The White Sox Bring It Home

Fifteen years ago, on October 23, 2005, the White Sox came from behind to beat the Houston Astros and take a two-games-to-none lead in the World Series. Spoiler alert: the South Siders were headed for a sweep. Here is a brief recounting of that series.   

After the 2005 White Sox won the American League pennant, chairman Jerry Reinsdorf wanted more. “No matter what happens,” he said, “when you win the pennant, you’ve had one wonderful year. But then you get greedy, and you want to get four more [wins]. It’s only been since 1917, so I think it’s time, and hopefully these guys can get the job done.”

The South Siders’ opponents in their first World Series since 1959 were the Houston Astros, who had come into being in 1962 and were appearing in their first Fall Classic ever.

 

Game 1 was played in Chicago on October 22. Roger Clemens started for Houston and was not effective, leaving with a sore hamstring after two innings and three White Sox runs. Joe Crede made the difference for the Sox with both bat and glove; his fourth-inning home run snapped a 3-3 tie, and he made diving stops at third base in the sixth (with a runner on third and one out) and the seventh (with two on and two out). The Sox added a run in the eighth on Scott Podsednik’s triple with A.J. Pierzynski aboard. Closer Bobby Jenks struck out three of the four batters he faced to preserve the 5-3 win for starter Jose Contreras.

PAUL KONERKO WATCHES HIS GRAND SLAM IN FLIGHT.

Game 2 was one of the most entertaining games ever played in Chicago—or anywhere else, for that matter. The cold, wet weather did not dampen the enthusiasm of the 41,432 who turned out. Old reliable Mark Buehrle pitched seven innings for the White Sox, allowing four runs on seven hits. His counterpart, Andy Pettitte, left after six innings with a 4-2 lead. Dan Wheeler started the seventh for Houston and retired Crede on a foul pop-up. Then Juan Uribe stroked a double to center. Podsednik struck out. Tadahito Iguchi coaxed a walk. Jermaine Dye was up next; he worked the count to 3-and-2 before the next offering hit his bat—but was ruled to have hit his arm. Now the bases were loaded, and the crowd was in an uproar.

Chad Qualls replaced Wheeler on the mound. Sox first baseman Paul Konerko stepped up to the plate. He swung at Qualls’s first pitch and drilled it over the wall for a grand slam. It was one of the most electrifying moments in Chicago’s long baseball history. Konerko circled the bases and then took a curtain call to acknowledge the tremendous ovation from the rain-soaked crowd. After the game, Konerko maintained that he’d been focused on getting a hit to tie the score and that the idea of hitting a home run hadn’t occurred to him. “That’s usually when you get them,” he said, “when you’re not trying to.”

 

Cliff Politte retired the Astros in order in the eighth, and Jenks came on in the ninth with the Sox still ahead 6-4. With two outs and runners on second and third, pinch hitter Jose Vizcaino lined a single to left, and the game was tied. Neal Cotts replaced Jenks and got the third out with no further damage.

 

Houston manager Phil Garner handed the ball to all-star closer Brad Lidge for the bottom of the ninth. Lidge retired Uribe for the first out, but then the unlikely Podsednik belted a home run to right-center field, and the White Sox were 7-6 winners. After hitting no homers during the regular season, Podsednik had now hit his second of the postseason. Few home runs, even by the most illustrious sluggers, have been more impactful. It was only the 14th “walk-off” homer in World Series history, and it gave the Sox a commanding lead in the Series. “Clearly, everything they’re doing now is right,” Garner said. “They can’t do anything wrong.”

 

Game 3, the first World Series game ever played in Texas, was a classic. It looked bleak for the White Sox early, as the Astros built up a 4-0 lead for their ace righthander Roy Oswalt in the first four innings. Crede started the top of the fifth with a home run and ended the inning standing on first base after being hit by a pitch. In the meantime, RBI singles by Iguchi and Dye and a two-run double by Pierzynski had given the Sox a 5-4 edge.

 

Sox righty Jon Garland settled down and retired nine of the last 10 batters he faced. He left after seven innings with the Sox still ahead 5-4. In the bottom of the eighth, with two on and two out, Houston’s Jason Lane doubled off Dustin Hermanson to tie the score. Then, with the go-ahead run on third and a potential insurance run (Lane) on second, Hermanson caught Brad Ausmus looking to end the inning.

 

Both teams were scoreless in the ninth inning. And the 10th. And the 11th, 12th, and 13th. A parade of pitchers, pinch hitters, and pinch runners cluttered the scorecard for both sides, and still the game remained tied. Dye led off the White Sox’ 14th with a single, a hopeful sign, but Konerko bounced into a double play on the very next pitch. Geoff Blum, a backup infielder who’d been acquired late in the season, came up to bat. After taking two balls from pitcher Ezequiel Astacio, Blum connected with a low fastball and sent it over the right-field fence. “I didn’t know if I got it high enough,” he said. “Somebody was watching out for me.” The home run was the first and last at-bat of the Series for Blum, a former Astro. The Sox added another run on two singles and two walks, taking a 7-5 edge into the bottom of the 14th.

 

Damaso Marte, the Sox’ eighth pitcher of the night, was on the hill for his second inning of work. With two outs and a man on first, an error by shortstop Uribe put the tying runs on and brought the winning run to the plate. Manager Ozzie Guillen called for Buehrle, who had concluded his seven-inning stint in Game 2 just 51 hours earlier. Buehrle got Adam Everett on a pop-up to Uribe, who had no mishap this time. The Sox won to take a 3-0 lead in the Series.

 

The Astros had managed just one hit after the fourth inning and had stranded 15 base runners in all. They’d left the potential winning run in scoring position in the ninth, 10th, and 11th. Houston skipper Garner did not offer any platitudes. “This is embarrassing,” he said, “the way it’s played out.” Garner saw what was obvious to anyone by now: that the White Sox would soon be world champions.

 

In Game 4 on October 26, Freddy Garcia and Astros righthander Brandon Backe each tossed seven shutout innings. Lidge came on in the eighth for Houston. Willie Harris, pinch hitting for Garcia, led off the inning with a single. Podsednik sacrificed him to second. Harris advanced to third on a groundout and scored on a clutch two-out single by Dye. “I just stayed with my game plan,” said Dye. “I didn’t try to do too much, just tried to hit it hard somewhere and found a hole up the middle.”

 

The lone run was enough. Politte and Cotts held the lead through the eighth, and Jenks closed the Astros out in the ninth. The game, the series, the season, and White Sox’ 88-year wait ended on a ground ball to Uribe, who tossed to Konerko for the final out. Konerko held onto the ball for a couple days, then presented it to Reinsdorf at the Sox’ victory celebration in Chicago. The latter was overcome with emotion at the gracious and surprising gesture.

 

“It was only fitting it ended up 1-0,” Pierzynski said of the final game. “That’s the way we started the year [on Opening Day], that’s the way we started the second half, and that’s the way it should have ended.”

 

The Series really should have ended, in a perfect world, on the South Side of Chicago. It was mildly disappointing that all four clinching games—for the division title, the first playoff series, the American League Championship Series, and the World Series—had been on the road. Thus the White Sox and their fans hadn’t had the chance to celebrate these victories together. Nonetheless, it had been a spectacular and satisfying run: 11-1 in the postseason and 19-3 overall since a nerve-wracking September slump. The White Sox had spent every day of the season in first place, beaten back all comers, and earned the mantle of world champions in every way.

 

“People are looking for big theories,” general manager Kenny Williams said. “We’ve just got 25 hard-working, grind-it-out guys. We asked them one thing—each and every one of them to leave it all out on the field. They did that more than any team I’ve ever seen.”

 

As White Sox fans basked in the glory of the achievement they had always imagined but never quite expected, they paused to recall other faithful fans who hadn’t lived long enough to see it. Although many of these parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, and friends had been deceased for decades, they weren’t really gone—at least in the minds of their survivors. The Sox had won for them, too.

 

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.