CHICAGO — The White Sox beat the Astros 7-3 on Wednesday to sweep the wild card series, their first playoff series win since 2005, and the appropriate response is to stand up and acknowledge what twenty-one years of waiting has produced: a team that now knows how to win a series, and a city that now knows the feeling again.
The win came early, which is how the best wins come. Sam Antonacci’s double built a 4-0 lead, Chase Meidroth hit a three-run homer, and the game was decided before anyone in the building had fully sat down. A first inning that good is not a strategy; it is a personality.
The year 2005, meanwhile, has stopped being a number and started being a person. Fans speak of it the way you speak of a relative who did something impressive once and then never stopped being mentioned at family gatherings. 2005 swept the Astros in the World Series. 2005 is now twenty-one years old, which is old enough to have opinions, and the opinions are apparently that the wait was fine and the wait was also not fine.
A season-ticket holder from the south side, who has attended 143 games since 2006 and considers that a personal record of loyalty, said the sweep felt “like a debt being paid in small bills,” and that he had already told his mother, who is not alive, and who he believes would have liked the small bills.
THE WAIT, ACCOUNTED FOR
- Series wins since 2005: Zero, until Wednesday.
- The first inning: Four runs, which the clubhouse described as “the whole game, arrived early.”
- The calendar: One fan brought a wall calendar with every page torn off except the one he wanted people to look at.
- The next round: The White Sox advance, and 2005 is expected to have something to say about it.
At press time, the celebration had moved from the field to the street, and a man outside the park was asked how long he had waited. He said twenty-one years, then corrected himself: he had waited twenty-one years and eleven months, because he had started counting in 2004, and he is not going to stop counting now that it’s over.