Am I a bad baseball fan or a fan of bad baseball?

I can't help liking the playing of the games more than the market for the players

Eloy Jimenez doesn’t play left field very well, but he loves his mother.

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Sometime in my 20s, I decided that if I wanted to live peacefully and productively with a woman, I would confine my sports appreciation to 1½ teams.

The White Sox were the one, and the Bears, the half. The Bears are even less than a half nowadays because I just follow them by watching the highlights Mondays on YouTube. The Bears are easier to take in small portions.

I will admit that I cheated a little during the Michael Jordan years, but not much. And I lived with a woman for over 20 years who liked figure skating, so I went along with that. We even used to invite over a skating expert during big tournaments so he could explain stuff to us. But I can’t tell an axel from a differential anymore.

I had no problem missing the recent World Cup matches. I’m not enamored of any games that can’t be adequately described in a newspaper. I do enjoy the riots, however.

But I went to White Sox games with my father and my friends and offspring for years, alternately freezing and boiling in two local home stadia. I still live and die with the Pale Hose. I don’t detest the Cubs, however, since most of my friends like them. I think they’re kind of cute.

But I’m hooked on the Sox.

And this is now my curse. It was bad enough that last year, half the team played like they’d rather be someplace else. The bigger problem is that my fellow White Sox fans on social media constantly educate me on why they fail.

The White Sox consistently pass up the Type A free agents, and maybe Type B, too. They often make thick-headed decisions about who to keep, who to trade, and who to waive.

They have turned home-run hitters into singles hitters. Speedy runners don’t run when they should, and do so when they shouldn’t. The players get hurt if the other team looks at them funny.

But unlike my friends, I still don’t get all that upset when the Sox don’t do what they need to do to win the pennant. I did not contribute to the “Jerry, sell the team” billboards.

I got my championship – when I least expected it – in 2005. That may be as much joy as I can handle.

I’m sorry my Dad didn’t live long enough to see it. But truth be told, there are a lot of things he didn’t live to see. He said he wanted to live in a country that wasn’t owned by oil companies, too. 

You don’t have to live to see everything, you know. Dad didn’t live to see a president lose an election and tell everybody that he didn’t. And he didn’t see over 6 million people die in a pandemic. He’d probably be glad to plan to miss the World Series if it meant he could miss that stuff, too.

He was never too happy about all the losing the Sox did. He had switched from the Cubs to the Sox in the 1950s because the Cubs were hapless, and he wanted a better chance to win.

That really didn’t work out for him, however. Same-same.

My Sox-type friends aren’t happy unless the team gets high-priced free agents. So they’re never happy. Can’t blame them.

It’s a little different with me. I like expensive free agents if they seem really happy to play for us. Like Dick Allen, thrilled to be hired by an organization that wasn’t particularly racist. Carlton Fisk felt more respected here than in Boston. 

Most of the former free agents now on the South Side never got all that much money from Jerry Reinsdorf and his bunch, so I can stretch my imagination to believe they actually wanted to be here. 

I probably couldn’t have imagined that about Aaron Judge, Manny Machado or Carlos Correa. 

I’d prefer to imagine players striving mightily to reach Chicago from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela or Cuba. I admire players who have struggled for years in the minor leagues before being promoted.

Then they’re almost believable as Our Guys. I guess that’s more attractive to me than adequate baseball efficiency.

The Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Phillies, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Rangers and Padres all spent big this off-season. Somebody won’t feel as good about it later as they do now.

Will Rogers said a long time ago, “We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” He might say today that $350 million could be a lot to spend on one hero if you wind up sitting on the curb with him.

Market value aside, I tend to like players more if they’re actually likable. I prefer that they hit above the Mendoza Line, but if they say Hi to their mothers when the TV camera is on them I might forgive them for not hitting .200. If they can hit and love their mothers, too, I’m theirs forever.

I enjoy it when the Sox bring back players after they played for other teams, even if they’re not as talented anymore. I liked that the Sox hired Harold Baines three times. I even liked that they hired Buddy Bradford three times.

Hello again, Billy Hamilton.