Paul Sullivan: White Sox are off to the races after salvaging a win against the Cubs in the City Series finale
Published in Baseball
CHICAGO — Another engaging chapter of the City Series ended Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley Field with a split decision.
The White Sox avoided a sweep with a 3-0 win over the Cubs, evening the season series 3-3.
“Both series, at our place and here, were fun,” Sox pitcher Erick Fedde said. “Maybe us going 3-3 helped Chicago not burn down.”
Both the Cubs and White Sox won two of three at their own ballpark, with the Sox outscoring the Cubs 33-32 in the six games.
As late Tribune sportswriter Bob Logan liked to say, it was “a titanic tussle of two evenly matched teams,” and both stepped up when it mattered this week to produce three wildly entertaining games in the long-running city saga that never seems to disappoint.
The BP Cup is just a distant memory now, so there was no trophy ceremony afterward, which is just as well. The Cubs-Sox games don’t need anything to play for these days, since both have bigger aspirations. They could meet again in a couple of months in the World Series, which is a sentence I never thought I would type.
“That’s the goal,” left fielder Sam Antonacci said.
It was just a workmanlike effort led by the Sox pitching and defense, with rookie outfielders Antonacci and Braden Montgomery making sensational defensive gems and bulk pitcher Jose Urquidy silencing the Cubs on two hits over six shutout innings.
This wasn’t the first time this summer the Sox came to the North Side and left on an upbeat note. In late June, Fedde and several teammates ventured up to Big Joe’s bar in Andersonville for its famous turtle races.
“Just got the boys together on an off day and having a little fun,” Fedde said. “We knew Chicago is known for turtle racing, so we got in contact with them and they seemed like good people, and it worked out well. I didn’t have a turtle win, but the big winner that night was Junior Pérez. At the end of the night, he took home the crown.”
Some of the young Sox players are getting their first real taste of a pennant race, and veterans such as Fedde know the grind can make you crazy. Like everyone else in life, sometimes you need to forget about your job and just cut loose a little.
“It’s a long season, and you have a lot of ups and downs,” Fedde said. “Sometimes it’s nice to just hang out and not think about baseball a little bit. I think those days are important and brings the guys closer.”
The Sox went 4-2 on the Detroit-North Side trip, their biggest in five years. They come home Thursday for a makeup game against the Atlanta Braves and then a weekend series against the New York Mets.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we learned that we didn’t already know,” manager Will Venable said, repeating the mantra the Sox have used since spring training.
We learned Sox fans aren’t satisfied with a brief playoff cameo. The made their feelings known at Wrigley Field, often outshouting Cubs fans.
“Sox fans all year have been great, and they definitely showed up this week,” reliever Grant Taylor said. “At some points it definitely felt like a home game. We’ve gotten a lot of love recently, even just going about our days when we’re not on the field. We’re seeing a lot more White Sox hats, White Sox shirts. Been a lot of fun.”
Barring a World Series matchup, we don’t know when these two will meet again.
A lockout looms in 2027, and players from both teams will stand united against MLB owners’ get-richer-quicker plan of implementing a salary cap.
But if this is the last we see of the Cubs and Sox for a while, it was a good way to end it.
After Pete Crow-Armstrong’s walk-off home run Monday in an all-time classic, Sox slugger Munetaka Murakami damaged the left-field video board Tuesday with a massive home run off it and probably is waiting on the Cubs to send him the repair bill. Then came the “Green Bay sucks” rain delay with shirtless fans of both teams grooving to “Dancing Queen” and finally Wednesday’s tense finale.
Even Cubs-hating Sox fans had to marvel at the performance of Crow-Armstrong, whose three home runs stole the show and helped his MVP cause.
And even Sox-hating Cubs fans had to be impressed with the gutsy play of a young Sox team that has proved it can bounce back from any knockdown. Like the series at Yankee Stadium, the Sox showed resiliency by avoiding a sweep.
“We might be in the postseason facing a win-or-go-home scenario, and to be able to come through in that situation, like today, is huge,” Taylor said.
The game’s biggest moment came in the seventh when Antonacci leaped up against the vines in left to rob Alex Bregman of extra bases in a 1-0 game. Montgomery said he was “frozen in time watching” Antonacci’s catch.
“I see it go off the bat, and I’m like, ‘Please, no,'” he said.
Antonacci said he had to forget about the fact there were real bricks behind the ivy-covered walls.
“You’ve got to blot it out of your mind,” he said. “If you have any doubt like that, odds are you’re not going to come down with it … until I get a concussion, and then it’s a little bit (different).”
There’s no better place to be than Chicago when both teams are winning, the sun is shining and a cool breeze sweeps in off the lake. It reminds us how much we love our city, our summers, our baseball and even our homegrown celebs such as Common and Jennifer Hudson, who were seen sitting together at Wednesday’s matinee.
Sure, the bleacher brawl Monday was embarrassing. But for the most part Cubs and Sox fans got along and treated each other with mutual respect. Walking down the ramps after Wednesday’s game, some fans openly discussed a potential October rematch. Imagine that?
The odds are still against it, but crazier things have happened. Remember, in Aesop’s fable about the hare and the tortoise, slow and steady won the race.
A racing turtle is certainly a fitting metaphor for this White Sox season. They haven’t broken any speed records, but they’re still in first place and outsmarting the rest of the American League Central with 36 games remaining.
Maybe the field trip to Big Joe’s was a perfect choice.
Can the team that races turtles together win together?
“We’ve been consistent all year,” Fedde said. “And we keep chugging along.”
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