The unwritten rules of Chris Sale cutting up a throwback jersey because he’s mad at look I don’t even know what’s going on

Pretend this is a video clip, and that I’m inhaling and opening my mouth to say something, then shutting my mouth because I’ve thought better of it. Because I need to think more about what I’m going to say. This is not a clear case of right and wrong. There are layers. This is an onion wrapped in phyllo dough on a summer afternoon in San Francisco. You can’t believe how many layers we’re talking about.

Chris Sale took a knife to dozens of uniforms in the White Sox locker room on Saturday. He didn’t want to wear these particular throwback uniforms. He thought he made that clear. He thought his teammates and coaches had his back. So he went through and just, you know, whack whack slash slash whack whack. As one does.

Again. Opening my mouth. Thinking better of it. Shutting mouth. There’s so much we don’t know.

What we do know: Jon Heyman reports that Sale thought that these throwback jerseys were nixed already, that the sticking point was that these particular jerseys were more obtrusive than your typical wardrobe change. In his mind, these negotiations had already ended, with both the players and the coaches agreeing that these jerseys were too heavy/baggy/uncomfortable (even if it seems unlikely that throwbacks from 1976 would be wool because polyester blends were the default back then.)

Sale thinks an issue is settled, and then management throws a “curveball” at him. If true, that would be a reason to be upset. If you’ll remember, earlier in the year he was one of the most outspoken critics of White Sox management in the Drake LaRoche fiasco. There are layers to his discontent. Peel them back, and there are more reasons for him to think he’s surrounded by buffoons. This hasn’t been the best decade for the White Sox. More downs than ups, really. You can concoct a plausible scenario in which management doesn’t have the players’ trust. Especially with how the season started.

Maybe he was promised -- promised -- by someone he absolutely trusted that he wouldn’t have to deal with baggy throwbacks and a break in routine. Then money took over, and he saw what was really important to the organization.

Now it’s time to imagine the other side, the manner of protest. Think of what it means to do what Sale did. The premeditation and follow through, specifically. He didn’t see a rogue uniform hanging in the locker and start slashing at it with a hunting knife he conveniently had in his knapsack. This wasn’t impetuousness or pure rage. This was discovery, contemplation, action. It was almost certainly deliberate, in that order.

Presumably it happened when everyone was on the field, not in the clubhouse. And, perhaps most importantly, it wasn’t just a single uniform. It was dozens. Fhrrrrrriiiiiiiip goes the knife. Moves to the next one. Fhrrrrrriiiiip goes the knife. Moves to the next one. We don’t have an exact body/thread count, but I haven’t read anything that suggests there was a jersey spared.

So I lied with the headline. There are no unwritten rules. They’re written down. And Sale was suspended for five games because of them. This is more of a hybrid post, pairing the holy shit Chris Sale did whaaaaat with the “So, what now?”

Start with what Sale did, and what that means.

That there is almost no way that Chris Sale is on the White Sox at this time next year.

I’m sorry, I’ve looked at this for hours, and I can’t come to a different conclusion. I’m the biggest supporter of the “Keep Sale and Quintana around and figure the rest out on the fly, you weirdos” philosophy. All things being equal, I still am.

All things are not equal. I keep going back to the planning and the dedication. There was an initial reaction to the throwback jersey. Then there was a decision to ruin the jerseys when the team was taking batting practice. Then there was the commitment to vandalizing every jersey, an impressive single-mindedness and dedication.

_{and then what happened was he just sitting at his locker like vincent d’onofrio i want answers about this next part}

I keep going over and over this part because this doesn’t happen as a reaction to a single catalyst. If my editors and their bosses sent me a note tomorrow that they hate my mother — literally an email or DM detailing how much of a garbage mom I have — I don’t think I’d have a reaction like Sale’s. I don’t see myself winging each and every laptop I see out of an eighth-story window.

The discontent has to be absolutely festering. Whatever ticked him off in the first place is a seed, and the plant is Little Shop of Horrors by now. This isn’t a sharp rebuke, a tongue lashing in front of the whole team. This is a screw-you that’s hard to calculate. It doesn’t matter if it’s deserved or not. There was nothing ambiguous about it.

So start thinking about what would fix it. A new front office? A new coaching staff? Yes, that seems like a calm, seamless transition into the kind of dynasty that would make a superstar rethink his future with the franchise.

Nothing. The answer is nothing. There is a pitcher who’s still trying hard because he has self-respect and pride, so the performance shouldn’t suffer much. But there is a toxic clubhouse — more so? — that only winning might cure. It might be better to apply for the permits to raze the whole thing.

The good news for the White Sox is that they’re holding the last can of Coke in a post-apocalyptic trade market that’s saturated with flat Mountain Dew. That’s true for the next week. That’s true for the next year.

The White Sox trade him for all of the prospects.

Whether it’s now, to a team like the Dodgers or in the offseason, to whatever team was inspired by the Diamondbacks’ bold decision to go for it last year, this doesn’t change a damned thing from the perspective of the White Sox. They wanted to be blown away. They will still be blown away. This episode changes nothing.

RANGERS: Ugh, this temper tantrum. Can’t see us offering more than Joey Gallo at this point. You know what? That’s not an official offer. We have to reevaluate.

DODGERS: Totally know what you mean. I mean, we might offer Julio Urias, but we’re pretty disenchanted by this news. We can take him or leave him. What a baby.

RANGERS: I know, right? It makes us hesitant to offer even Gallo and Jurickson Profar in the same deal, with, say, Lewis Brinson thrown in.

DODGERS: Exactly. It’s why we wouldn’t even offer Urias, Puig, Seager, Jansen, and a stake in the pigeon farm that supplies our Dodger Dogs concession.

RANGERS: We kept some of Nolan Ryan’s DNA, you know. We’ve conducted ... experiments. We think we’re close to a breakthrough, and we’re willing to share.

And that’s just a mock conversation between two teams. There are about 15 to 18 teams that will be interested in, if not desperate for, a below-market ace. He throws baseballs like an AT-AT being drawn and quartered, and it’s magnificent. The bidding war would be radioactive. It’s easy from the outside to look at this as some sort of White Sox problem instead of a Chris Sale problem. The price might dip when the markets open, but it’ll rebound strongly by the closing bell.

What this did, though, was push the White Sox into the oncoming train. With each hack-slash-hack, Sale gave his employers more PR chips. Whereas any Sale rumor before last week was borderline offensive to a true White Sox believer, now there’s at least a measure of understanding. This isn’t a bad team selling a great player because that’s what bad teams do. This is a supremely unhappy player, someone who just doesn’t want to be with this team in its current form.

It might be the best thing that ever happened to the White Sox, really. They have the freedom they didn’t have before. If they get the right package, they might clean up. Just like when the Twins turned Johan Santana into ... or when the Expos got Carl Pavano for ... or ... look, it doesn’t matter. There’s a reason for them to trade Sale now, and the reasoning extends beyond it’s just what bad teams normally do. The best part is it still shouldn’t change their leverage.

If Sale is on the next good White Sox team, making good on my semi-lucid dreams of a postseason 1-2 punch to rival anyone in either league, it’ll be an upset. It turns out he took a knife to a bunch of jerseys, and now he’s almost certainly going to be traded.

Things look so simple in the offseason, don’t they?