September 29, 2005: White Sox clinch AL Central crown en route to first World Series title in 88 years

Heading into the 2005 season, the Chicago White Sox had been consistent contenders in the American League Central Division since their last divisional title in 2000. Chicago, as was its wont during that period, constructed its 2004 squad to compete one-dimensionally via the long ball – much to the dismay of manager Ozzie Guillén. The outspoken first-year skipper (and the team’s longtime former star shortstop) had “grown tired watching the team fall short year after year despite a lineup stacked with sluggers.”1 Instead, he sought strong pitching and a more balanced attack. “We hit a lot of home runs, but so what?” Guillén said. “We had no leadoff hitter, no speed, we had a lot of holes to fill.”2 Despite his managerial inexperience, Guillén helped persuade general manager Ken Williams to begin a major roster overhaul that would allow his team to “hit and run, bunt, steal bases [and] create action instead of wait for [home runs].”3 Key midseason-2004 acquisitions included “professional hitter” Carl Everett along with starting pitchers Freddy García and José Contreras.4

Williams accelerated the rebuild in the offseason before the 2005 campaign. He offset the departure of sluggers Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordóñez, and José Valentín with the addition of a mix of speed, defense, and pitching that featured “low-maintenance, low-ego type guys, and hard workers.”5 Speedy left fielder Scott Podsednik, star Japanese import second baseman Tadahito Iguchi, power-hitting right fielder Jermaine Dye, and fiery catcher A.J. Pierzynski came aboard to become mainstays of the starting lineup. Incoming relievers Dustin Hermanson, Bobby Jenks, and Luis Vizcaíno helped revamp the bullpen. “We didn’t try to reinvent the game when we set out to put this team together,” Williams explained. “What we wanted to do was basically go back to what has worked in baseball history and stand firm on those fundamentals: Catch the ball, pitch the ball, and give yourself a chance to be in and win every ballgame.”6

The controversial “drastic” moves quickly proved successful, with the White Sox maintaining the division lead throughout the 2005 season – although not without some drama.7 After enjoying a comfortable 15-game margin on August 1, the team fell flat over the final two months of the campaign and nearly squandered its divisional stranglehold. Nonetheless, the White Sox clutched a tenuous three-game lead over the Cleveland Indians as they headed into a September 29 road contest against the Detroit Tigers. A victory over the Tigers would guarantee the AL Central title for the White Sox.

Detroit had won two of the first three in the four-game set against its divisional foe. However, the woeful Tigers entered the contest a distant 24 games out of first place and were without the services of key regulars Iván Rodríguez and Carlos Guillén. “It’s been a tough go,” manager Alan Trammell said of the team’s 12th consecutive losing season that ultimately resulted in his firing the day after the season ended.8

Making only his third appearance of the campaign, Jason Grilli took the mound for Detroit in his final big-league start before embarking on a lengthy career as a bullpen arm. The White Sox called upon the 13-8 workhorse García, who relished “high-profile games.”9 The crowd of 13,494 at Comerica Park endured brisk weather conditions during the afternoon tilt.

A bases-empty double by Dye kick-started a two-out rally for Chicago in the top of the first inning. After veteran slugger Paul Konerko walked to put two aboard, Everett tripled, scoring both runners. Everett remained stranded on third when Grilli, who had started eight games for the White Sox a year earlier, retired his former teammate Aaron Rowand on a fly ball.

After García made quick work of Detroit in the bottom half of the inning, Chicago used its “small-ball tactics to manufacture a run” in the second frame.10 Pierzynski led things off with a double and took third on a sacrifice by Juan Uribe. After a walk to Willie Harris put runners at the corners, Podsednik scored Pierzynski on a sacrifice fly to give the visitors a 3-0 lead. That score held until Grilli allowed a solo home run to Konerko in the sixth inning to give the White Sox a four-run advantage.

The Tigers’ offense finally found some life in the bottom of the seventh. Craig Monroe and Brandon Inge led off with singles. Monroe moved to third on Vance Wilson’s groundout and scored on a wild pitch. García settled down to retire the next two batters and limit the damage to one run.

Detroit again chipped away at the deficit in the eighth after Tigers reliever Chris Spurling blanked Chicago in the top half of the frame. Plácido Polanco’s leadoff single chased García from the game in favor of reliever Cliff Politte. After retiring the first batter he faced, the journeyman allowed a double to former White Sox star Ordóñez that scored Polanco. The inning’s cavalcade of pitching changes continued with relievers Neal Cotts and Jenks being called upon from the bullpen; the two successfully held the score at 4-2 as the increasingly nerve-racking game headed into the final stanza.

After Detroit reliever Fernando Rodney narrowly escaped trouble in the top of the ninth, Guillén decided to leave the fate of Chicago’s precarious two-run lead to the right arm of Jenks, whose last four appearances included two blown saves and a loss. The 6-foot-4, 275-pound rookie – promoted from Double-A ball in July – had recently supplanted an ailing Hermanson as the team’s closer.

Inge’s fourth single of the game led off the bottom of the ninth for Detroit. He moved to second on Wilson’s bouncing ball that was booted by third baseman Joe Crede, who had just returned to the team that morning after visiting Missouri for the birth of his second child. After the “shaky” start, however, Jenks retired the next three Tigers on back-to-back strikeouts and a “scary” line drive to first that Konerko speared to end the game – and give the White Sox their first AL Central title in five years.11 “I won’t lie to you – my stomach dropped a little bit when the ball was hit,” Jenks admitted after collecting his fourth save of the year. “It was an unbelievable catch.”12 After making his potentially game-saving grab, Konerko viewed the contest as being analogous to Chicago’s campaign as a whole. “It was like our season,” the All-Star first baseman said. “We cruised through seven innings, and then we got a little tight at the end and pulled it out.”13

After the relatively mild on-field celebration among White Sox players moved into the clubhouse, a raucous party commenced. “At the height of the festivities, champagne and beer were being sprayed so fiercely it was as if an automatic sprinkler system had been activated,” Chicago sportswriter Rick Morrissey wrote. “Cigar smoke hung over the scene. Salsa music throbbed. Grown men acted like boys.”14 The celebration validated the “feisty leadership of Guillén and foresight of Williams” from doubters who thought the team would fritter away its divisional lead.15 However, the “only choke” on this day involved the manager and GM “choking back tears of joy.”16

Curiously, not present during the merrymaking was longtime Chicago slugger and future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas, whose season ended in July when he fractured a foot. “Frank’s not here because he chose not to be here,” Guillén bluntly said.17 Chicago sportswriter Chris De Luca deduced that Thomas’s absence was a signal that his 16-season run with the team was “nearing its last chapter.”18 After two consecutive injury-plagued campaigns, Thomas indeed was not brought back by the White Sox in 2006, creating a years-long rift between the two parties.

Looking ahead despite being surrounded by the ongoing revelry, winning pitcher García declared that the team needed “to step up for the first round of the playoffs.”19 And while still in the midst of drying off from champagne baths, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who had been a “basket case” down the tense stretch run, began wondering about the “mind-boggling” possibility of winning a championship for the city.20 Even jubilant Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley opined that the White Sox “can be in the World Series easily.”21

Indeed, the “lunch-bucket” team took seven of eight games in the first two playoff rounds to win its first pennant in 46 years.22 The White Sox then swept the Houston Astros to capture the World Series in “arguably the greatest postseason run in history.”23 The championship was the White Sox’ first since 1917. Much of that year’s squad subsequently became embroiled in the infamous Black Sox Scandal involving game-fixing in the 1919 fall classic that, as legend has it, cast a long-lingering malediction over the Windy City’s South Siders. But Chicago’s defeat of Detroit on a late September day 86 years after that ugly episode in baseball’s annals was the first step toward finally exorcising the Curse of Shoeless Joe (Jackson).24

Sources

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for box scores/play-by-play information, and other data.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET200509290.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2005/B09290DET2005.htm

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperArchive.com, Newspapers.com, Paper of Record, Stathead.com, Weather Underground, and a recording of the game’s television broadcast from Comcast SportsNet in Chicago posted on YouTube.

Notes

1 Mark Gonzales, “Small Ball Rules: Buehrle’s Gem, 1 Run Just Enough to Top Cleveland,” Chicago Tribune, April 5, 2005: Section 4, 1.

2 The Pride of Chicago: The White Sox’s 2005 Championship Season (St. Louis: The Sporting News, 2005), 18.

3 The Pride of Chicago: The White Sox’s 2005 Championship Season, 14.

4 “D-Rays Offer Deal to Everett,” Lakeland (Florida) Ledger, December 10, 2003, https://www.theledger.com/story/news/2003/12/10/d-rays-offer-deal-to-everett/26088026007/, accessed June 4, 2024.

5 Dave van Dyck, “Built From the Grind Up,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Section 4, 7.

6 Doug Padilla, “Williams Happy, but He Has a More Worldly View,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: 151.

7 Van Dyck.

8 Gene Guidi, “Central Time for Chisox,” Detroit Free Press, September 30, 2005: 7E.

9 Doug Padilla, “Celebration Central,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: Red Streak, 19.

10 Mark Gonzales, “Weight Lifters,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Section 4, 3.

11 “Clinch Runners,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Redeye, 13; Mike Downey, “Sox’s Gaze Extending Well Beyond Cleveland,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Section 4, 3.

12 Rick Morrissey, “An Amazin’ Finish and a Fresh Start,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Section 1, 6.

13 Padilla, “Celebration Central.”

14 Morrissey.

15 Chicago Sun-Times, White Sox: 2005 World Series Champions (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing LLC, 2005), 125.

16 White Sox: 2005 World Series Champions, 54.

17 Chris De Luca, “Sox Stand Up to Test,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: 157.

18 De Luca.

19 Doug Padilla, “Steady Freddy, Timely Hitting Return; ‘Look Out’ in Postseason, Konerko Warns,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: 156.

20 Rick Telander, “The Way I See It,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: 158.

21 Rummana Hussain, “Daley Rejoices: ‘Happy, Happy Day,’” Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2005: 6.

22 Mark Gonzales, “Lunch-Bucket Sox Feast on Achievement,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 2005: Section 4, 6.

23 Phil Rogers, Say It’s So: The Chicago White Sox’s Magical Season (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2006), 263.

24 David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2006 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006), 737.