A report from the Guardian.

[DePloderer]

Here's one from yesterdays Guardian.

 

Dye colours White Sox sweep in World Series

 

Dave Hannigan

Friday October 28, 2005

 

Guardian

 

In the build-up to game four of the World Series, the fact that the Houston Astros did not have a single African-American on their roster suddenly became an issue for debate. It seemed almost inevitable then that with the teams still scoreless in the eighth inning, Willie Harris came off the Chicago White Sox bench to hit a single before eventually being driven home for the game's only run by Jermaine Dye. Two African-Americans combined to undo the Astros at their own Minute Maid Park and hand the White Sox their first championship since 1917. The ghosts of the team that infamously threw the 1919 Series were finally laid to rest.

Having scored the first and last runs of the Series, and hit consistently throughout, Dye was voted Most Valuable Player for his outstanding form in this clean-sweep by the National League champions.

 

Harris, though, had a story worthy of a moment in the spotlight, too. After a season spent on the substitutes' bench, during which the mother of his 10-year-old daughter died in a car crash, his appearance at the plate on Wednesday night was his first in three weeks. Less than 24 hours after Geoff Blum, another bit-part player, unfurled a home run to win an epic game three, the Sox introduced another batter cold and watched him deliver a crucial hit.

 

"We all worked hard to do whatever we could to help this team win and guys came up with big hits in a lot of situations," said Dye. "It's just special for me to be thought of as MVP and become an MVP from that group. And it means a lot, not only to us in the clubhouse, but to the organisation, to the fans and to the city. It's a great feeling. We're just happy to be able to bring a championship to the city of Chicago. It's really special."

 

Perhaps nothing better encapsulated the Sox's business-like approach to ending the 88-year drought than their refusal even to discuss how the nefarious activities of their predecessors might have hexed the club. This was a team rooted in the here and now, unconcerned with so many decades of well-documented losing and romanticised curses. With the minimum of fuss, a blue-collar outfit boasting arguably just one bona fide superstar brought the trophy back to the south side of America's second city, where for a century they have been regarded as the poor relation to the more vaunted Cubs.

 

The balance of power in the Windy City may well have shifted permanently. The statue of Michael Jordan (who once disastrously dabbled in the minor leagues for the Sox) standing outside the United Center, home to the Chicago Bulls, has worn a White Sox jersey all week. When Juan Uribe threw to Paul Konerko to record the final out and clinch the 1-0 win in Houston, the Reverend Dan Brandt at the Nativity of our Lord Catholic Church immediately rang the bells in salute to the team. At the Sox's own stadium, US Cellular Field, hundreds of fans gathered to celebrate a moment only the most supreme optimists among them could have seen coming. After all it had been 46 years since they had even qualified for the Series.

 

If one half of Chicago had been waiting several generations for the victory, it was celebrated from Tokyo to Caracas to Havana. Apart from boasting three more African-Americans than the Astros in their line-up, the Sox's locker-room had a Japanese second baseman, a sprinkling of Cuban defectors, a Dutch trainer and a Venezuelan manager in Ozzie Guillén.

 

Although Major League Baseball had long ago earmarked game four to introduce the all-time Latino Legends team, as voted for by fans, the Hispanic flavour to the pre-match ceremony lent credence to the view that Wednesday was going to be the Sox's night.

 

A proud Venezuelan who often ends television interviews with a declaration of love for his homeland, Guillén cut a strangely subdued figure at the finish. As his players and staff jumped about the field in front of Astros supporters shaken by how their team disintegrated during the first Series appearance of its 43-year existence, and a surprising number of Sox fans who had somehow wangled tickets and made the journey south, he stood to one side. The game's most animated and loquacious coach was deep in thought.

 

"I was thinking about my country," said Guillén. "I say, wow, I wish I'd be in Venezuela right now to see how they're celebrating. With all due respect to Chicago fans, I know in my country they're going crazy. I think finally I do something real nice to make Venezuela real happy. And I was thinking about, well, that now Jerry Reinsdorf [the Sox owner] can hold something he wanted to hold for a long time, the trophy, World Series trophy. That's all I was thinking about. I was thinking about my country and Jerry Reinsdorf, but more about my country because I think we need this happiness back there and thank God we did [win]."

 

While Guillén deserves enormous credit for the way he has moulded a team into far more than the sum of its parts, their cause was helped by the Astros' bats falling collectively silent when they were needed most. Not even the presence of the former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, behind the plate could help them to rediscover their form. Having experienced a September slump that threatened their qualification for the play-offs, the Sox won their last five regular-season games and then won 11 out of 12 on their way to collecting the trophy.

 

Twelve months ago, the Boston Red Sox ended an 86-year famine and nobody in baseball thought they would see anything as remarkable. They were wrong.

 

Party like it's 1917

 

Nicholas II deposed as Tsar of Russia. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seizes power in the October revolution.

 

The United States enter the war.

 

The Balfour Declaration commits Britain to support Jewish settlement of Palestine.

 

Charlie Chaplin becomes the first actor with a million-dollar contract.

 

Anthony Burgess, Heinrich Böll, Vera Lynn, Ella Fitzgerald, John Lee Hooker and Zsa Zsa Gabor are born.

 

Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin and Buffalo Bill dies.

 

Mata Hari is shot as a spy by a French firing squad that is reportedly blindfolded so as to render it immune to her charms.

 

The Chicago White Sox win the World Series, beating the New York Giants by four games to two.

Edited October 29, 2005 by DePloderer

[kapkomet]

I love this. Did you ever think you'd see these type of articles in the British newspapers?

[Chisoxfn]

Good stuff.

[Lefty Of Love]

Excellent write up.