No longer second in Second City
HOUSTON -- They didn't have a .300 hitter and they barely had an All-Star-type position player. Their manager isn't much for computers and could have been time-capsuled in from the '40s or '50s, if it weren't for the fact that he was born in Venezuela and they didn't entrust teams to his kind back then.
No team representing their franchise had won it all since 1917, but there's another team in their town with far more cachet and they don't have any sad woe-is-us tales to account for the lack of titles, either. The team has just basically been blah for the past 85 or so years. As far as anyone knows, there is no song on Chicago juke boxes entitled, ''A Dying White Sox Fan's Lament."
When they were going well this year, no one outside of Chicago cared. When they stumbled a bit, and the Indians concurrently caught fire, people snorted. Told ya so. They never were that good.
They are the 2005 Chicago White Sox and they have just concluded one of the great late September/October runs of all time. They started winning on Sept. 28 and with one little exception they just never stopped, winning their last five games of the regular season, all three against the Red Sox, four out of five against the Angels, and, with last night's stirring 1-0 triumph over the Astros, all four games of the World Series.
The 2005 season is over and the Chicago White Sox are your new world champions. Yes, I know. That will take some getting used to, and that's before we even discuss the North Side of Chicago.
They began the postseason with an atypical bombardment of the Red Sox, but in order to become the champion they won the type of game to which they had long ago become accustomed. Entering last night's game they were 38-20 in one-run games and 29-15 in two-run games, combining both the regular season and postseason. When 102 of your previous 173 games are that tight, you kinda get used to the tension and you sorta know how to go about it. So what's one more, even if it's like the single most important game your team has played since the Wilson administration?
Were they lucky at times during this postseason? Uh, yeah. You can say that, and Mr. Ozzie Guillen is the first person to admit it. ''I'd rather be lucky than good," he said, and while many among you know that is not an original sports thought, seldom has it been more apropos.
What the affable and rather loosely wrapped skipper -- can you think of another big league manager who would be giving a pregame discourse on why being governor of Florida is not such a good job (''hurricanes, fires, floods, immigration, etc.")? -- could have added is that the White Sox seemed to take full advantage of all the good fortune that came their way. That's what good teams do. It's always better to be lucky and good.
They had to be very good indeed last night, because this was one of those occasions when 42,936 people go to a baseball game and a baseball game breaks out. Specifically, it was what we in the trade like to refer to as ''an old-fashioned pitchers' duel," featuring a pair of righthanders bringing their respective ''A" games to the fourth game of the World Series. C'mon. How cool is that?
The Chicago starter was Freddy Garcia, a onetime Astro farmhand who was shipped to Seattle in the Randy Johnson rental seven years ago. He gave up four hits and no runs while walking three (one intentional) and striking out seven in seven innings. When the White Sox scored their run in the eighth, he earned the distinction of being the winning pitcher for the first White Sox champions since 1917.
He was nobly opposed by 27-year-old righthander Brandon Backe, who matched Garcia with seven shutout innings. In one sensational stretch he struck out five batters in a row.
So it was 0-0 entering the eighth when Willie Harris, hitting for Garcia, stepped in to face flame-throwing reliever Brad Lidge. Don't feel bad if you had not been aware of Willie Harris's existence on this earth, or if you didn't know he was the second major leaguer ever produced by the town of Cairo, Ga., the first being a fellow named Jackie Robinson. Willie is a bit player, but he is a bit player who came up big. Harris singled to left, and, yes, you can say that was the biggest hit of his life.
Scott Podsednik sacrificed him to second, and pinch hitter Carl Everett moved him 90 feet closer to the Promised Land with a grounder to second. And so it was up to Jermaine Dye, 32 years old, perhaps not as sound of body as he once was, but in a serious groove, with a hit in each game and 2 for 3 in this one. Make that 3 for 4. Dye singled up the middle. The White Sox were now six outs away from ending an 88-year championship drought.
They got those outs, but not before Houston put on what constitutes an Astro rally. In other words, an eighth-inning, one-out hit batsman and a wild pitch, followed by an intentional walk. That left it up to the luckless Morgan Ensberg, whose best shot on a very hittable pitch was to hit a fly to center, thus advancing Willy Taveras to third. Guillen brought on Neil Cotts, and he got pinch hitter Jose Vizcaino on a slow roller to shortstop Juan Uribe.
The ninth inning was not without drama. Jason Lane led off with a single to center and was sacrificed to second. Then came the big defensive play. Chris Burke fouled one down the left-field line and Uribe made a tremendous catch, leaning as far into the stands as humanly possible. But it still wasn't over. The White Sox needed one more out.
Orlando Palmeiro hit a slow roller to shortstop, and Uribe made a four-star play coming in, scooping up the ball and firing to first baseman Paul Konerko to get Palmeiro by a centimeter.
Chicago has the best baseball team in the world. Will the good people of Chicago treat the Second City's Second Team with the respect it deserves?
We're watching, Chicago. You'd better do right by these guys.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com. 
