The White Sox win the World Series. I’ve waited my entire life to say that. For 28 years, I thought about saying it. I wondered what it would feel like to say it. But I couldn’t say it and make it come true. And it most certainly wouldn’t have lived up to the reality of saying it for the first time like I did yesterday.
You’ve waited your entire life to say it, too. And now you can. It’s something that will never be taken away from you. You can forever tell the tales of the 2005 season.
After the game last night at “The Corner Office” Poker Jason said to me, “I expect a good post on NachosRule.com tomorrow.” Well, Jason, here’s my best shot. Here’s my tale of the 2005 season…
As with most seasons, I start to read the pre-season predictions around March. And, as usual, the experts made their usual predictions. “Cardinals over the Red Sox”, “Yankees over the Giants”, or the out-on-a-limb “Phillies over the Twins”. The AL Central was supposed to look something like this – 1) Minnesota 2) Cleveland 3) White Sox 4) Detroit 5) Kansas City. Some experts even went as far as to put Detroit above Chicago. This led to my usual emails to Charlotte Dan and my dad; upset at the lack of respect the national media gives the White Sox every year. I can’t even begin to imagine the number of times I wrote “Pitching wins pennants”. I couldn’t believe that nobody had noticed the change in their starting rotation over the previous year. I kept saying that in 2004, they started the season with Buehrle, Loaiza, Garland, Schoenweis and about half a dozen guys who couldn’t pitch their way through a paper bag, fighting for the fifth slot (including Dan Wright, Jon Adkins, Jon Rauch, Felix Diaz and Jason Grilli). You’re probably saying, “Who the hell are these guys?” Well, that’s the point. They couldn’t put together a rotation.
They entered 2005 with Mark Buehrle still heading the rotation. But instead of being the #3 guy, Jon Garland would fill that evasive 5th slot, alleviating all sorts of pressure on him, and filling out a complete rotation for the first time in years. Since the middle of 2004, they had added Freddy Garcia, Jose Contreras and Orlando Hernandez. Each of whom were tremendous upgrades from the previous year. I kept thinking to myself – Why doesn’t anybody else see this? Am I so blinded by my prejudice that I’m missing something big? I mean, last year’s team won 83 games with shoddy pitching and season ending injuries to their top 2 hitters. Is it so hard to believe that they might win a few more games this year? Maybe even enough to win the division? I was excited. I seemed to be the only one.
For the first time in recent memory, they came out of the gates hot. They won each of their first 7 series with a 16-4 record. That’s what good teams do. They don’t worry about long winning streaks. They win series. They don’t let a loss or two get them down. People forget that the White Sox were 31-12 in mid-May when after they took the first two games against the Cubs at Wrigley. 19 games over .500 in mid-May? Are you joking? There was already talk of, “If they go .500 the rest of the season, they’ll still finish with 90 wins.”
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