Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: disco sucks, disco records, blue seats, White Sox, World Series, Comiskey Park (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Roeper's mother was nine months pregnant with him when the Chicago White Sox made their losing stand at the 1959 World Series, beginning a post-season drought that wouldn't end until their championship 2005 season. Roeper, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and co-host of Ebert & Roeper, grew up an impenetrable and sometimes irritable Sox fan. Here, he examines the history and culture of Chicago's second baseball team, and his personal history as a fan, with the kind of devotion usually reserved for family memoirs. He claims to have attended a thousand Sox games, and he adamantly argues why the South Side team will always be superior to the North Side Cubs. Naturally, Roeper (Schlock Value) peppers his narrative with movie references, as well as fun sidebars and details about long-forgotten games and players. His irreverent style-alternately witty and abrasive-recalls Chuck Klosterman's essays on pop culture and music, and his take on such subjects as the old Comiskey Park and the joys of owning season tickets for a losing team are detailed, funny and quick. Sox fans will love this one, Cubs fans will mock it and the unaffiliated will better understand what it means to be a true baseball fan.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–Just as the World Champion Boston Red Sox of 2004 had their Curse of the Bambino to overcome, the White Sox had not been able to win a Series since six or seven players of their 1919 team accepted payments to lose in favor of the Cincinnati Reds. The Black Sox scandal was as much of a stain on baseball as the steroids controversy of today. Roeper recounts the 2005 season like the recap of a single great game: he starts the story near the end of the season and then bounces back and forth from the beginning to the end again when the White Sox seem about to lose everything in historic fashion. He interweaves this with his personal history as a lifelong fan. White Sox fans may not be as legion as those of the Yankees or Red Sox, but Roeper gives a compelling account of their team's first World Series Championship in almost 90 years that can prove enjoyable to anyone who loves a good story.–Will Marston, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press; Updated edition (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556526792
• ISBN-13: 978-1556526794
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #415,044 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sox and the city, November 3, 2006

By	Margaret L. Kraus "sox peggy" (Morris Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz (Hardcover)

This is the ultimate read for any loyal White Sox fan. Winning the world series was a dream come true for me, and no one shares the magic of that wonderful season like Richard Roeper in this great book. Brought back many special memories of growing up a true sox fan in a cubs town, with the ultimate finale, a world series winner for our beloved white sox.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sox & the City, August 17, 2006

By	Richard E. Guise - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Sox and the City: A Fan's Love Affair with the White Sox from the Heartbreak of '67 to the Wizards of Oz (Hardcover)

timely & funny, as a long time Sox fan I could relate to many of the descriptions in Roeper's book. The book gives a different perspective from a so called non sportswriter or jock. I would highly recommend it for hard core Sox fans.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Passionate White Sox fan's view of recent Sox history, through 2005, November 17, 2007

By	cs211 "cs211" (United States) - See all my reviews

Thank goodness the White Sox have southside Chicago native Richard Roeper as a fan! The Cubs and other more popular MLB teams have a much longer roster of both author/fans (e.g. Stephen King and the Red Sox) and A-list celebrity/fans (of which the White Sox have none - sorry Jerry Springer, you're B-list). But the White Sox, with their long, interesting history and their amazing 2005 World Series run, needed someone to step up to the plate and deliver what the fan base needs: a book documenting what it means to be a White Sox fan in the four decades up to 2005. Roeper delivers a solid home run, albeit not a grand slam.

Roeper deftly interweaves three main storylines in "Sox and the City": the highlights of the past 40 years of Sox history; Roeper's own personal experiences as a fan attending more than 1000 Sox games; and the highlights of the 2005 season and World Series run. Along the way Roeper provides a personal, often humorous view of the main topics in Sox history: the different Sox teams that have been assembled over the years; what it means to be a Sox fan in what will always (unless the demographics of Chicago change radically) be a Cubs town, including especially the Sox/Cubs rivalry among the fans (which, because of geography is more passionate - at least on the Sox side - than any other intercity major league rivalry); Harry Caray's move from the Sox to the Cubs; Bill Veeck's attempts to generate excitement (and bring in paying fans) on the southside; Disco Demolition Night; the move from Comiskey to the Cell; and much more.

There is so much White Sox history that it is impossible to capture it all in a single volume, but Roeper hits all the highlights. His prose is very accessible, humorous, and direct. "Sox and the City" is likely to become the definitive guide to what it means to be a White Sox fan in the present day.

Why only four stars? Roeper's done an admirable job in all areas of the book except two: explaining precisely what made the 2005 team different than all other White Sox teams, and capturing the excitement and impact of the Sox's 2005 World Series victory on the city of Chicago. Perhaps the latter is an impossible task to translate into words - you had to be there.

All literate White Sox fans should read this book.