When Ozzie Guillen was managing the White Sox, he loathed coming to Wrigley Field and loved sharing his thoughts with the media. From the cramped quarters to the rats that he swore were bigger than pigs, Guillen had a comment for everything.
Before the crosstown-series opener Monday at Wrigley, second-year Sox manager Will Venable was asked if he harbors similar hostility toward the venerable ballpark. In the most unsurprising answer of his media session, Venable said he did not.
“I understand the rivalry, and it’s exciting to be a part of,” said Venable, a former Cubs coach. “But I don’t think there’s any animosity that I’m feeling or that I’m putting out there. I’m just excited to have an opportunity to play the Cubs.
“Being here with the Cubs, having seen that firsthand, being here with other teams and then being with the White Sox now, it’s a great place for a baseball game. And when the White Sox are here, obviously it is, even though it’s probably electric pretty much every day here.”
It certainly was during a back-and-forth game that saw the Cubs come out on top 7-5. Cubs superstar Pete Crow-Armstrong won it with a two-run homer against Sox rookie lefty Hagen Smith that scored automatic runner Carson Kelly leading off the 10th inning.
“It was a fun game to play,” said Venable, who chose not to walk Crow-Armstrong because he wanted the lefty-lefty matchup. “Obviously, outside of the result, when we were able to hear the White Sox fans in the crowd, there was a lot of White Sox presence there, which was really cool to see.”
With both teams on course for the postseason, that electricity crackled while the lineups were being announced, with a sizable portion of Sox fans making themselves heard. It continued when Sox relievers walked to their bullpen beneath the right-field bleachers in the middle of the first inning, with fans either cursing or saluting their arrival.
It reached a fever pitch when Crow-Armstrong — the target of a certain female Sox fan’s taunts in the series finale at Rate Field — stepped to the plate. Sox fans’ boos were audible, but they quickly became groans when the leadoff man sent Luis Castillo’s first-pitch fastball 376 feet into the bleachers in right.
When Seiya Suzuki sent Castillo’s fourth pitch, another fastball, 440 feet to center field, Sox fans might’ve felt their worst nightmare coming true. But Castillo settled in, and Sox fans tried to make the Friendly Confines as unfriendly to the Cubs as possible.
In the fourth inning, Wrigley Field turned into Rate Field North with chants of “Let’s go, White Sox!” And with two runners on, Randal Grichuk — who played for another Cubs rival, the Cardinals, in 2014-17 — responded with a 404-foot blast to center.
The momentum swings and accompanying crowd participation had been diminished in the crosstown rivalry while the Sox endured three consecutive seasons with more than 100 losses. But the players still felt something. This week, they’ll feel it more.
“In some sense it’s different,” said Sox right-hander Erick Fedde, who also pitched for the team in 2024, when it set the record for losses in a season with 121. “In ’24, I did feel like those were the biggest games for us because whether we’re out of the playoffs or not, it was a three-game set to give our fans pride.
“I still think that pride really matters and stands loudly in the sense of we want to put our foot down and play well and make our side of town feel like we’re winning the Chicago series. Big picture, we want to win to keep pressing for the playoffs. But this is still very important. I don’t want to undersell it. It’s a playoff-style atmosphere.”