I own a pair of White Sox socks. On the ankle, they say “SOX.” This makes me indescribably happy. Until my own team of choice decides to start marketing a novelty bra with the team name emblazoned on it, my Sox Socks remain the most amusingly literal baseball-related clothing item in my wardrobe.

I offer up this tidbit of information as proof that I don’t hate you. If I hated the White Sox, I wouldn’t own those socks, would I? Granted, I wouldn’t wear them in public, but I did spend $7.99 on them, which I think says something.

I know that by most standards, the White Sox are supposed to be the Twins’ most hated rivals. I respectfully disagree, citing the fact that Cleveland and Detroit are so obviously the true Co-Seats of Pure Evil in the AL Central.

The truth is, I make all of my judgments on baseball players/teams based on a highly scientific statistical analysis called The Official Those Girls Line of Baseball Acceptability. A player, or team if we’re looking at averages, meets our criteria for Baseball Acceptability if their Good at Baseball Factor and their Adorableness Quotient meet along our line. This gives an equal opportunity to players who are great at baseball, but maybe a little unfortunate in the looks department, as well as players who couldn’t catch a cold but are fun to look at. It’s a pretty fair system. Either sort of player helps to fill the seats.

It’s easier to understand if you look at the graph. I’ve taken the liberty of plotting your team’s location on the grid:

As you can see, the ’08 White Sox clearly fall within the Acceptable range. If gross and crazy Nick Swisher hadn’t been added to the roster, and if several other players hadn’t succumbed to Swisher’s peer-pressure and subsequently made some incredibly poor facial hair grooming decisions, your team would’ve actually scored much higher in terms of their Adorableness Quotient.

In the interest of full disclosure, and as a means of hopefully preserving my credibility amongst fellow Twins fans, my figures may be skewed with a slight Sox bias because of A.J. Pierzynski’s presence in the White Sox line-up. I still adore A.J. after all this time. Some love is forever, I guess. I can’t help myself. I’m always quite annoyed when Twins fans boo A.J. at the Metrodome. He got traded away from our team against his will, and we got a king’s ransom from the Giants in return. There is nothing to boo about. Is he kind of a jackass on the field? Absolutely. But we certainly didn’t complain about it when he was our jackass, so everyone should just calm down and shush about it. Besides, it’s really just part of his charm, and his game. I can respect that.

With a White Sox-Twins battle at the top of the division, this season is turning out to be much more interesting than I thought it would be back when pundits were predicting a Detroit-Cleveland juggernaut in the Central. I couldn’t be happier. It certainly makes this week’s series one to watch. However it shakes down, I ultimately hope the Wild Card comes from our division, and both of our teams head to the post-season. My ideal play-off scenario includes the Twins, White Sox, Rays and Rangers.^* The fact that I also consider these teams to be the Four Hottest American League Rosters is purely coincidental.

So, good luck this week, and may the best team win.

(*) My ideal playoff scenario obviously involves the Big One hitting, sending Orange County into the Pacific.↩

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Katie searches regularly for similar intersections of science and baseball at Oh, It’s THOSE Girls. She resides elsewhere but truly lives at the Metrodome.