For the past few weeks, I have been involved with something more important than classes, activities and figuring out what the hell I’m doing after I graduate combined: the Chicago White Sox’ run through the playoffs to their first championship in 88 years. Even though I’m from the Cubs-dominated North Side of Chicago, through coincidence I wound up a Sox fan, and have been since I was five, making this long-awaited victory sweeter than any of those Bulls championships that fell so conveniently into Chicago’s lap while I was growing up. More importantly, though those of you who aren’t baseball fans (or root for the Cardinals) may scoff, I truly believe that I have learned many important lessons from the best baseball team in the country.
For example, I’ve learned that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The White Sox don’t have any superstars, or even any players who are nationally known (at least before the playoffs). But each of the players on the team plays a specific role well, and that enables the team to work together to be better than it seems on paper. No player hits over .300 for the Sox, no pitcher won 20 games, and other teams had more players on the All-Star team. But what’s more important than these typical ways of judging the quality of players on the team is the clutch performances that everyone on the team managed to produce throughout the season and especially in the playoffs, from the pitching staff four straight complete games in the ALCS to Geoff Blum’s go-ahead home run in the 14th inning of Game 3.
I also learned that what happened in the past is much less important than what’s actually happening in the present. Even though it had been 88 years since the last Sox championship, this fact never seemed to faze the team. Even though last year’s Red Sox win was filled with talk by nearly everyone involved about how they were trying to finally break their team’s “curse,” this year’s White Sox took a much more business-like approach to it: we’re here to win a championship, and that’s all there is to it. Although the media and some fans were stuck on 1917, the no-nonsense approach favored by the team worked well in defusing the pressure of the playoffs and in making the whole situation easier to deal with. Rather than dealing with almost 90 years of history, they dealt with each game as it came, one at a time, each one another step on the way to the top.
Perhaps most importantly, I learned it’s better to be lucky than good (preferably both).
The ball just seemed to bounce the right way for the Sox all through the playoffs, from Tony Graffanino’s botched potential double play ball in the Division Series to AJ Pierzynski’s phantom dropped third strike against the Angels to Jermaine Dye being told to take first base after the umpire thought a pitch hit him (though it actually hit his bat). Everyone needs a little luck once in a while, but more importantly, when a lucky break comes along, you better take advantage of it. Every time the Sox got a favorable call or a lucky bounce, they made sure to cash in on it (Tadahito Iguchi’s three-run homer after Graffanino’s error, Joe Crede’s double after Pierzynski reached base, Paul Konerko’s grand slam after Dye got on base). As great as it is to be lucky, unless you take advantage of the breaks you get, you’re wasting your good luck.
Yes, I’m aware that I’m taking a series of clich‚s and just re-proving them with events from the end of the baseball season. But what was truly unique about the whole playoff run was just the basic rush I got from each victory, something that’s a lot harder to transcribe on to paper. After the Sox won the Series, I felt like I did when I saw my first game at New Comisky (now known as US Cellular Field), and Frank Thomas hit a hom run in the bottom of the 9th to win it. It might not be as “important” as international relations, and it certainly isn’t as relevant as the piles of homework I ignored in favor of watching the games, but I’ll certainly never forget the thrill of each game over the past few weeks. Even though it was 88 years in the making, the moment when Konerko caught the final out made it all worth it.
Matt is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor.