It was a beautiful day for a ballgame Wednesday afternoon at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Too bad the nice weather was wasted on a meeting of the mediocre. The home team, of course, was the Halos, suffering through their ninth straight losing season — a franchise record — and .
Their opponent was the Chicago White Sox, on track to best — or is it worst? — the major league record for . The two franchises are mirror images of ineptitude — junior teams in baseball-mad cities, long saddled with cheapskate owners and a tendency to underachieve when not outright tanking — playing a game where even the winner was still going to be an all-time loser. Who on Earth would want to waste their time on ? Kurt Squire, for one.
He’s a UC Irvine informatics professor who has been a die-hard White Sox fan ever since winning free tickets as a kid to a game at the old Comiskey. The 52-year-old, who grew up in a steelworking family in northwest Indiana, has rooted for his team at Angel Stadium every season since starting his current job in 2017. Last year, Squire decided to start a new tradition: attend a full series and invite the few White Sox fans he’s met in Southern California, where fans regularly pack bars and can easily outshout Angels fans.
A fan of mine, he invited me to tag along to the Wednesday game with his son, Warner, and whoever else showed up. “When I was growing up, [Cubs fans] were just a bunch of drunks in the stands and embarrassing,” the explained as we fou.