Being a White Sox fan has never been for the faint of heart. In a city where the Cubs often command the spotlight, rooting for the South Side team has meant living in the shadow of the North Siders, with playoff appearances few and far between.
But for a brief stretch, Tim Anderson didn’t just make the White Sox fun to watch. He made it cool to be a White Sox fan.
Anderson may never have his number retired or a statue on the concourse, but he deserves to be remembered for what he accomplished in a White Sox uniform, even if his time with the organization ended unceremoniously.
He’ll get some of that recognition when he returns to Rate Field on Thursday night to throw out the first pitch, with the White Sox set to don their original South Side City Connect uniforms in his honor.
🔥 Subscribe to the Untold Chicago YouTube channel to hear Chicago legends tell stories you’ve never seen in headlines — real moments, real experiences, straight from the athletes themselves.
Love him or hate him, you will be hard-pressed to find a more polarizing player in White Sox history than TA. The 2024 season marked the first time in eight years that the White Sox didn’t have Anderson roaming the infield.
Anderson was always more of a quiet player who kept to himself. His play on the field was always louder than his comments off of it. As his fame grew, he slowly began to come out of his shell. However, he also grew a target on his back.
Anderson helped put the White Sox back on the map. He blossomed from an athletic rookie with plenty of potential into a two-time All-Star and batting champion. His bat flips, swagger, and confidence made the White Sox appointment viewing, and suddenly there was a reason to tune in every night.
Then came the moment that seemed to capture everything Anderson had become. His walk-off home run in the first-ever Field of Dreams Game gave White Sox fans a moment to savor—and a reason to feel proud of their team again.
It seemed like every season, Anderson gave fans another reason to come to the ballpark. Sometimes it was his bat. Sometimes it was his personality. And sometimes, it was simply the feeling that something special might happen whenever he stepped to the plate.
As Anderson’s confidence grew, the White Sox began to focus a marketing campaign around him. He embraced the idea that baseball should be fun and unafraid to challenge the game’s traditional norms. At one point, Anderson compared himself to Jackie Robinson as a pioneer in baseball, a comparison that rubbed many the wrong way. But Anderson’s bravado wasn’t just talk. More often than not, he backed it up on the field.
In 2019, he led the major leagues with a .335 batting average, joining Luke Appling and Frank Thomas as the only players in franchise history to win an AL batting title. His nine hits over his first three postseason games in 2020 were the most in MLB history.
In 2021, he was named the cover athlete of R.B.I. Baseball, becoming the first White Sox player to be featured on the cover of a video game. He followed that up by batting over .300 for the third consecutive season. He also hit five home runs from the leadoff spot, giving him 13 total in his career, which was good enough for second most in franchise history.
As Anderson got better, the White Sox got better. But when his production began to slip in 2022 things got ugly fast. Injuries and off-field drama quickly derailed his White Sox career. In his final season on the South Side he owned an OPS+ of 61, which marked a new career low as an affair with an Instagram model and an alleged altercation with Yasmani Grandal dominated the headlines. Suddenly, the weight of being the face of a franchise became much heavier as criticism mounted.
Anderson was interviewed by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers in April of 2024 and was asked why things did not work out.
“A lot of my decisions off the field kind of interrupted a lot of things,” Anderson said. “We understood that. It’s hard to win when you don’t have the right guys to go out and compete. And want to win it.”
That was not the first time he has owned up to some of his missteps off the field. There is also some truth to what he said. By all accounts, the end of the White Sox so-called “contention window” had a clubhouse that lacked leadership and accountability. It was evident by their play on the field that it was a team that was not dedicated to winning baseball games.
While the ultimate goal of winning a World Series never came to fruition, Anderson was one of the biggest reasons the White Sox became fun again for a few memorable seasons. His highs in a White Sox uniform far outweighed the lows, and whatever happened at the end shouldn’t erase what came before it.
So when Anderson steps back onto the South Side on Thursday night, White Sox fans should give him the standing ovation he’s earned—and a chance to appreciate what he meant to the franchise.
