The White Sox’ season has included its share of memorable moments. There was Edgar Quero’s walk-off home run to beat the Cubs, and Braden Montgomery marking his debut with his own game-winning home run against the Braves.
On Saturday, the Sox were almost on the wrong end of history.
Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto retired the first 23 batters and appeared to be heading into the ninth inning with a perfect game but Mookie Betts mishandled Chase Meidroth’s grounder, giving the White Sox their first baserunner with two outs in the eighth inning. Tristan Peters then broke up the no-hitter and shutout with a home run to lead off the ninth.
Peters’ home run did little to give the Sox a chance to rally, and they ended up losing 7-1 to snap their eight-game home winning streak.
An eight-time All-Star and the 2018 American League Most Valuable Player, Betts said he was very aware of the perfect game and not blaming the tricky hop for the error.
“Just a routine ground ball that I missed,” Betts said. “Not making any excuses.”
The Sox weren’t making excuses about how they came so close to suffering a perfect game for the first time since Oct. 2, 1908, when Cleveland’s Addie Joss beat them 1-0. They were even closer to being no-hit for the first time since the Twins’ Francisco Liriano on May 3, 2011.
Yamamoto, the 2025 World Series MVP, was dominant. He struck out seven and gave the Sox very little to turn on. And when the Sox did make good contact, it was right at a Dodgers fielder.
“One of the best outings we’ve seen from an opponent this year,” manager Will Venable said. “The stuff was outstanding. Lived on the edges. We didn’t have a ton to hit. Hit a couple balls hard but he was in control the whole day.”
For much of the day, it looked like Yamamoto could become the first Japanese pitcher to throw a perfect game. Doing that Saturday against the Sox would’ve been another example of the oddities of baseball: a day earlier, the Sox pounded the back-to-back World Series champions 8-2.
Then not even 24 hours into the future, the sold-out Rate Field crowd of 37,832 was buzzing with the possibility the Sox would not get a base runner or hit.
“It just shows the ups and downs of baseball that a team can go through and an offense can go through,” Peters said. “I wouldn’t even say we had a bad offensive day either. I think we put together some good at-bats and we hit the ball hard. That’s just baseball.”
Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, back in the lineup after missing Friday’s game with left knee inflammation, led off the game and hit Sean Burke’s second pitch well out to right field to spot Yamamoto and the Dodgers a run. Max Muncy added two more home runs.
But it was Yamamoto who looked poised to do something special before his hopes ended on Peters’ home run.
“In the dugout, it kind of feels like we won that game after that,” Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas said. “We really needed it. We were ready for that hit, and we are happy for TP to do that.”
The Sox are probably glad they won’t have to see Yamamoto again. His former teammate, Vargas had a simple explanation for why Yamamoto was so good.
“He’s Yamamoto. I guess he’s that effective most of the time,” Vargas said. “We put a lot of good swings out there today and we [stayed together] as a group. It was his day and good for him.”