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The Chicago White Sox are on the brink of setting a record that no team wants. They have already lost 120 games this season. One more, and it will be official - the most a team has ever lost in Major League Baseball's modern era. NPR's Becky Sullivan went to the team's last home game to see them for herself.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Sunny, 73 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. It was a day so nice that even the grumpiest of White Sox fans, like Chester Olenczyk, couldn't help but laugh about the team.
CHESTER OLENCZYK: I wanted to see the record. It's a beautiful day, I'm off, not working today, so...
SULLIVAN: You wanted to see the record.
OLENCZYK: Yes, yeah, see my own team lose.
SULLIVAN: More than 15,000 fans came out to see the worst baseball team this side of the moon landing. And Olenczyk wasn't the only one who actually hoped they'd lose and set a new record - 121 losses, the worst team in modern history.
KEVIN PARKS: Yeah, I wanted it to happen today so we can get it over with, so SportsCenter can leave us alone.
SULLIVAN: This was the 20th game that Kevin Parks came to see this terrible season. The feeling that he and the others have about the Sox is hard to describe. It's not pride, exactly, because obviously the team stinks, but it's something close to it.
PARK: So that's why I wear my hat. My friends ask me. They say, why you wear the hat all the time? I say, we're about to do something that's never been done before.
SULLIVAN: On Thursday, at least, the White Sox didn't play ball, by which I mean they actually played really well.
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SULLIVAN: They shut out the Los Angeles Angels and scored seven runs in the fifth inning. Now they're in Detroit to play the last three games against the Tigers. Win all three, and they won't set the record. It's a tall order. The Tigers are one win away from a playoff spot. Still, interim manager Grady Sizemore believes it's doable.
GRADY SIZEMORE: You know, for us, we have to do everything right. We have to play small ball, play fundamentally sound, not make mistakes and take advantage of opportunities.
SULLIVAN: For context, the White Sox have had the fewest hits this season, the worst batting average. Only two other teams have had a worse performance from their pitching staff. And on the field, they've had blunders that pained their fans and went viral on social media.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. The White Sox have just gone full White Sox.
SULLIVAN: It's all made this season tough to watch for even the most diehard of fans, like Kathleen Knack, who lives a hundred miles away in Dixon, Ill.
KATHLEEN KNACK: Normally come to about 20 games a year. This is my first game this year.
SULLIVAN: Is it because...
KNACK: Yes, a hundred percent.
SULLIVAN: All season long, she and her husband would talk about driving out to see a game, but they never made it.
KNACK: We kind of will play, like, a game, where we're like, OK, if they win this many in a row, we'll go tomorrow, and they don't. I mean, they never have. So I know.
SULLIVAN: She's not exaggerating. Their longest winning streak this year was only four games long back in May. Yet it's not lost on her that things could be even worse. In Oakland, the A's also played their last home game yesterday - not just the last of the season, though, the last ever because the A's' owner, John Fisher, decided to move the team out of Oakland after he didn't get the public funding he wanted for a new stadium. At least the White Sox are sticking around.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Take me out to the ball game.
SULLIVAN: Before this year, the most games the team had ever lost was 106. That was back in 1970, the year that Ed Nichols came to see them play for the first time.
ED NICHOLS: It was a twi-night doubleheader - got there at the fifth, sixth inning. And then the next game was the hundredth loss of the year.
SULLIVAN: Since then, the Sox have given him plenty of highs, including a World Series title in 2005, but Nichols says he'll never forget how it started.
NICHOLS: They were so bad, and no one was there. But the field was green, and it was just an amazing experience that's kept me coming back for 50-plus years.
SULLIVAN: And he'll be back next year, too. Becky Sullivan, NPR News, Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAVID BOWIE SONG, "HEROES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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