HOUSTON -- The White Sox are back at the site of their last playoff series win, but the number that matters to this group isn’t 2005.
It’s Game 1.
When the White Sox open the American League Wild Card Series against the Astros in Houston, they’ll be doing it in a ballpark where Juan Uribe, Paul Konerko, Bobby Jenks and Orlando Palmeiro helped close out a championship run on Oct. 26, 2005. Palmeiro’s slow roller up the middle was handled by Uribe at shortstop, who fired to Konerko at first to finish off the final out, lock in Jenks’ save and complete a 1-0 win that capped a four-game World Series sweep over Houston at what is now Daikin Park.
That was also the last time the White Sox won a playoff series of any kind.
For the current roster, most of whom were nowhere near baseball age nearly 21 years ago, that history is more trivia than burden. Sam Antonacci said, “I would have been three,” before adding, “So, I don’t even know what I was doing.”
Tristan Peters did his own math on the moment.
“Twenty years ago?” he said. “I was six.”
Since that title run, the White Sox have had only a few cracks at October. They won 90 games in 2006 but missed the postseason, lost 90 in 2007, then got back in through the AL Central tiebreaker Game 163 in 2008 and the Blackout Game against the Twins. That team was without Carlos Quentin, who had been a strong AL Most Valuable Player candidate before breaking his right wrist early in September, and then lost in four games to the Rays in the Division Series.
The next postseason trip didn’t arrive until 2020, when the White Sox dropped a three-game series in Oakland during the COVID-shortened season. In 2021, they were eliminated in four games by the Astros in the Division Series. Small things hovered over each of those runs - Quentin’s injury in 2008, the last-day chance to secure the two seed and home-field advantage in 2020, and the possibility of finishing ahead of Houston in 2021 to gain that edge again.
This time, the White Sox are not carrying any of that baggage into the series.
They finished the regular season with a 12-13 September, while Cleveland surged with a 24-11 finish to take the AL Central by one game, leaving the White Sox with five days off before Saturday. But Antonacci said the group isn’t dwelling on the past, whether that means the 2005 championship, the recent regular-season struggles against Houston, or what came before.
“You have to take care of the first one,” Antonacci said. “Whatever happens in the first one, you put it to the side and go about a gameplan for the second one. Take it one game at a time, one inning at a time, one pitch at a time and try to win each pitch.
“Everyone is just focused on now. Couldn’t really tell you who won the World Series last year, if you asked me. You don’t know it off the top of your head.”
After a pause, Antonacci remembered it was the Dodgers.
“But you don’t think about, ‘This team won the World Series last year,’” Antonacci said. “Maybe some people think like that, but no one remembers it. They will remember it for a few days after, and then the new season starts and the sole focus is on the season.”
White Sox general manager Chris Getz said the team’s identity has carried them to this point.
“Certainly this player group, they have competed so well all season,” Getz said. “And to be rewarded with an opportunity to play in the playoffs, this group is as fearless as any group I’ve been around. We’ll get it kickstarted, and we’ll see where it takes us.”
Beyond getting past Game 1, there is another objective tucked into this series: bringing playoff baseball back to Rate Field. For a fan base that has waited a long time for this kind of stage, the White Sox want the chance to play in front of that crowd again. And that would mean winning the franchise’s first playoff series since Oct. 2005, when Steve Perry, the lead singer of Journey, was in the clubhouse celebrating.
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