A lot of Chicago White Sox fans and baseball observers, yours truly very much included, had started to worry that a bad week for the White Sox might mean the magic of this season was fading.
Falling behind to the New York Yankees, which are probably the best team in the American League even with their three biggest stars on the injured list, 4-0 in the first inning at home didn't help. It especially didn't help that Sox ace Davis Martin was on the mound and he walked a batter ahead of a run-scoring single and three-run Spencer Jones home run.
The White Sox proved they can take a punch and keep fighting
But Martin was nails for the rest of the evening, and the Sox scratched and clawed their way back into the game thanks to back-to-back homers from Sam Antonacci and Munetaka Murakami. From there it was all sorts of twists and turns until finally Edgar Quero drove home the winning run with a single in the bottom of the 12th inning. That makes eight walk-off wins so far in 2026 for the Sox -- Quero has two of the walk-off hits, despite having a down year offensively. He was in the minors until Kyle Teel returned to the injured list.
The Sox might still lose the series -- this is being written before the fourth and final game against New York concludes -- but their resilience in the third game might put off the doomsayers for a while. The team has played some sloppy baseball on this homestand, and blown some leads, and there's been a debate (at least in this author's mind) about whether it's just the kind of rough patch all teams experience over the course of 162 games or whether the Sox just don't have the juice to be in the playoff race for the long haul.
Chicago pushed back on that narrative by being close to coming back against New York in game two of the series and by finalizing the comeback in game three. The Yankees are definitely a better team than the Sox right now, even with the decimation of its roster thanks to injuries, but the Sox showed that they do have the talent to hang with a better team and even come back to win against a solid starter (Cam Schlittler) and the best bullpen, at least statisically, in baseball.
That's huge. Confidence and mindset are important in a game like baseball, about which the late Yankees legend Yogi Berra supposedly said "90 percent of this game is half mental." Yes, talent and execution matter the most. The best players in the game aren't the best just because they think positively and have confidence. Not to mention, confidence oft times comes from having talent and having success, instead of preceding success.
That said, a team that both believes its never out of it and also has talent always has a better chance than a team that writes the day off once they get down a few runs*. The Sox do have both, and while they aren't the most talented team in a mediocre AL, the mix of talent that they do have and a culture that encourages resilience will keep them in the mix. And that's before any trades they might make to bring in more talent.
*Some fans need to remember this, I type as I look in the mirror
No one yet knows how the South Siders' season will end, obviously. But one thing is clear -- the Sox aren't going to pack it in even after a bad week of baseball.
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