How the White Sox’ Campfire Milkshake Symbolized the 2024 Season

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

Aside from the recent hot streak, when every loss tarnished the team’s respectability, stunned fans put paper bags over their heads at Guaranteed Rate Field this week, battling the home team and hoping to witness the historic record-breaking loss as they watched ‘sell the team.”

An unlikely baseball symbol would appear to represent this lost season. The $15 Campfire Milkshake, introduced in the spring, features burnt 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 filled with Prairie Farms Belgian chocolate ice cream mixed with graham crackers. A piece of chocolate bar marks the finishing touch. One sip can raise a fan’s A1C as high as the Sox’ bullpen ERA — good luck finishing that one. During the last home game of this nasty season, 205 shakes were available in 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 allowing them to pick up their shake at a station near the bar’s entrance, near section 157. The chilled glasses are ready with their chocolate milk. rims as fans watch workers make the shakes. During the home final on Thursday, September 26, a match where a loss would break the record, the shakes were sold out within 40 minutes. The announced attendance was 15,678 – the capacity of Sox Park is 40,615.

Photo by Matt Dirksen/Getty Images

At the Vizzy View Bar, an employee candidly tells fans that the team has made about $500,000 in sales from the shakes this season. Although the shakes are also available at club level, this calculation may not be correct for this unverified figure. Half a million dollars would mean an average of 412 shakes 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 short on stars, this rookie may be the only thing worth remembering in a parade of failures that made national headlines last week when The Athletic published an embarrassing look at the team’s woes. That includes horrific sequences like the one in early September when two White Sox players collided during a game in Baltimore. The result allowed three runs to be scored, with the Orioles’ TV announcer declaring, “The White Sox have gone full White Sox.” Even horror writer Stephen King has acknowledged that 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 actual baseball. MLB posted a photo of the shake on X in March and has since received 14,500 likes. Back in the spring, no one predicted the White Sox would be historically bad, but marketing felt like they weren’t contenders. In April, the team’s record plummeted and the marketing team started using the milkshake as a way to distract from the team’s performance. Brooks Boyer, the team’s head of revenue and marketing, was apparently “giddy” that the Athletic wrote about the shake. In May, SB Nation blog South Side Sox wrote that the “key acquisition of the offseason could 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 custom 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 beverage sales are up when the home team plays Good. Since there are few fans in the stands watching miserable baseball, sampling a shake is a legitimate reason to attend a game.

“It makes perfect sense that the team wants to give fans sugar but not provide us with nutrition,” South Side Sox editor Brett Ballantini wrote to Eater. “(It) certainly ties in with a smoke-and-mirror front office, recruitment processes, performance on the field…”

Milkshakes became a White Sox thing in 2022 when Levy chef Ryan Craig launched the horchata-churro flavor. The following season, the team introduced the magonada, complete with a tamarind straw. Fans also had the option to enrich the shake with drinks. Those entrances cleared the way for the campfire to burn.

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

For $15 – which is comparable to the cost of a baseball beer – is it any good? Former White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski is not impressed: “It’s in a cool glass, but I mean, it’s a milkshake,” the 2005 World Series champion 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 okay. It is slightly above average.”

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

The 2025 season doesn’t look promising considering it will be exactly 20 years since the 2005 World Series was won. Management is already saying that poor attendance will prevent them from improving the lineup through free agency, which is typically the quickest way to improve a team. There has already been talk about trading players of value. Can management trade the Campfire Shake recipe with another team? If the shock returns, how much will the Sox raise prices? Management’s focus in 2025 could be on financing a new stadium. In February 2024, the team floated the idea of ​​asking for $1 billion in public financing for the development of a new stadium. It would take more than 66.6 million shakes to reach that number. Maybe the Sox can have a huge bake sale.

From here on out, it looks like the shake will end up 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 is not a pleasant memory at all.