On Thursday afternoon, both Chicago teams played day games in the same time zone. The White Sox threw their first pitch in Kansas City at 1:10. The Cubs threw theirs at Wrigley at 1:20.
By our math (first pitch plus the official game time), the White Sox finished beating the Royals 9-1 at about 3:45, and the Cubs finished beating the Marlins 2-1 at about 3:47. Two playoff spots, clinched roughly two minutes apart, in two different states.
Start with the South Side, because nobody saw it coming.
The White Sox lost 101 games in 2023, 121 in 2024 and 102 in 2025. The 121 is the most by any team in the modern era. This April they started 6-13. And on Thursday they became, according to MLB.com, the first team ever to reach the postseason after back-to-back 100-loss seasons.
Kyle Teel, the catcher who came over in the Garrett Crochet trade, homered, got hit by two pitches, reached base five times and scored three runs. David Sandlin threw six innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts. Munetaka Murakami, in his first season in the majors, drove in a run and now has 33 homers.
“This is what the White Sox is,” Murakami said afterward, via the AP. “We come together, and this is not the end. We’re going to start from here.”
Andrew Benintendi put it the way we would have: “We are dumb enough to think we can win it. So, why not?”
A special note on the shortstop. Colson Montgomery has 31 homers, 87 RBIs and, per the AP, 223 strikeouts, which ties Mark Reynolds’ single-season record. He has three games to own it outright, and then he’s going to the playoffs anyway.
We have been saying for years that baseball is a game about failure. We did not expect a 24-year-old to make the argument for us this efficiently.
On the North Side, it was quieter and closer. Seiya Suzuki tied the game with a solo homer in the fifth, his 26th. Ian Happ led off the sixth with a triple and Nico Hoerner singled him home. Matthew Boyd gave the Cubs seven innings of one-run ball, and Ryan Zeferjahn closed it. Somewhere in there, in the first inning, Pete Crow-Armstrong walked, stole second and joined the 40-40 club, which deserves its own story (and has one).
The AP counted: this is the fourth time both Chicago teams have made the postseason in the same year. The others were 2008, 2020 and 1906. In 1906 they played each other in the World Series, which is a story we tell today at the fireplace.
The White Sox still trail Cleveland by one game in the Central with three left. The Cubs are in the wild-card mix with a doubleheader in Boston on Friday. Nobody in Chicago has to decide who to root for yet.
Give it a week.