By the first week of October, the sea of parking lots around Rate Field typically reverts back to asphalt-desert status for its six-month hibernation period.
That was certainly the case the last four years, with the White Sox piling up 405 losses since their last taste of playoff action in 2021.
And it’s been that way across the South Side most autumns since President Theodore Roosevelt was in office and the city was still building its way back from the Great Chicago Fire.
Even in the 10 seasons that Sox fans previously got to enjoy fall ball at their home stadium over franchise history, they haven’t experienced the elation of clinching a playoff series at home since Oct. 14, 1906.
Photos were hard to come by back then, so you can only imagine the scene in the wooden grandstands at long-gone South Side Park near Pershing and Princeton, where Doc White’s complete game sealed a World Series championship over Orval Overall and those pesky Cubs.
Fast forward 120 years, throw in the grace of a fan in the Vatican, sprinkle in a wand-toting reliever and summon the magic of a gritty young clubhouse — and Sox fans were still buzzing outside the park Wednesday, inching toward a South Side party more than a century in the making.
A deflating 9-3 loss to the Guardians in Game 3 of the American League Division Series kept Sox’ the faithful waiting another day for a potential clincher. But they’re not going anywhere.
“We’ve been waiting so long for this,” Nikki Tieman said while tailgating with family and co-workers in Lot C, three hours before first pitch.
“We’re just enjoying it so much because we had a rough couple of years. We were still at the games, and we were still cheering and wearing our gear. But it’s just a little sweeter this year,” Tieman said. “It’s just a magical year where everything is just magically aligning, so I’m sure the pope is playing some small part.”
But Tieman’s family has been riding it out with the team since long before Sox fan Rob from Dolton became Pope Leo XIV. The Joliet family had season tickets on the first base line back at old Comiskey Park, well after her uncle Larry Vasquez got his first taste of Sox heartache listening to them on the radio in 1959 when they lost the World Series to the Dodgers.
“We didn’t win, but you know, I didn’t care. I was still rooting,” Vasquez said, sharing an understated, multigenerational angst all too familiar to Sox fans.
Following the Sox from afar, in Iraq
Tieman’s brother, Miguel Vasquez, was just glad to be able to lock down tickets. He wasn’t able to do that in 2005 while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq, where the internet left him as frustrated in his quest to buy tickets for his family as it did thousands of Chicago fans this year in the scramble for postseason seats.
“I tried so hard, but the internet was so bad over there,” Vasquez said, still shaking his head at the failed transaction 21 years after that magical Sox season.
But his fellow service members knew they couldn’t let a die-hard comrade miss out on the magic.
“I was getting my gear on about to go out, and they stopped, and they’re like, ‘Nope. No, you’re gonna go watch [World Series-clinching] Game 4,’” Miguel Vazquez said — laughing at the memory of his commanding officer who advised: “You better hope they win because you’re not getting another day off.”
Tailgating regulars John Wisniewski and his father, Rich, were also among the throngs stirring up championship memories in Lot C, hooking a TV up to their pickup to play a recording of that decisive World Series win in Houston.
“We’re trying to get the good vibes from 2005 today,” said the younger Wisniewski, of Algonquin.
Those vibes were decidedly lacking at their tailgate two years ago for Rich’s birthday during the Sox all-time worst, 121-loss season of 2024. They were the only vehicle in the sprawling lot, while legions of fans lost faith in an organization setting the modern standard for Major League futility.
“Baseball is home, so for us, it was another day in the park, like, it was great,” John said. “But it was just depressing. And it was just like, we can’t wait until we win and can be great again.”
“I just love to see this,” said Rich, who made a Sox fan out of his son.
“You don’t become a Sox fan. You’re born a Sox fan,” John said. “It’s your dad, it’s your uncle, it’s your family — everybody who’s a Sox fan, and they bring you here, and it just feels like home every time you come.”
A crosstown connection
Plenty of fans have married into that family, too, like Corey Fennessy, who reluctantly divulges it was a crosstown connection that she made with her husband, Jamie.
“I obviously married somebody who cared about baseball a lot more than I do,” the former Cubs fan said.
There’s no doubt about the next generation, either, as the Glen Ellyn couple’s grade school-age son, Mo, declares there’s only one reason for him ever to step foot in Wrigley Field.
“Only to see the Cubs get smoked,” Mo said, drawing a laugh from his Little League coach dad.
Being there for Mark Buehrle’s start in Game 2 of the ‘05 Series was great, but Jamie Fennessy has “gotta tell you — this is, like, the most impactful day.”
“In 120 years, they haven’t done this, and to clinch at home would be what everybody here deserves, because they stuck through thick and thin. It means the world. And, you know, these will be lifelong fans after today,” he said, waving to Mo and his sister, Jane.
Jamie’s looking forward, hopefully, to an ALCS game with his own dad.
“We’re just passing it down, doing what’s right,” he said. “Baseball kind of brings generations together, and it’s doing that right now, so it’s been awesome.”
Are fans sweating after their upstart squad missed their first chance to seal the series at Rate Field?
McKinley Park tailgater Jim Tomino was unfazed as he walked back to his SUV.
“That just means we get to come back and do it again tomorrow,” he said. “With a win, of course.”
