/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62929896/usa_today_11828745.0.jpg)
On a cold and hazardous January day, with offseason inactivity threatening to devour us whole, comes ... SoxFest!
Unfortunately, the dark, Yonder Alonso-related, Jon Jay-befriended cloud hanging over the proceedings all weekend will be: What Would Manny Machado Do? Or, more generally, what the hell has happened to baseball’s free market system?
Thankfully, there will lines for autographs, Hall-of-Famers on stage, plenty of post-fest beer, and all that other stuff that makes a weekend like this so much fun — and so essential as the wind chill plummets.
And not to gloat, but South Side Sox has snagged a plum free agent of our own!
Catch me at SoxFest in that 7° weather tomorrow, y’all.
— Free Agent Writer Cat Garcia (@TheBaseballGirl) January 24, 2019
Gonna be there writin’ some words for @SouthSideSox. See ya!
That’s right, just as South Side Sox might have been frozen out of SoxFest, a Cat crossed our path.
It’s a serious coup to have a writer with Cat’s credentials (The Athletic, MLB, Sun-Times, La Vida Baseball, FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus) hopping on for not just SoxFest proceedings, but into the regular season.
The bum rush of our big free agent signing right before SoxFest prevents a more significant bio, yet — Cat hopping on comes as enough of a surprise that a fuller bio would have been riddled with typos and inaccuracies, as if the White Sox suddenly signed a shocker, like Aaron Judge — but for now, please offer a warm welcome to someone we should all be proud to have sit on our masthead.
You can check any of Cat’s tweets from SoxFest @TheBaseballGirl, and read her coverage of SoxFest here all weekend.
Meanwhile, here’s the full SoxFest details, for those of you going in cold. Or for those perhaps a touch warmer, but jealous to miss the festivities, a teaser:
#SoxFest2019 is SOLD OUT! We look forward to seeing you all there.
— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) January 23, 2019
View full schedule here: https://t.co/IVs3L0VAni pic.twitter.com/U8p2o8Oemv
If you’re going to SoxFest, please check in with all of us in the comments below.
Welcome, Cat!
(And sorry to upstage you with our big signing, White Sox.)