York Mets. If the White Sox beat that record, baseball will lose some of its charm and romance, for fans loved those losing Mets.

The 2024 White Sox do not and will not have the personality, charisma, or legendary status the Mets had in 1962. The club mostly consisted of former Dodgers and Giants who had played in Gotham before those teams moved to California before the 1958 season and still paid homage to those esteemed franchises. (The old Dodgers and Giants had appeared in every World Series from 1947-1958 except for 1948, 1950, 1957, and 1958.) The Mets franchise filled the vacuum left by the teams that called Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan home.

The first Mets team plucked old, over the hill or over-their-head players off LA’s and SF’s roster to provide a sense of nostalgia for National League fans in New York who felt betrayed when their teams moved west and would good never, in good conscience, root for their bitter rivals in the American League (i.e., the Yankees). To the fans, the Yankees were corporate-think Microsoft, Facebook, or Blackrock.

In contrast, the Dodgers were the neighborhood team, the “mom and pop shop” team of Flatbush. As for the Giants, though not as “blue collar” as the Trolley Dodgers, they still had the greatest player in the last 100 years, Willie Mays.

But back to that 1962 season. Colorful stories abounded about outrageous incidents that were too preposterous to be staged or fabricated.

There was the Yankee’s one-time manager, Casey Stengel, summarily fired in 1960, despite guiding the Yankees to seven World Series titles in ten years. He responded, “I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again.” The colorful Stengel was then named the first manager of the New York Mets franchise.

Casey did not disappoint, although not as a strategic manager guiding a new team to unbelievable heights of winning. Instead, he just so darn colorful, providing endless anecdotes, including the fact that he sometimes Casey fell asleep on the bench.

The Mets team was no better. Casey was coaching players who simply couldn’t play the game nor compete like his great Yankees teams of the 1940s and 1950s. But Casey’s honest evaluation of one of his players—“Look at that guy. He can’t hit, he can’t run, and he can’t throw. Of course, that’s why they gave him to us”—ending up causing the franchise’s to embrace rather than ostracize their players.

For Casey, his players were “The Amazings,” not for their incredible play but because of the beauty, fun, and frolics they brought to each game. They lost every one of their 120 games in a unique way.

It’s different with the White Sox. Notwithstanding the energy and professionalism each team member brings to the game, their inability to excite baseball is why baseball fans can’t root for them to win. It would be a shame if their boring, bland, colorless brand of losing led them to break the record and erase the “accomplishments” of baseball’s real “worst club of all time” from the record books.

Or as Casey would state, “Without the losers, where would the winners be?”

The ‘62 Amazings were winners...in a losing fashion.