Two years ago the Chicago White Sox lost 121 games, the most by any team since 1899. On Tuesday they won a playoff game in Houston.
Chicago beat the Astros 6-3 in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series, its first postseason victory since 2021. If you had this on your bingo card, you were lying.
Colson Montgomery Announced Himself
Montgomery did the damage, homering and crushing a 432-foot shot to center field in the fourth inning. Sam Antonacci drove in two, including a second-inning single that got Chicago moving early.
Starter Hagen Smith gave the Sox three scoreless innings on two hits. That is not a heroic workload, but it was enough to keep Houston’s lineup quiet while Chicago built a lead it never gave back.
The Turnaround Has No Precedent
This is the part that deserves attention. The White Sox are the only team in Major League Baseball history to follow consecutive 100-loss seasons with a playoff berth. They lost 100-plus games three straight years, bottoming out at 121 in 2024.
Franchises do not climb out of that hole in two years. They usually take five, hire three managers, and trade away whatever fans were still attached to. Chicago skipped the misery portion of the rebuild, and the front office deserves credit for not blowing it up a fourth time.
Pope Leo XIV Sent A Letter
Before the game the team received a letter of support from Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native. The contents were not made public.
Treat that however you want. A South Side team that lost 121 games getting a note from the Pope before its first playoff win in five years is the kind of detail you cannot script.
Houston Has A Real Problem Now
The Astros are the ones sweating. Houston is one loss from elimination, at home, against a team nobody expected to be here. This is a best-of-three, which means Game 1 carries outsized weight, and Houston just handed it over.
The Astros were supposed to be the experienced side in this matchup. Instead they let a young Chicago club set the tone and hit them with power they clearly did not respect.
Where I Land
I still think Houston’s roster is better over a seven-game sample. But this is not seven games. Chicago needs one more win, and it now has the confidence of a team playing with house money against an opponent starting to feel the pressure.
The White Sox are not a fluke story anymore. A team that loses 121 games and reaches October two years later has actually built something, and Tuesday was the proof rather than the accident.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.