For the last few years, going to a Chicago White Sox game has felt less like entertainment than it has done community service. The team lost 121 games in 2024, the most losses in a single season in modern history, and one that was bookended by other 101 and 102-loss years. Fans stopped showing up. National broadcasts, rare as they were, treated the franchise like a cautionary tale. And even Rate Field itself felt tired, with whole sections empty before the first pitch.
Now, though, the ballpark crackles again. And a lot of that comes down to Japanese rookie phenom, Munetaka Murakami, and the way he hits baseballs absurdly hard. Enjoyably hard, even.
After years of speculation about when he would finally leave Japan, the White Sox won the bidding war to sign Murakami over the winter, and he arrived as already a huge name in his home continent. He hit 56 home runs for the Yakult Swallows in 2022, won the Triple Crown and MVP awards, and basically spent his early career terrorizing pitchers in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. The question was never whether he could hit. The question was whether he could hit here. Or more precisely, whether he ever would.
Turns out, no one need have worried.
Murakami Came Out The Gate Storming
Some sluggers arrive from Japan spend six months looking overwhelmed by major-league velocity. Murakami, though, was ready immediately. The home runs started during the seasonâs first week and have not slowed down since; Murakami reached 10 homers within his first 25 major-league games, including a stretch where he homered in five straight contests, and this week became the first rookie in MLB history to hit 20 home runs before June.
They are not cheap home runs, either. Murakami hits the ball with the kind of violence that changes the mood, and sometimes does so with swings that do not even look that committed. What looks like the mild hand swipe of someone trying to swat away an overexcited dog can lead to a baseball travelling to the Moon.
Every team has hitters who can clear the fence. But not every team has a guy who makes 35,000 people stand up the second the bat connects with the ball. For the White Sox, a franchise that has spent years dead on its feet, this positivity is a heck of a welcome change. There are vibes at the ballpark, and for the first time in what feels like a long time, the Sox are fun again.
White Sox’s Futility Streak Seemingly At An End
Even when the White Sox’s rebuild had its occasional success stories, the whole thing often felt joyless and inevitably. Stars got hurt. The young players stalled out. Managers came and went. Fans got sick of hearing about âthe futureâ while watching bad baseball in the present. By the end of the particularly disastrous 2024 season, many people around the club just sounded exhausted.
This year feels different, however. The White Sox are hanging around the playoff race far longer than many expected, and people are actually paying attention again. Attendance is up noticeably from the past two seasons. The atmosphere around the team is lighter. There is music blasting after wins instead of lectures about accountability and fundamentals. And Murakami is at the centre of all of it.
This is not to say that Murakami is one of the best hitters in the game. He still swings through plenty of pitches, and in particular, good fastballs up in the zone can beat him, while breaking balls low and away still get ugly swings now and then. On the season to date, Murakami is batting .240, which normally is not the profile of somebody becoming one of baseballâs biggest stories. And he will also now miss two weeks of action due to a hamstring problem.
Nevertheless, Murakami’s addition has raised the floor of the team, the attendance, and the overall mood.
Murakami, The Big Ticket
For years, the organization kept trying to sell fans on patience. Wait for the prospects. Wait for the rebuild. Wait for next year. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, people stop listening. But the addition of Murakami jumped all of that within about three weeks by tonking the cover off the ball.
It has also helped that the team around him is no longer as forlorn. Young veterans such as Miguel Vargas and Sam Antonacci have taken steps forward, the pitching staff has been a bit more competent than expected, and for the first time in a while, White Sox games are worth watching beyond the seventh inning stretch.
Nobody is pretending they are there yet. There are still flaws everywhere on the roster. But after years of embarrassment, the White Sox finally feel alive again. You might actually watch them now.
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