Following the White Sox’ poor campaign on the field last season, capped with the departure of manager Ozzie Guillen, the team is tweaking its promotional theme for 2012.

The Sox marketing department, which brought you gems like the Grinderball Rules (e.g., No. 96: Expect the unexpected at U.S. Cellular Field, home of the White Sox), is offering a new spin on the 2011 slogan, “All in.”

In 2012, the Sox will rally around “Folding is sometimes a respectable play.”

“We wanted to make sure we weren’t raising people’s expectations too much, so we changed the tagline,” said Martin Rollins, the team’s head of marketing. “Think about it: If you’re holding a pair of deuces — or, let’s say, Adam Dunn and Alex Rios — you’d have to be crazier than Robin ‘Mojo Rising’ Ventura to go all in. Sometimes, it’s better to just say, ‘I got nothin.'”

According to Rollins, the Sox marketing team batted around a few other ideas, including “There’s always the year after next” and “Still more fun than watching the Chicago Sky,” before settling on the folding slogan for this year.

By Brian Summerfield

Brian Summerfield