White Sox Can Soak In This Win

If the people of Chicago had begun to wonder what baseball was like in late October, their answer came Sunday night: It’s cold and wet.

It’s Commissioner Bud Selig in the front row wearing a standard-issue, MLB-stamped, white plastic poncho. It’s lightning over the right-field bleachers and clouds of mist swirling over the outfielders.

And, if they sat through all of that, they found it’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes devastating. A fastball for a fastball, Scott Podsednik channeling Albert Pujols, and the Chicago White Sox getting more big hits and one more big break.

This is now the White Sox’s World Series to have, up 2-0 on the Houston Astros, finding or falling into good fortune at every critical turn.

That 3-and-2 pitch struck Jermaine Dye’s bat, even if, as plate umpire Jeff Nelson explained to a baseball official later, “I thought in my heart it hit him.”

Just as Doug Eddings once believed his heart, in Game 2 of the American League championship series.

Just as Tony Graffanino once believed his glove, in Game 2 of the AL division series.

Just as Dye believed he’d go ahead and take that base, in Game 2 of the World Series, deserved or not.

The umpire points to first, so Dye takes first and scores on a trot, a couple dozen paces ahead of Paul Konerko. Konerko’s seventh-inning grand slam put them momentarily ahead, and then, in the bottom of the ninth inning, became the backdrop to Podsednik’s little swing that could and a 7-6 victory.

These are the White Sox, as anyone wearing a trash bag at U.S. Cellular Field on Sunday night could tell you. This is what they do. They finish rallies and they mostly pitch through terrible jams, beginning with Orlando Hernandez in Boston, through Freddy Garcia in Anaheim, then Neal Cotts and Bobby Jenks in Chicago.

For three weeks they have played relentlessly, scoring 22 two-out runs in 10 games. Graffanino’s error begat Tadahito Iguchi’s home run. Eddings’ error begat Joe Crede’s double. Nelson’s error begat four more runs, all with two out.

Carl Everett said, “This team doesn’t give up. Any time you have outs, there’s always a chance to win. We play 27.”

Really now. Doesn’t everyone?

“Not really,” he said. “I wouldn’t say most teams play 27. They may be out there for them, but they don’t play them all.”

And so 48 hours into their franchise’s first World Series, the Astros await their first win in a World Series.

They were not quite glum, not even Brad Lidge, who in the span of four outs spread over six days gave up two stunning, can’t-be home runs.

The owner, Drayton McLane, passed through the clubhouse, patted a couple of shoulders, and thrust his hand toward Dan Wheeler, who’d been charged with three runs in two-thirds of an inning. Wheeler wiped a fistful of chicken grease on his sliding pants, accepted McLane’s gesture, and returned to his drumstick.

“Obviously it [stinks],” Lidge said, “but what are you going to do?”

Not far from him, fellow reliever Chad Qualls, who earlier fed Konerko the first-pitch fastball that landed in the left-field bleachers, said of the Podsednik-Lidge at-bat, “On a night like this, you wouldn’t think he’d hit one, and he did. Just getting lucky, I guess.”

That’s an awfully long run of fortune, from a 99-win regular season to a sweep of the Red Sox and a five-game dismissal of the Angels.

“That’s what we did all year,” A.J. Pierzynski said. “We find a way to get a hit when we need it. Two-out hits are how you win, especially in the playoffs.”

And when all the lucky stuff is done, Pierzynski added, “It still has to come down to a guy getting a big hit.”

They have had plenty, and already have beaten Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and a lot of guys who have come out of the Astro bullpen. They have scored 12 runs in two games of a World Series that should have been about Clemens, Pettitte and the guys who come out of the bullpen.

So they’ll go to Houston and see what Roy Oswalt is all about. They’ve had their curtain calls and their career moments and thrills of their lifetimes, in a series that is but two games old, and that crisp breeze that carried rain across their ballpark Sunday night felt a lot like the nudge of momentum, too.

Phil Garner, the Houston manager, smiled and waved a finger at an 0-2 hole. His offense hasn’t been enough and his defense hasn’t been reliable and his closer, suddenly, can’t close.

But, he said, “Oh, well, we’re doin’ fine. We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”

An hour before, in the bottom of the sixth inning, the rain was coming down pretty good. The temperature was 45 degrees at game time, and surely had fallen. But Selig, in that poncho, still hadn’t gone to the hood.

It’s late October, but, in Chicago, it still feels like baseball season.