[Nick Soulis]

Series #237



Shoeless Souls Redeemed
1919 White Sox Find Their Way Home in the Field of Dreams



Series 237, Game 1
At Comiskey Park
Weather: Clear skies, 59°F, wind out to center at 10 mph
Attendance: 21,273
Final Score:
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 1
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 2
Winning Pitcher: Lefty Williams (1–0)
Losing Pitcher: Bobby Castillo (0–1)
Player of the Game: Lefty Williams (10.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 140 pitches)
Key Moment: Happy Felsch’s 2-run walk-off single to center in the bottom of the 10th.
Series: Chicago White Sox leads 1–0

Grantland Rice Commentary – “The Night the Ghosts Stood Tall”
There are nights in baseball when the soul of the game steps out from between the foul lines and sits quietly among the living. Tonight, at Comiskey Park, the ghosts of 1919 took their place among men once more.Lefty Williams, whose arm once carried both promise and suspicion, threw with the grace of a man unburdened. His every pitch seemed an act of repentance, his every strike a whisper to the years he lost. And when the tenth inning came, with redemption on the line, it was Happy Felsch — his name a cruel irony for a century — who found the happiness denied him long ago.The ball leapt from his bat, slicing the air like a tear finally shed, and landed softly in center field as two runners crossed home. The crowd — descendants of skeptics, sons of believers — rose not for victory, but for vindication.
Baseball, in its mysterious mercy, granted these men what history would not: a moment without guilt. The wind off Lake Michigan carried their names across time — Weaver, Jackson, Collins, Williams — and for one quiet instant, they were not the fallen of 1919, but champions of the eternal game.For baseball, like grace itself, never forgets — but sometimes, it forgives.

Series 237, Game 2
At Comiskey Park – October 2, 1919
Weather: Partly Cloudy, 62°F, wind out to center 10 mph
Attendance: 31,442
Final Score:
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 4
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 8
Winning Pitcher: Eddie Cicotte (1–0)
Losing Pitcher: Pete Filson (0–1)
Player of the Game: Eddie Cicotte (CG, 9.0 IP, 12 H, 4 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 124 pitches)
Series: Chicago leads 2–0
Special Note: 3B Gary Gaetti injured in a base collision (MIN)

Grantland Rice Commentary — “When the Past Found Its Pace”
There are games that begin like a hymn and end like a verdict. Today’s belonged to Eddie Cicotte, he of the troubled page, who labored under a century’s shadow and found the sun long enough to throw nine honest innings. The fifth brought thunder from Minnesota — a squall of line drives, a hard rain of base hits — yet when the storm passed, he stood dry-eyed upon the mound, the ball in his palm, the prayer still on his fingers.
Around him, the White Sox played the old music — bunts laid like fine stitching, doubles struck like tuning forks, baserunners taking the extra breath and the extra base. Joe Jackson’s late single did not absolve a myth; it completed a moment, the way a final brushstroke saves a painting from mere intention. And when Happy Felsch again drove home the faith of his teammates, Comiskey exhaled a century of doubt.
Minnesota rallied in the manner of the living — loud, imperfect, earnest. But the day belonged to men reaching out of their history for the simple grace of doing a thing well. Baseball is generous in this way; it will let you atone by inches, by throws to first, by the thud of leather, by the last out collected without flourish.
So it was that the White Sox, once the byword for betrayal, played a game beyond suspicion. They did not cleanse the ledger; they merely wrote in a neat hand. And somewhere, in the hush after the final strike, the game itself seemed to nod — not to pardon, but to permit — that most human of victories: the right to try again.

Series 237, Game 3
At Metrodome – October 4, 1919
Weather: Indoor (Metrodome Roof Closed)
Attendance: 37,936
Final Score:
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 6
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 3
Winning Pitcher: Dickey Kerr (1–0)
Losing Pitcher: Ken Schrom (0–1)
Player of the Game: Eddie Collins (3-for-4, BB, 3 R, RBI, 3 SB)
Series: Chicago leads 3–0

Grantland Rice Commentary – “The Honest Man’s Reward”
There are ballgames, and there are reckonings. Tonight, beneath a roof of white and echo, baseball itself held a quiet court. The 1919 Chicago White Sox, who once betrayed their covenant, have found their testimony in the clean hands of Dickey Kerr and the unyielding grace of Eddie Collins.Kerr, the small southpaw with a schoolboy’s composure, spun a masterpiece of quiet defiance. He walked none, yielded little, and in every inning reminded the crowd — and perhaps his own teammates’ ghosts — that virtue still knows how to throw a strike. Collins darted about the bases like a man chasing time itself, three stolen bases, three runs, three reminders that excellence requires neither noise nor apology.
Around them, the crowd — modern and bewildered — saw something they’d never known but somehow recognized: baseball without adornment. Just men, a ball, and a truth too large to whisper. The Twins fought gamely, but it was like trying to catch sunlight in their gloves.
In these White Sox there is no perfection, only penance — and perhaps that’s what makes them beautiful. For as long as the game allows second chances, it will remember this: that a century after betrayal, the honest man finally found his reward.

Series 237, Game 4
At Metrodome – October 5, 1919 (Roof closed)
Attendance: 38,324
Final Score:
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 5
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 6
Winning Pitcher: Bobby Castillo (1–1)
Losing Pitcher: Red Faber (0–1)
Player of the Game: John Castino (2-for-3, 2B, BB, 2 R)
Series: Chicago leads 3–1

Grantland Rice Commentary — “Roof of Sound, Breath of Hope”
Beneath the Metrodome’s pale ceiling, baseball discovered a new voice—less a hymn than a drumbeat. The Twins, who had been lulled toward forgetfulness by the sweet cadence of Chicago’s redemption, suddenly found their own rhythm. It arrived on the barrel of Tom Brunansky’s two-out double, the instant when time itself seemed to shudder and turn.
Bobby Castillo then became the steward of the night. He did not dazzle; he endured. He pitched not for applause but for survival, and the white roof banked his courage back upon him as a warm echo. Around him, John Castino moved like a poet with a pocketknife—precise, unfancy, essential. Two runs scored on his footprints; two innings turned on his insistence.Across the field, the ghosts had their say. In the seventh, Collins stole time, Weaver hustled it forward, Jackson lashed it to the wall, and Felsch carried it home. For a moment the past reasserted its claim. But baseball, that democratic art, reserved the final word for the living who defended stoutly and the pitcher who would not yield the ball.
So the sweep did not come. Instead, the series learned to breathe again. Under a roof of manufactured weather, hope was handmade: one double, one out recorded, one heartbeat restored. Tomorrow brings the same old question, dressed in new light—can the past be postponed another day?

Series 237, Game 5
At Metrodome – October 6, 1919 (Roof Closed)
Attendance: 38,169
Final Score:
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 1
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 2
Winning Pitcher: Pete Filson (1–1)
Losing Pitcher: Lefty Williams (1–1)
Save: Ron Davis (1)
Player of the Game: Pete Filson (8.2 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 145 pitches)
Series: Chicago leads 3–2

Grantland Rice Commentary — “The Long Night of the White Sox”
Beneath the Dome’s pale hush, the White Sox felt the first touch of mortality. For three games they had been whispers of myth—immovable, uncanny, destined. But tonight, under synthetic air and electric light, they became mortal again.
Pete Filson was their undoing, though he arrived not as a conqueror but as a craftsman. He spun his art quietly, without flourish—each pitch a small defiance against history’s larger tide. In the eighth, as tension bent the air like wire, Dave Engle’s bat spoke for every man who had ever faced erasure. The ball slid past the mound, skipped through the grass, and brought home two who had waited too long to matter.
Across the field, Lefty Williams stood alone in the gathering silence. He had pitched as though forgiveness were a thing he might yet earn—eight innings of grace, broken only by a single lapse. But baseball, that cruel confessor, seldom forgives at once. His loss was not in numbers but in echoes; the crowd’s roar marked the price of remembrance.
So the ghosts return to Chicago, their lead intact but their breath uneven. The Field of Dreams has reminded them that redemption, like baseball itself, is never granted in five games. It must be earned one swing, one inning, one heartbeat at a time.
Tomorrow waits on the South Side, where memory is louder, the air heavier, and the past closer than ever.


Series 237, Game 6 (Clincher)
At Comiskey Park – October 8, 1919
Weather: Clear, 55°F, wind right-to-left at 11 mph
Attendance: 34,118
Final Score:
1983 Minnesota Twins …… 4 R, 13 H, 2 E
1919 Chicago White Sox …… 8 R, 11 H, 0 E
Winning Pitcher: Eddie Cicotte (2–0) — CG, 9.0 IP, 13 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 2 K, 143 pitches
Losing Pitcher: Bobby Castillo (1–2) — 6.2 IP, 9 H, 8 R (2 ER), 3 BB, 2 K, 114 pitches
Player of the Game: Joe Jackson (2–4, 3B, 2 RBI, 2 R, BB)
Series MVP: Buck Weaver (.423 AVG, 3 RBI; go-ahead knock in G6 rally)


Grantland Rice Commentary — “When the Ledger Softened”
Baseball keeps books no banker could balance — columns for joy and sorrow, for noise and silence, for what was done and what was meant. Tonight, under the clean October light of Comiskey, the ink bled toward mercy.Eddie Cicotte threw the length of the night and the length of his history. He bent but did not break when the ball found green; he found the edges where courage lives. When the last grounder trickled toward the first-base line, he claimed it like a lost letter finally delivered and closed the account with his own hand.
Around him, the White Sox stitched the innings like careful tailors: Buck Weaver’s needed single, Joe Jackson’s triple that woke the afternoon, Happy Felsch’s threaded stroke, Nemo Leibold’s two-strike insistence. Five runs in a single turn — not a storm, but the tide coming in at last.
Across the diamond, the Twins played as the valiant must, and their refusal made the coronation honest. A champion without a worthy foe is merely fortunate; Chicago met resistance and earned absolution.
No game can rewrite the past. But some games can change how the past is carried. Tonight the men of 1919 shouldered their century and found it lighter. The ledger did not forget; it simply softened — and in that softening, the game kept its oldest promise: that effort, clean and complete, can yet purchase a little peace.

1919 Chicago White Sox Win Series 4 Games To 2

Series MVP:

(.375, 7 RBI, 3 R, 2 2B, .407 OBP, .866 OPS, walk off hit game 1)