Catching up with the Armour Square Park League

Want to play in our simulated Chicago White Sox scrim? C'mon and join!

Earlier this year, as both an incentive for our site supporters and a fun distraction for the everyday grind (yes, pre-coronavirus), we created the Armour Square Park League.

For those of you unfamiliar, Armour Square Park sits to the north of Sox Park, a collection of baseball diamonds, tennis courts, running tracks and football fields that make a great place to play catch before a game, or stroll afterward.

Author, and his father, before a White Sox playoff game in 2005

The league allows you to choose any White Sox player in history — one who most resembles your playing style, at your position as a kid — and participate in our intramural competition, of sorts. We have a few dozen writers involved, and many subscribers as well.

(There's even a rumor that a team from the far, far South Side, the Ybor City Fever, may be joining the league.)

If you subscribe to South Side Hit Pen here at Sports Illustrated, you automatically qualify to play. In theory, this league should be huge, based on the amount of support we've gotten from readers over the past eight months. But not everyone wants to play, I guess.

Whether game results will be written up as news on-site, or pushed to the Community section along the right rail on site, I'm not yet sure. But there will be results, and stats, published.

Our transition to Sports Illustrated probably means we'll start the season over, as we'd only gotten a couple of games into the schedule before we got our call-up here. 

But here's a look at both games so far:

Bridgeport Hit Men 3, Douglas South Siders 2: Yours truly pitched the win for the Hit Men, while 2Bs Joe Resis (Hit Men) and David Smith (South Siders) both went 3-for-4. Douglas CF Laura Wolff had the first hit in ASPL history, and Hit Men RF Julie Brady had the first home run.

Red Line Go-Gos 16, Chinatown Grinders 1: This one obviously wasn't much of a game. The No. 4-7 hitters for the Go-Gos went 16-for-23 with 11 runs, 14 RBIs, three homers and three doubles. Four Go-Gos tapped out four hits apiece in the game, led by Scott Reichard’s massive 4-for-6, two-homer, four-run, five-RBI game. Owen Schoenfeld went 4-for-5 with a homer, stolen base and four RBIs. Leigh Allan went 4-for-6 with two knocked in, and Ali White had a 4-for-6, three-RBI, three-double day.