Divine revelations: Pope Leo XIV's attendance at 2005 World Series leaves champion White Sox with an immaculate legacy

Chicago Tribune

a day ago

In the moment, the man who will go on to become the most recognizable religious leader in the world looks nervous. He looks as though even his considerable faith can be tested by the whims of his favorite baseball team. As if, perhaps, he's offering a silent prayer for one more out.
In the moment, Robert Prevost, the native South Sider destined to become first American-born pope, is at the mercy of fickle spirits with Old Testament tempers. The baseball gods can be cruel and smiting, especially in Chicago, and Prevost has to understand this as well as anyone.
One day people will come to see where he sat, to have their pictures taken and to feel a connection to him and their faith. One day soon, on Saturday, the team he roots for, the Chicago White Sox, will host an outdoor Mass in his honor and in celebration of a moment they shared.
But the pilgrimages and the Mass will come a long time after he stands, like tens of thousands around him stand, in the anxious delirium of the top of the ninth inning of Game 1 of the 2005 World Series. It is then when the television camera finds him, by chance or by fate.
There are two outs and the White Sox, holding a 5-3 lead against the Houston Astros, have their hard-throwing 24-year-old closer, Bobby Jenks, on the mound. The energy in what was then called U.S. Cellular Field radiates through the broadcast. Joe Buck, narrating the play-by-play, reiterates that it's the first World Series game in Chicago since 1959 and, after a 95-mph fastball from Jenks, the Sox 'are two strikes away from a win here in 2005 in Game 1.'
The noise increases and then it happens in a quick shot of the crowd. 'What are the odds?' someone asks many years later in the comment section under the video, after it becomes clear that Prevost, the Chicago-born priest and future Pope Leo XIV, is in the stands, dressed not in the black and white of clerical garb but that of a White Sox loyalist, in what looks to be a jersey under a coat.
He's not too far above the home dugout, hoping — praying? — for one final out.
The moment on TV lasts three seconds, maybe less, but when it reemerges almost 20 years later, not long after white smoke rises from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, it is reborn. It conjures questions of divinity. It symbolizes faith. It provides proof, the most ardent Catholics among White Sox supporters might attest, of the existence of a higher power.
At the least it is celebrated, the sight of Prevost next to his friend Ed Schmit III and Schmit's son, Ed IV, then 5 years old. Prevost, 20 years before his election as pope, still young in the face, wears an antsy smile. He bows his head and then looks up, toward the scoreboard. Next to him, Schmit holds his boy in one arm and flashes two fingers, for two outs, with his free hand.
Anticipation builds. Jenks wastes no time. Two more pitches result in two more strikes, the final one a 96-mph blur, and exactly 33 seconds after Prevost appears on screen, Game 1 is over. The crowd erupts. A rush of fireworks goes off over center field. Ozzie Guillén, then the 41-year-old White Sox manager, offers quick fist bumps in the dugout and embraces Jenks with a big smile.
For almost 20 years, the final moments of that game remain a footnote in the larger story of the White Sox's four-game sweep. They're lost amid Jermaine Dye's steady hitting and Paul Konerko's seventh-inning grand slam in Game 2; almost forgotten around Chicago in the joy surrounding the Sox's third World Series championship, and first (and still only) since 1917.
But then come the revelations: the white smoke in Vatican City, Prevost's election and transformation to Pope Leo XIV, an American city's pride in the ascension of one of their own. There are memes: 'Da Pope,' and Holy Communion with Vienna Chicago-style hot dogs and deep dish pizza; the new pope blessing everyone but cursing Green Bay. Mild sacrilege, arguably, but funny.
And there are questions, including those about his baseball loyalties. There is, at first, something like a false prophecy — that the pontiff is a Cubs fan. Soon come the firm corrections, the now-viral photo and video from Game 1 of the '05 Series, and the proof of his allegiance. Pope Leo XIV's oldest brother is a Cubs fan, but the pope, himself, never wavered from his South Side roots.
'We used to give each other grief all the time,' Louis Prevost, 73, says of their childhood. 'And in those days, the Cubs were pretty sad …
'When I saw the picture (from the 2005 World Series), I was like, 'How the heck did he get into that?' But that was him at the game there. That was his thing. He liked to get out and go to a game once in a while. Eat a hot dog. Have some pizza. Like any other guy in Chicago on the South Side.'
In the moment that night in October 2005, Robert Prevost indeed looks like any other guy from the South Side. That has become a big part of the allure. The night has taken on a sense of timelessness. Two decades later, people want to revisit it. Some are making pilgrimages to Rate Field, now home to one of the most hapless teams in baseball, to feel closer to Pope Leo XIV.
'How special,' Guillén says one evening in May, after the White Sox unveiled a mural in honor of Pope Leo XIV. Guillén is 61 now and sitting in a green room above home plate at Rate Field, where he works as an analyst on the Chicago Sports Network. He's dressed in his TV clothes and like a lot of people these days, the 2005 World Series has come to feel more spiritual for him, too.
'Like, this man was here,' Guillén says of the pope. 'That really hits you in the face.
'Like, what a moment.'
The connection to Pope Leo XIV means more to Guillén because of his deep ties to the White Sox, as a player and manager, and because of his established roots in Chicago, his adopted hometown. But it goes beyond that, too, given his faith.
Guillén grew up in a religious home in his native Venezuela and spent three years carrying the cross in a Catholic church, an altar boy with a talent for baseball. He says the church provided structure — the only things he did was 'play (baseball), go to school and be the altar boy' — and refuge.
It wasn't uncommon, Guillén says, for his priest to give him money because Guillén grew up with little of it. Even as a boy, the future Major League shortstop knew that one day he'd name his first-born son after that priest. And indeed, Ozzie Guillén Jr.'s middle name is Eduardo, after 'Padre Eduardo' from his father's homeland.
In the days after the election of Pope Leo XIV, the younger Guillén posed the question his father hadn't yet pondered: Did he ever think, growing up as an altar boy in Venezuela, that the pope would know who he was? Guillén laughed.
'I said, 'He don't know who I am,'' Guillén says.
To which his son replied:
'Of course, he does. He was in there (for the World Series). You were the manager.'
Guillén's wife is 'very, very Catholic,' he says, and years ago, during a visit to Rome, they had occasion to visit with Pope Francis. The Guilléns took pride in the first Latin American pope in history. When he died in April, Guillén says his wife cried.
She spent weeks watching the news coverage, waiting to learn of Pope Francis' successor, only to find out it was a Chicago-born priest who rose through the church during his years in Peru. And not only that — but that he happened to be a White Sox fan who sat near the dugout in the 2005 World Series, cheering on her husband and his players.
'It should make it more special for all the guys who wear the uniform, knowing they were playing in front of' the future Pope Leo XIV, Guillén says. 'Look where he is now.'
Guillén wants to take another trip to Rome with his wife. He hopes the new pope might bless him.
'I want to meet him,' he says.
Looking back, it's easy to become swept away in the spirituality of it all. The feeling that perhaps a higher power really was at work. It's enough to turn skeptics into believers. The White Sox won all four of those World Series games by no more than two runs. They overcame deficits in two of them.
They rallied from two runs down with Konerko's grand slam in the seventh inning of Game 2, only to lose the lead in the top of the ninth and then win on Scott Podsednik's unlikely home run in the bottom of the inning. They trailed by four in Houston in Game 3, then rallied again and won in 14 innings. They scored the lone run of Game 4 in the eighth inning, only for Jenks in the bottom of the ninth to allow a leadoff single before retiring three consecutive batters to close out the Series.
And that run of good fortune, of the baseball gods smiling kindly after so many years of cursed luck, began in some ways in Game 1. It began with the future pope watching not more than two dozen rows behind the Sox dugout. With future President Barack Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois, also in attendance. It has to be the first and only sporting event in history with a future pope and future U.S. president among the crowd, both rooting for their neighborhood's team.
'As my fellow South Siders know, it has been a long time coming,' Obama said during a speech on the Senate floor the day after the Sox's victory in Game 4. He referenced how appropriate it felt that the final out came on a throw that was on time 'by only half a step;' how the White Sox won four games by a total of six runs.
'Win by the skin of your teeth,' Obama said. 'Win or die trying, that's our motto this year.'
'I had the privilege of attending Game 1 of the World Series on Saturday,' he said moments later, 'and the fans in and around the park were a cross-section of the city.'
Few scenes spoke more to that than the one in Section 140, down along the third base line. There, in row 19, a Chicago-born priest of the Augustinian Order, a former Peruvian missionary then based in Rome, stood alongside three generations of South Siders to cheer on a Venezuelan-born manager leading a team that came to embody a city's identity.
The mural honoring that long-ago night is painted on one of the pillars at the entrance of Section 140, and pays homage to the dual identities of the man depicted. In the larger image, there's Pope Leo XIV, in full papal regalia, lifting his right arm as if to offer a blessing. In a smaller one, in the top right, there's Robert Prevost, then known as Father Bob, attending Game 1 in 2005.
It's a screenshot of the moment the camera found him in the top of the ninth. There's little Eddie Schmit next to him and his father, Eddie III. Just out of the frame is Ed Schmit Jr., who was closest of all to Father Bob and who knew him well from their work at St. Rita High School, where Father Bob sometimes taught and where Schmit Jr. was an alum and founding board member.
About a dozen members of the Schmit family gathered for the mural's unveiling last month. Schmit Jr. died in July 2020 of pancreatic cancer, but his memory loomed large.
'He is just smiling down,' said Father Tom McCarthy, former principal at St. Rita and a longtime friend of both Schmit Jr. and the pope.
Father Bob called Schmit Jr. often in his final days and their conversations never ended without Schmit sharing his belief that Prevost would be pope one day. It was something Schmit thought for a long time, from back when Father Bob blessed family babies and when Schmit often offered him Sox seats that have been in his family since 1983 at the old Comiskey Park.
The site of the mural and the pope's seat in Section 140 is now something like a holy site, a shrine for the curious and the more spiritual. It's not a stretch to say people are making pilgrimages to it.
On the first Monday in June, the line to take pictures with Pope Leo XIV's likeness stretches well into the concourse. It curls around the Mini Melts ice cream stand and ends near the beer counter where 16-ounce tall boys go for $12.99.
A nearby usher, Keith Coplen Jr., says it's his first night on the job, and that he's nervous because he's in charge of the aisle of the mural. He prepares for the crowd but takes comfort in his surroundings and before it becomes too busy he takes a breath. 'I think Jesus is with me,' he says, nodding in the direction of the artwork next to him.
Eighteen rows down, two men are on an expedition and stop when they find what they're looking for: Seat 2 in Row 19 of Section 140. It's Father Bob's seat from that night in 2005. They take turns sitting in it and take pictures of each other and, as Catholics, they feel drawn to the location, even if 20 years have gone by.
'I had to see this,' one of them, Dick Schindel, says as he leans against the row.
Up above, Coplen is keeping count of those who come to the mural. There's a dozen, two dozen, more than 50 less than an hour before the first pitch, and 161 and counting when the Sox take the field. The rush grows busier the closer it gets to game time.
People approach and make the sign of the cross. Families arrange themselves for the perfect picture. Some hold up prayer hands. Some hold out their phones for selfies.
'He's blessing me!' one woman yells to her friends, after she has stood beneath Pope Leo XIV's extended right arm. The White Sox are in last place again and the upper deck is closed again and the team's descent is perhaps proof of the limits of God's power, or priorities. For one night 20 years ago, though, something divine happened here. Believers were made. Faith rewarded.
The spirit lingers, for those who seek it.