The Glory of The Wind

April 29, 2026

The Glory of The Wind

White Sox 3, Angels 2

Nougat and vodka might be the two most upholding vices ever created by polite society but weekday baseball has a seat on that splendor train as well.

We ate no nougat and drank no vodka on Wednesday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field, and perhaps that’s for the best because our senses might have been overwhelmed. But we did enjoy a tidy few hours of daylight baseball as the White Sox completed their first sweep of the season, topping the Los Angeles Angels 3-2 in 10 innings on Chicago’s South Side.

This matinee provided what you paid for because we saw a legend do his thing, as Angels slugger Mike Trout belted a solo home run which, yes, we all liked to see. But White Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery knocked in the winning run with a bases-loaded base hit in the home half of the 10th inning to give the best baseball fans postwar America has ever known reason to celebrate.

The announced crowd for this game was 15,000. But if there were 15,000 living souls in attendance on this blustery day that felt more like February and looked more like a funeral, then my bathroom can fit at least 15,000 people. Which would be awesome.

But it doesn’t matter how many people were there. What’s most important is we ate a cauliflower sandwich, potato chips, French fries, diet Coke, kept score, and shook hands with a guy named Sal who was so excited to be there he managed to be escorted out by security in the eighth inning.

The White Sox’ rookie Japanese sensation, Munetaka Murakami, did not hit a home run in this contest and was guilty of some nearly tragic baserunning, but he did walk three times and struck out once meaning he filled in two of three circles on his daily True Outcome certificate.

Murakami is captain of the True Outcome Club as he seems to either homer, walk, or whiff every time he steps up to the plate, as if all other options have not made themselves available to him. The baseball cognoscenti seems to love this, as if it’s better to strike out than, oh, I don’t know, hit a double. The analytics nerds just love to give names to things and we think True Outcome sounds like a bad Quentin Tarantino movie, and not the description of what a batter achieves when they do not employ anyone else on the field except the pitcher, catcher, and the lucky stiff in the stands who catches the home run ball.

We. Are. Not. Criticizing. Murakami. He is the greatest thing to happen to Chicago baseball since the churro. The chocolate churro.

As testament to how much we appreciate Murakami we are writing a lot about Number 5 when, again, he was not the hero of the day. But he does make us worry a bit as frost is still on the ground in the first season of his two-year contract and Sox fans are already wondering if the team will offer him a contract extension. We hope the Sox can sign him to a long-term deal of course but that would mean breaking a bank that the White Sox have never even been to.

If the Sox cannot reach an extension with Murakami after this season, and there is no Major League Baseball labor disruption, then the Sox will have to trade him as they cannot just let him slip away for nothing. But it would be nice to have a nice thing.

The White Sox are young, hungry, and, on this frigid April day, winners once again. Our first time at Chicago’s best ballpark this season was a great one. And we got home in time for dinner. (nougat for dessert)