My song is a song sung blue.

The editors of the New York Times recently offered a challenge. The challenge wasn’t related to Wordle, Connections, or other games on their puzzle pages. This challenge was to submit a Letter to the Editor, but instead of using normal correspondence, the letter should be in the form of a poem or lyrics to a well-known song. I knew this was a gauntlet I needed to take up, even if I wouldn’t choose a song from Camelot.

My first step in composing my letter was to list possible topics and appropriate melodies. Should I rewrite Joy to the World as an homage to Kamala Harris? Could the lyrics of preening King George III’s You’ll Be Back in Hamilton be reconfigured for Donald Trump? Or was Who’ll Stop the Rain the perfect canvas for a lament about Global Warming?

I knew I could write all those songs, and I knew I could do them well. But I also intuited that the editors of the Times would be deluged by letters on those topics. Who wouldn’t want to opine about their staunchest political beliefs? So I added one more topic to my list of potentials, a topic that might win, but in other ways was sure to lose. I chose to write about an unrequited love, the Chicago White Sox.

The weekend the Times challenge was issued coincided with the eventful days on which the White Sox were on the cusp of setting Major League Baseball’s all-time record for losses in a single season. For days, their 120 losses tied them with the 1962 New York Mets but all die-hard fans knew 121 was inevitable. That was where my head was when I submitted the following lyrics, to the tune of I Want To Hold Your Hand.

I'M JUST A WHITE SOX FAN

Oh yeah I, feel like grumbling
I need a new game plan
My crew they're really stumbling
I’m just a White Sox fan!
 
I’m just a White Sox fa-an
I’m just a White Sox fan.
 
Oh team, hear my plea
And score runs if you can
Esteem, has gone from me
A lowly White Sox fan
 
A wholly White Sox fa-an
Unholy White Sox fan.
 
And when you win games
It just fills me, with pride
It comes so rarely that, it can’t be
Bona fide
Every night
It’s not right!
 
Big clue
The team is awful
Even the mascot’s bland
This bad
Should be unlawful
I’m just a White Sox fan
 
Hard-drinking White Sox fan
Rethinking White Sox fa-an
Unsinking White Sox fa-a-a-a-a-an!

Today the NYT published the winning entries. These included the predicted Trump and Harris numbers, a song about ecology, and one about homelessness. Beatle tunes, show tunes, and even a poem made the cut. But as I read on, I was filled with a growing sense of emptiness. My name had not been entered into the starting line-up.

The White Sox are losers once again. But with a song in my heart, I say “Wait Til Next Year!”