KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As Trevor Richards, the rubber-armed reliever rescued from years of bouncing between the minors and majors, stepped on first base for the final out on Thursday, his White Sox teammates reacted in subdued fashion.
The first team in MLB history to reach the postseason on the heels of three-straight seasons of 100 losses or more, lined up for post-victory handshakes like it was any other win.
It was a feint.
“We knew we kinda had to play it chill,” said shortstop Colson Montgomery, donning ski goggles and light years away from caring about tying the MLB single-season strikeout record. “We just knew once we got in the clubhouse, we were all going to go nuts and go crazy. This is just a product of a couple years in the making.”
The turmoil of those years inspired a release beyond what paddling a last-place Royals team 9-1 to clinch — for now — the final American League wild card spot might otherwise inspire.
“We’ve been chasing this moment for a long time,” said Miguel Vargas, a human mood ring for the White Sox franchise over the last three seasons. “It’s special for us, it’s special for the organization.”
“This is what we do,” said Sean Burke, surveying the jubilant landscape with a cigar in hand, and scheduled for a start on Friday crucial for the AL Central race.
As Montgomery’s interview ended, the opening chords of Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’” — the bawdy 80’s funk hit that became the de facto anthem for a Sox offense that shocked the league with best-in-AL production — began to play, inspiring a mob of dancing around clubhouse energizer Mike Vasil.
“This is what the White Sox are,” Munetaka Murakami said via interpreter. “We’ve come together. This is not the end.”
About a half hour after reaching base five times, catching nine innings of one-run ball and lifting his fifth home run of an otherwise injury-ravaged season, a shirtless Kyle Teel was being hoisted in the air by Vasil. Efforts for Teel to return the favor were genuine, but quickly abandoned. In the past few days, Sox players assured that their larger goals wouldn’t dampen their celebration of a playoff berth, and were as good as their word.
“This was better than anything I could have ever imagined,” said Davis Martin, as the longest-tenured White Sox player took a moment to watch from the sidelines. “When you’re 6-13, it’s real easy to go ‘we’re still rebuilding, we’re still not ready to compete.’ We didn’t do that.”
In an age where teams claiming that “nobody believed in us” in their beer-drenched celebratory locker rooms has become a cliche, the White Sox can claim it genuinely, and maybe even internally; in the sense of how quickly it happened.
There were champagne stains on the shirts of White Sox front office members as well, but they once thought–like everyone else in the sport–they were navigating a methodical return to postseason baseball. The Murakami signing that convinced so many Sox players that the sky was the limit for this year, was once seen as a low-risk, buy-low addition for a team with little to lose.
Corner a Sox player on when they believed the playoffs were possible, and the answer will be “spring training.” Corner a Sox decision-maker, and the answer might be more nuanced.
“It happened organically throughout the year,” said manager Will Venable.
“It doesn’t really matter what I think,” said general manager Chris Getz. “Because this group believes.”
Incredibly, they always did. Burke, who debuted at the end of the wretched, 121-loss 2024 season, has said he thanks God that he’s a member of the Chicago White Sox.
It was a common feeling on Thursday, but it began earlier.
“Honestly, man, when I first debuted I felt that way, even though we were terrible,” Burke told the Sun-Times. “We play in one of the best cities in America, one of the most iconic sports teams in the country. I felt it from the start.”