This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

I Always Knew There was a Strauss-Bloom-Guillen Tie to the White Sox

In a groundbreaking, and brief, article, Abe Socher makes Arden Koeffler's "Strauss Guides Sox From Grave" available online.

Although he is often given credit for the current neo-conservative ascendancy in Washington, Leo Strauss' greatest posthumous triumph may be in the current success of the Chicago White Sox. Under controversial rookie manager Ozzie Guillen, the White Sox won their first World Series since 1917 yesterday. It was their first appearance in the World Series since 1959.

Friends and biographers describe Leo Strauss' move from the New School of Social Research in New York to the University of Chicago as an epochal event in the political philosopher's life and thought. "It's really not a coincidence that Strauss published his first truly American book, Natural Right and History, after he moved to Chicago and became a White Sox fan . . . . "He used to say I love America, but I hate those fuerschluginer Yankees." . . .

In fact during the 1950s Strauss frequently took his students from the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus to nearby Comiskey Field on the south side of Chicago. By the mid-50s he was holding seminars there with his best students, including Harvey Mansfield (whom he apparently never forgave for the move to Boston), Allan Bloom and others.

These seminars, held near the outfield bullpen, eventually attracted the notice of ace pitcher Early Wynn, who brought them to the attention of Manager Al Lopez. "By the time we really hit our stride in '59," Catcher Sherm Lollar would later remember, "everybody was going to them seminars--me, Al, Early, Turk [Lown], Larry Doby, Nellie Fox, and on down the line. That's where we learned to balance power, strategy and pitching, by reading Plato, Xenophon, Al Farabi and all those guys. I still remember the presentation that Klu [slugger Ted Kluszewski], Bubba Phillips and Earl Torgeson put together on Machiavelli. It really opened our eyes."

After Strauss died the back-channel connection between the proto-neo-conservatives at the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought and the management of the White Sox appeared to die with him. But it was revived by Allan Bloom in the 1980s, when he met White Sox manager Tony La Russa at a party commemorating the anniversary of the publication of Rousseau's Emile. La Russa introduced Bloom to Chicago's most promising shortstop since "Little Looey" Aparicio had played on the Strauss-Lopez teams of the 1950s. That was current White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. While the extent of Bloom's influence on Guillen remains a matter of speculation, there is no doubt that his team is a throwback to the Straussian clubs of the late 1950s and early 1960s. When pressed about Straussian influence the usually ebullient Guillen was circumspect. "We're just glad to be here," he said, "the kind of questions you're asking, that's not for the masses, man."