On most evenings, Andrew Vaughn's deep drive off fellow Andrew Chafin with two on and one out in the ninth inning would've carried well into the White Sox bullpen for a dramatic 6-4 walk-off victory.
Tonight, Travis Jankowski pulled it back with one of the finest definitions of "home run robbery" you'll ever see.
The wind was blowing in from center field and knocking down a lot of threatening fly balls over the course of the night, but that wasn't the reason why Vaughn's 352-foot journey didn't travel 353.
It's because the game decided it wasn't done with Lenyn Sosa yet.
That explains why Chafin, a lefty, loaded the bases by failing to retire any of the three lefties he faced. Nicky Lopez led off with a roller through the wide-open left side, Andrew Benintendi muscled a blooper to left, and Gavin Sheets followed Vaughn's heartbreaker with a five-pitch walk.
Sosa had the chance to be the hero when he spent the previous two hours being a thoroughly lowercase goat. The three-run homer Sammy Peralta surrendered in the fourth inning that put Texas ahead 3-2 was only worth three runs because of two ugly mishaps in Sosa's jurisdiction. First, a Nathaniel Lowe leadoff grounder right of second base was hit at such an angle that Sosa and Lopez arrived at the same spot at the same time. Neither took charge, and the ball bounded on by for a single.
Peralta then induced a potential double-play grounder off the bat of Josh Jung right at Sosa, but it developed slowly enough that the ball reached Sosa as Lowe reached Sosa. He could've flipped to second to cut down the lead runner, or he could've ignored the distraction and threw to first for one out. Instead, Sosa tried to tag Lowe as Lowe changed course, whiffed, and then lost the ball on the transfer when he tried to settle for a 4-3. That's when Wyatt Langford followed with a homer that summed up Sosa's year in the field to date.
But Sosa wasn't done being the main character. He briefly redeemed himself by shooting a single through the middle with two outs in the fifth that tied the game at 3. But then he came to the plate with two on and two outs in the seventh, and after hitting a popup nearly 90 degrees upward, he loitered around home plate and drifted into the path of Carson Kelly, drawing an interference call that looked even sillier when Kelly couldn't track the wind-altered path. Were Sosa even jogging to first in a cursory manner, he might've been safe with the bases loaded, but Kelly didn't have to catch the ball for the inning to be over.
If Sosa took the embarrassment out to the field with him afterward, it doubled when Chuckie Robinson's standard throw down to second after the final warm-up pitch hit Sosa square in the kisser.
watching the white sox. pic.twitter.com/MQseiHmOfE
— Jim Margalus (@SoxMachine) August 29, 2024
So the game had to come down to Sosa. He was deemed the protagonist, and one who was doomed to fail, because he flied out to center to seal the White Sox's sixth straight loss, and second of the day.
Take Sosa's "2024 White Sox in One Person" game out of the equation, and perhaps the story is that it's hard to sweep a doubleheader even if your opponent is the 2024 White Sox.
The Rangers started Jack Leiter and his 16.39 ERA over his three previous MLB starts, and the White Sox fared well enough against him. Benintendi opened the game with a two-run double, driving in Lopez (who reached on a walk) and Luis Robert Jr. (catcher interference). He settled in well enough to get to the fifth, but he let the first two runners reach in that inning as well, and Robert came home on Sosa's game-tying single.
When the Rangers managed to retake the lead with a two-out rally off Justin Anderson -- a single, a stolen base, a walk, and a Corey Seager bloop single that fell in front of a sliding Robert -- they had to go with Chafin to close it out, and Grant Anderson to back him up, because they'd used Plan A Kirby Yates to close out Game 1.
All the while, a White Sox bullpen game started by 27th man Matt Foster worked about as well as could be expected. He threw two scoreless innings, followed by Peralta, Gus Varland and Jared Shuster getting it through 7⅔ innings, with Anderson stranding an inherited runner to close out the eighth. Peralta allowed the only damage, but it was exacerbated by clumsy infield defense.
That said, the White Sox offense had four innings to look at former teammate José Ureña, and couldn't do anything against him. He took an awkward step off the mound in the eighth inning that had him visibly hobbling during his final pitches of the evening, but he was able to retire Robinson with one leg.
