Tag: campfire

No one would blame fans of the Chicago White Sox for losing their appetites after enduring an abominable 2024 campaign, one that included a 21-game losing streak. Statistically, the 2024 Sox are one of the worst teams in the history of Major League Baseball, tying the modern-day record of 120 losses set in 1962 by the New York Mets. Currently, owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s team is riding a three-game winning streak and will wind down the season with three opportunities this weekend in Detroit to break the all-time loss record.

Recent hot streak aside, as each loss ate away at the team’s respectability, numbed fans donned paper bags over their heads this week at Guaranteed Rate Field, rooting against the home team and hoping to witness the historic record-breaking loss while chanting “sell the team.”

An unlikely ballpark symbol would emerge to represent this lost season. Introduced in the spring, the $15 Campfire Milkshake features burned marshmallows swimming in a sea of whipped cream. A puddle of chocolate drips down and covers the rim of the 16-ounce plastic souvenir cup which is filled with Prairie Farms Belgian Chocolate ice cream mixed with graham crackers. A piece of a chocolate bar marks the final touch. A sip may cause a fan’s A1C to surge as high as the Sox’s bullpen ERA — good luck finishing it. On the last home game of this sordid season, 205 shakes were available at the Vizzy View Bar. It’s a well-oiled machine with fans ordering their shakes at the bar where a cashier hands them a receipt which they use to pick up their shake at a station by the bar’s entrance, near Section 157. The chilled glasses are laid out with their chocolate rims as fans watch workers make the shakes. During the Thursday, September 26 home finale, a game where a loss would break the record, the shakes were sold out within 40 minutes. Announced attendance was 15,678 — Sox Park’s capacity is 40,615.

Inside the Vizzy View Bar, an employee candidly tells fans the team made about $500,000 in sales on the shakes this season. Though the shakes are also available on the club level, that math might be off on this unverified figure. A half a million dollars would mean an average of 412 shakes were sold per game over 81 home games. Regardless, the shake was a success and management may bring the Campfire Shake back in 2025.

For a team with few stars, this rookie is perhaps the only thing worth remembering during a parade of failures that made national headlines last week when The Athletic published an embarrassing inside look at the team’s woes. That includes abysmal sequences like one from early September when two White Sox players collided during a game in Baltimore. The result allowed three runs to score with the Orioles’ TV announcer declaring “the White Sox have gone full White Sox.” Even horror writer Stephen King has acknowledged the White Sox season is a nightmare.

Fans, former players, and media have relied on gallows humor to survive the season, turning to the shake as a distraction from talking about the actual baseball. MLB posted a photo of the shake in March on X, and since then it’s garnered 14,500 likes. In the spring, no one predicted the White Sox to be historically bad, but marketing had a feeling they weren’t contenders. By April, the team’s record plunged and the marketing team honed in on the milkshake as a way to take the attention away from the team’s performance. Brooks Boyer, the team’s chief revenue and marketing officer, was apparently “giddy” that the Athletic was writing about the shake. In May, SB Nation blog South Side Sox wrote that the team’s “hottest offseason acquisition might be the Campfire Milkshake.”

The team would arrange for Olympic legend Simone Biles and her husband, Chicago Bear Jonathan Owens, to pose for a photo with the shake. Two fans wore customized jerseys to Sox Park — one with the word “Campfire” and the No. 20, and the other with “Milkshake” and the No. 24. Concession stand workers routinely say food and drink sales soar when the home team plays well. With few fans in the stands watching miserable baseball, tasting a shake provides a legitimate reason to attend a game.

“It makes all the sense in the world that the team would want to hop fans up on sugar but not fill us up on any nutrition,” South Side Sox editor Brett Ballantini writes to Eater. “[It] certainly dovetails with a smoke-and-mirrors front office, hiring processes, on-field performance…”

Milkshakes became a White Sox thing in 2022 when Levy executive chef Ryan Craig launched the horchata-churro flavor. The next season the team introduced the magonada, complete with a tamarind straw. Fans also had the option to spike the shake with booze. Those entries paved the way so the Campfire could burn.

Speaking during a media event in late August at Soldier Field, the inventor of the Campfire Milkshake, told Eater that he had no plans to create a shake for the Chicago Bears. Craig wanted to ensure the White Sox had something exclusive that would put a smile on their faces. He, of course, diplomatically didn’t mention the obvious: Why would the Bears want their own shake and want to be associated with baseball’s version of the Titanic?

For $15 — which rivals the cost of a ballpark beer — is it shake good? Former White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski isn’t impressed: “It comes in a cool glass, but I mean, it’s a milkshake,” the 2005 World Series champ said on the September 23 episode of the Foul Territory podcast. “It’s a milkshake with some chocolate and marshmallow on top. I mean it’s OK. It’s slightly above average.”

Pierzynski’s assessment is accurate. The torched or burned marshmallows aren’t even melted, it’s more for the look than the taste. But carrying the shake around is like a South Side status symbol, the equivalent of parading a Prada bag around the main concourse. That comes with concerns. On an unseasonably warm September afternoon, the sun melted the chocolate rim. Unless fans want warm chocolate on their fingers, these shakes are meant to be quickly consumed on the air-conditioned club level.

The 2025 season doesn’t look promising, coming on the 20th anniversary of the 2005 World Series win. Management is already saying that bad attendance will prevent them from improving the lineup through free agency, typically the quickest way to better a team. There’s already been talk about trading any player of value. Could management trade the recipe for the Campfire Shake to another team? If the shake returns, how much will the Sox increase prices? Management’s 2025 focus could be on funding a new ballpark. In February 2024, the team floated the idea of asking for $1 billion in public funding for a new stadium development. It would take more than 66.6 million shakes to reach that amount. Perhaps the Sox could hold a giant bake sale.

As of now, the shake looks like it may go down in White Sox infamy, with shorts, the problematic Disco Demolition Night, and Nolan Ryan’s noogies. It’s a symbol of the worst season in baseball history. And that’s not a very sweet memory at all.