CryptoSoxery No. 3

One from Sports Illustrated, no less

For our first two ventures into the world of CryptoSoxery, we used quotes from famous White Sox fans about being a White Sox fan. In this week's effort to find you a way to kill a little time while pretending to work at home and wishing a baseball season would appear at the end of the tunnel, the challenge will be to solve a puzzle from an article written about the greatest of all White Sox managers.

But first, last week's answer, a quote from the most famous White Sox fan of us all:

"You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer, beautiful people up there. People aren't watching the game. It's not serious. White Sox, that's baseball."

Had Barack Obama not been merely a presidential candidate at the time, he might have been a little less deferential about fans of that other team in town, the one owned by one of the most horrible families on the globe. As a resident of Lakeview who has spent many a summer's day watching drunken frat boys by the kegload stumble out of Wrigley Field in order to puke on our sidewalks, I might have been a trifle more harsh.

Worth noting: looking for an Obama Sox quote, I came across a right-wing pundit's claim that the president was actually a Cubs fan. Come on — really? With all the other slurs and libels the poor man has had to put up with, you want to add the meanest one of all?

But enough about last week's quiz - on to the new one, from a Sports Illustrated article in 1957, not long after Al Lopez moved from the reins of the Indians to the White Sox on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Nine winning seasons in nine years at the helm of Sox, including one AL pennant. Also made the Sox incredibly fun to watch / Wikipedia

TV PEJPTBW QWRUY NWIDS EJZKUQN OJVE T VEJD RJVPEJDB KVTNN

(UHPURV NWL FJQQG RJULPU, VEU FUKV JD VEU QUTBIU) TDS T

SJKVJDPV QTPX WN RWOUL EJVVULK. VW PWZRUDKTVU, QWRUY

OWLXUS VWOTLS SUMUQWRJDB T VUTZ WN KIRULJWL NJUQSULK TDS

LTPU-EWLKU FTKU LIDDULK.

If this statue in the Tampa park named in his honor is an indication, Lopez was a tad slimmer in his playing days / Getty Images

For those not yet familiar with CryptoSoxery or cryptoquotes in general, it's a simple letter substitution cipher. What began as an A may be written as an R, a B as an F, and so on, same substitutions all the way through. This one is pretty long, which makes it easier, because, as with baseball stats, the more input, the more likely the norm will come into play — things like E being the most common letter, single-letter words apt to be an A or an I, etc.

The answer will come next week, along with CryptoSoxery No. 4. Have fun or frustration, as you wish.