Some changes for our writers

The bulk of the masthead is moving to Fans First Sports Network

It’s funny, in the process of researching the composition of this article detailed our move away from South Side Sox for the THIRD time, I discovered that I’d missed a key anniversary: I am the longest-tenured editor in South Side Sox annals. Yep, The Cheat was around for five years or so, Jim Margalus seven — and seven is the milestone I passed back in February.

As it turns out, the SB Nation brass has a funny way of commemorating that milestone. But first, a little storytelling.

In July 2019, after the SB Nation higher-ups decided to cut our budget in half after the White Sox failed to sign Manny Machado (true story), we made a decision to move most of our writing — with SB Nation’s blessing — to Sox on 35th. That merger ended, amazingly, after about a week after the one key promise made to me and our staff was almost instantaneously broken.

A month of purgatory back at SSS later, we published a new story under the same headline, this time forming and moving to our own independent Wordpress site, South Side Hit Pen.

We did that to finish out the 2019 and through the offseason, when Sports Illustrated picked us up for 2020. After a tragic pandemic semi-season, on the day of playoff elimination in Oakland, SI flaked and dropped us almost with almost all its baseball sites.

So we came home to SSS, and have been here since. And it should be noted, as our good work here continued, as we grew in size and diversity of staff, and as the White Sox saw their fortunes improve, our slashed budget was almost completely restored by the higher-ups.

However, word came down a few weeks ago that it was 2019 all over again, and SBN’s five-year itch meant we got scratched.

The good news, first: We are moving the bulk of our operations to Fans First Sports Network, which is already our podcasting outlet and now one for our writing as well.

While leaving here is nothing we’re happy with, we’ve been welcomed at FFSN with open arms, and are being provided with much more optimistic budget to provide our White Sox coverage.

Gamethread/recap stories will continue at South Side Sox. The gamethreads will be more skeletal in the preview sense, but meatier in terms of us linking our other writing and podcasts at FFSN. Recaps are likely taking the form of our past standby, Six Pack of Stats. Appended to the Six Pack will be our Futility Watch, as well as the game polls that determine our White Sox Player of the Week. Again, we’ll provide links to our other coverage at FFSN frequently.

Most everyone you have come to know here will now write at FFSN. I will remain, along with my longtime No. 2, Year of the Hamster, to carry on South Side Sox in energy-saving mode.

The only other regular feature here in-season will be each morning’s Today in White Sox History, provided by Mark Liptak and now mostly updated by me.

In the offseason, we plan to run our Top Prospect Poll here at South Side Sox, as well as the White Sox Hall of Fame and other voting features.

While I am not as personally shocked by this decision by SBN as I was in 2019 (fighting the bulk of the summer for our budget to be restored, in fact), it’s still a crushing blow to what seems to be the oldest continuously-running White Sox coverage site of all time. To dim the lights here, even modestly, is a sad thing.

We are proud of the seven years we’ve put in here, through ups and downs both with the ballclub and our own ability to cover it.

So we’re down here, but rising at FFSN. Things will be quieter around these parts, but the sum total of our staff coverage will be increased — it just splits. Hamster and I will do our best to spoon-feed our FFSN coverage to you with links here, but please consider bookmarking our FFSN White Sox tab over there and cut out the middleman.

Believe me, I am so sorry to be doling out this news. Ultimately, and for a second time, SBN does not value our work here enough to continue supporting it, so we are forced to move on. We hope you will follow us to FFSN in order to continue enjoying our exhaustive portfolio of coverage, and more so we hope we’ve earned your respect and appreciation enough here to warrant giving us a try there.

This change is effective today, so it’s back to that classic Summer of 2019 and the Brett and Hamster Show. We’ll keep tap dancing for you, as long as they let us.