SoxFest begins tomorrow night and I saw the schedule of events. Missing is a marketing panel which has really turned into a Sox fan festivus. During that session, fans got the opportunity to air grievances with the occasional suggestion for making things better as an experience at the ballpark. One of the questions that was asked last year by a fan got me thinking about rooting for the team versus rooting for the players.

The fan asked Brooks Boyer why he should root for  Alex Rios when Alex couldn’t even be bothered to show up for SoxFest. If you recall, Rios had an absolutely horrible 2011 and fans were rightly upset with his play. Brooks had the perfect response to the fan: you should root for Rios because he wears the White Sox uniform! And that exchange leads me to thinking about what exactly as fans are we rooting for?

A lot of times when we become fans of a team, it might be due to a particular player. Jen, who writes on this site is an example of someone who became a Sox fan because she was following a player. A friend’s brother became a fan because he liked the team colors and I became a fan because I just started watching the team and enjoyed their play compared to other teams I saw. All of us are White Sox fans rooting for that team. Hopefully, the players on the team follow, but sometimes it gets really hard to do. » Continue reading “The Name On The Jersey”