Elle's Baseball Musings: Both Chicagos Booked October on the Same Thursday
By Elle Elena ·
Thursday was the first time the Cubs and White Sox clinched playoff berths on the same day. That is not a cute framing device. ESPN Research dug it up because nobody had a ready example. Chicago had shared October before (1906, 2008, the weird 2020 season). It had never punched both tickets on the same afternoon.
I spent part of the day bouncing between feeds the way you bounce between neighborhood recommendations when someone asks where to eat in this city. Birrieria Zaragoza for visitors who think they already know Chicago. Johnnie's Beef when you want the counter-service argument settled. On Thursday the menu was simpler. North Side first, then South Side, then the standings looking like someone had finally remembered both clubs live here.
At Wrigley, Pete Crow-Armstrong walked to lead off the first against Miami, stole second on the next pitch, and became the seventh player with at least 40 home runs and 40 steals in a season. He already had 45 homers. Fans chanted MVP while the board caught up. PCA talked afterward about gratitude more than relief, which is the correct emotional order when a milestone lands in the middle of a clinch. I have liked what happens when stealing bases is treated as a real weapon again, and watching a center fielder treat 40 steals like part of the job description instead of a novelty still feels like the sport remembering itself.
Seiya Suzuki homered in the fifth. Nico Hoerner singled Ian Happ home in the sixth. The Cubs won 2-1, locked an NL wild-card berth, and booked consecutive postseason trips for the first time since 2015-18. The path was not tidy. A 20-3 sprint in April and May, a 2-14 freefall after that, and enough scar tissue that Craig Counsell could talk about calluses without sounding like a poster. Ian Happ called it a rollercoaster and still sounded like someone who expected the ride to keep moving forward.
A few hundred miles west and a few minutes earlier on the clock, the White Sox finished something stranger. They beat Kansas City 9-1, clinched at least an AL wild-card spot, and became the first club to follow consecutive 100-loss seasons by reaching the playoffs. Three straight 100-loss years, then 82 wins and counting, first October since 2021, still one game behind Cleveland for the division with the Rockies coming to town. Kyle Teel reached base five times and homered. David Sandlin threw six innings against the organization that drafted him. The first two innings were pure White Sox 2026: mistakes capitalized on, bases stolen, patience turned into a 3-0 lead before Kansas City finished warming up.
Colson Montgomery tied Mark Reynolds' single-season strikeout record at 223 and still talked like a guy who had believed in the clubhouse when the rest of baseball treated the franchise like a cautionary slide. Baltimore was eliminated by the same result. The AL Central race stays alive between Chicago and Cleveland, which is a sentence I didn't see coming in March.
The best baseball stories often involve players and teams who were not supposed to become stories yet. The White Sox were supposed to be a multi-year rebuild slideshow. The Cubs were supposed to be interesting and imperfect. Thursday made both of them October teams before the leaves finished turning, and it did it on the same calendar square.
I am not going to pretend this guarantees a deep run for either side. Clinching is a door opening, not a parade schedule. What I will say is that a city with two clubs, two vibes, and years of staggered relevance just got a shared afternoon it had never owned before. PCA put 40-40 on the board while one half of town exhaled. The other half sprayed champagne after three years of counting losses in triple digits. If you live here, or if you just love the sport enough to care when a city invents a new kind of clinch day, Thursday was an afternoon you stay on the couch for.
I will watch how Chicago spends the rest of the week against Colorado and whoever else is still playing for seeding. I will also keep one eye on Cleveland, because a Central title and a bye are still on the table. For one Thursday, though, both Chicagos got in. That is enough of a sentence to carry overnight.
-Elle