White Sox title is AP story of the year
2005: THE YEAR IN SPORTS

NEW YORK (AP) — When the White Sox won the World Series for the first time in nearly nine decades, it took awhile for Jerry Reinsdorf to realize what the title meant to many in Chicago.

“It started with a friend of mine sending an email saying he had gone to the cemetery to tell his parents the White Sox had won the World Series,” the White Sox owner said, “and when he got there, two-thirds of the graves were decorated with White Sox memorabilia. And then I found out that this was not just at that cemetery, this was going on all around the area.”

Chicago’s remarkable run to its first World Series title since 1917 was voted sports story of the year in balloting by newspaper and broadcast members of The Associated Press.

“There’s hardly anybody still alive from 1917, and those few who are really don’t much remember that,” Reinsdorf said. “So this is the first time this has happened in almost everybody’s lifetime. And the impact has just been incredible. Baseball makes people think about their ancestors, their parents and their grandparents.”

Chicago’s victory received 552 points in the voting. Hurricane Katrina displacing the NFL’s New Orleans Saints, the NBA’s Hornets and college teams was second with 465 points, followed by Lance Armstrong’s record seventh straight Tour de France title (455), the furor over steroids in baseball (448), the New England Patriots’ Super Bowl victory (259), Southern California’s attempt to win its third straight college football title (243) and Baltimore’s Rafael Palmeiro getting his 3,000th hit and then getting suspended for steroids.

Chicago went an AL-best 99-63 during the regular season, holding on to win the AL Central after a September slump nearly dropped the White Sox into second place behind Cleveland. Chicago then went 11-1 during the postseason, matching the 1999 New York Yankees for the best mark since the postseason expanded to three rounds in 1995.

Reinsdorf ’s Chicago Bulls won six NBA titles from 1991-98. This championship meant far more, he said last week from the Phoenix area, where he spends much of the offseason.

“Basketball is a great sport. Baseball is a religion, and I truly believe that,” Reinsdorf said. “Ask 10 people what was the first basketball game they went to and whom did they go with, then ask them what was the first baseball game and whom they went with, and there’s a good chance that all 10 will remember the baseball and none of them will remember the basketball — or the football or the hockey.”