White Sox 2005 Rewind: All Juan Uribe needed was just a little patience

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Cast your mind back a bit, to a previous edition of #SoxRewind, when I discussed what had to be the most ridiculous White Sox victory of their 2005 championship season.

That game against the Royals, from May 5, 2005, featured a bonkers White Sox comeback without the benefit of a hit in a two-run eighth inning. The tying run scored when the famously free-swinging Juan Uribe took four straight balls to force in the tying run.

Well, fast forward a little more than two months later, when Uribe did it again.

In the June 12, 2005, game against the Padres in San Diego, the White Sox trailed by two heading to the eighth. The White Sox offense jumped all over a pair of Padres bullpen arms, including future South Side reliever Scott Linebrink, with a Carl Everett leadoff double and a Paul Konerko single making it a one-run game.

With Linebrink chased after yet another double, new reliever Akinori Otsuka followed a strikeout with an intentional walk of Timo Perez to set up the double play against Uribe. But Uribe flipped his patient switch yet again and closed a six-pitch plate appearance by taking a very close Ball 4, bringing home the tying run.

That — coupled with a hitless effort from the White Sox bullpen — spun the game into extra innings, where Aaron Rowand played hero with a game-winning homer in the 10th.

But while Rowand’s dinger was the defining play in the White Sox 8-5 win, Uribe delivered a clutch moment you wouldn’t associate with his style of play for the second time in the first half of the season.

Uribe walked 34 times in 2005, compared to 77 strikeouts. He actually walked twice in this very game and three times in this series in San Diego, but his on-base percentage on the season was not at all good at .301. He had struck out 96 times in 2004, and in 2006, his on-base numbers were god awful, with just 13 walks compared to 82 strikeouts and a miserable on-base percentage of .257.

But twice, when he really needed to, Uribe took his base on balls and won games because of it.

What else?

— Rowand’s game-winning homer came off Hall of Fame closer Trevor Hoffman, one of two pitchers in baseball history to record 600 career saves. This was Hoffman’s first career game against the White Sox. He ended up pitching against them only three times in his career, and in two of those games he took the loss. On June 14, 2009, almost five years to the day from giving up that game-winning homer to Rowand, Hoffman was pitching for the Brewers and allowed a ninth-inning RBI single to A.J. Pierzynski that broke a 4-all tie and cost the Brew Crew the game.

— This wasn’t one of Freddy Garcia’s better outings. He gave up five runs. But it could have been a whole lot worse and knocked the White Sox out of this one before they were able to close that two-run gap in the eighth inning. And who does Garcia have to thank for it? Well, the Padres. The home team made a couple head-scratching decisions that allowed Garcia to keep the scoreboard clean between a three-run first inning and a two-run sixth.

Perez made his own big mistake in the second inning, whiffing while trying to catch a sinking fly ball in left field. The ball flew past him, and a single turned into a runner on third to lead off the inning. Garcia got the next batter to fly out to shallow center but simultaneously got a huge assist from Khalil Greene, who did not tag from third with Scott Podsednik contorted after making the catch in center field. Garcia got a groundout and a strikeout to end that inning without a run coming across.

Fast forward to the fifth, when the Padres got back-to-back one-out singles, with Garcia following with a two-out walk to Phil Nevin. Garcia’s first two pitches of a bases-loaded at-bat to Ramon Hernandez were balls, potentially signaling another wild plate appearance that could have broken the tie. Instead, Hernandez swung away on the 2-0 pitch and grounded out to third base to end the inning.

— One more Padres mistake to discuss. Podsednik scored from second base on a Carl Everett single in the fifth inning, tying the game at 3. As fleet of food as Podsednik was in 2005 (and still is, probably), the play at home was a bang-bang one thanks to a terrific throw by right fielder Robert Fick. But as Darrin Jackson pointed out on the broadcast, Hernandez screwed up by tagging a sliding Podsednik on his chest, allowing the runner’s foot to touch home plate ahead of the tag. If Hernandez tags Podsednik on the foot, the White Sox still trail and might not make the extra-inning comeback.

Since you been gone

While #SoxRewind is extensive, it doesn’t include all 162 regular-season contests, meaning we’re going to be skipping over some games. So what’d we miss since last time?

June 11, 2005: Dustin Hermanson blew his first save of the 2005 season. In to protect a 1-0 lead in the ninth inning, Hermanson served up a game-tying homer to Hernandez before giving up back-to-back singles and intentionally walking the bases loaded ahead of Damian Jackson’s walk-off hit. White Sox lose, 2-1, fall to 41-20.

Next up

#SoxRewind rolls on Friday, when you can catch the June 15, 2005, game against the Diamondbacks, starting at 4 p.m. on NBC Sports Chicago. The White Sox bats explode for a 10-run inning, which kicks off with a homer by The Big Hurt.

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