White Sox beat Cubs in perhaps most watched exhibition game ever

Adam Engel

So, the White Sox beat the Cubs, 7-3, at Wrigley Field on Sunday in the first exhibition game for both teams since baseball restarted amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The game drew a 3.93 rating on NBC Sports Chicago, the highest rating for a Sox game since September 2012 -- also known as the last time the Sox were in the pennant race.

I guess that goes to show how starved we are for baseball, right? My phone was blowing up during the game with texts from friends. I seem to become more popular when there's a ballgame on the air.

Hey, my friends have questions. Hopefully, I have answers.

And here are my three takeaways from Sunday's game:

1. It was nice to see the Sox slugging the ball around. The Sox had a punch-and-judy kind of offense in comparison to the rest of the league in 2019. They had a team slugging percentage of .414, which was 13th out of 15 teams in the American League. Only the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers -- two clubs who finished with more than 100 losses -- were worse.

But during a six-run fifth inning, the Sox totaled seven hits, five of them for extra-bases. Adam Engel homered off Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks. Tim Anderson and Jose Abreu singled, also off Hendricks, and the Cubs changed pitchers.

The first four batters against Jharel Cotton went as such:

• Two-run double for Yasmani Grandal
• RBI double for Edwin Encarnacion
• RBI double for Luis Robert
• RBI triple for Leury Garcia

Granted, the triple by Garcia was a bit of a misplay by Cubs center fielder Ian Happ, but every one of those four hits was stung. Good to see.

2. Carson Fulmer is still very bad. The Sox didn't use any pitchers that we'd expect to be on the Opening Day roster. We saw Drew Anderson, Ross Detwiler, Jimmy Lambert, Fulmer and Codi Heuer.

Unfortunately, Fulmer was the one who looked terrible. The former first-round draft pick entered with a 7-2 lead in the eighth inning and could not get three outs. He walked the bases loaded and gave up a run on an infield single. Heuer relieved and needed only one pitch to clean up the mess.

Lead preserved, win preserved, but it's hard to envision Fulmer ever carving a role in the major leagues at this point. He couldn't consistently throw strikes two years ago. He cannot consistently throw strikes today. Enough is enough.

3. Cherish every moment that we have with baseball. I mean, I can't really blame all the people who chose to spend their Sunday night watching a game that really didn't mean a thing.

Summer nights and baseball are cherished things for many of us. We're all crossing our fingers that this 60-game season and playoffs will be played out to its conclusion, but we don't really know what's going to happen with this virus and this godawful pandemic.

Basically, any time I have the chance to sit down and take in a ballgame, I'm going to do it. Even as Sunday's game dragged into the late innings and the regulars from both sides had finished their work for the evening, I continued to watch.

I'm doing that just in case the privilege of watching baseball goes away in the coming weeks. I pray it does not. It was good for the soul, and the fact that the Sox won, that's even better.