Murakami's Blast, Sánchez's Nightmare Sink Yankees in 12
The White Sox erased a four-run deficit and beat the Yankees 6-5 on July 29, with Munetaka Murakami scoring three times — including twice on the same catcher's pickoff error in extra innings. What looked like a comfortable New York win turned into a Chicago comeback for the ages.
The Yankees came out swinging. Paul Goldschmidt singled to left in the first inning to score Rice and push Domínguez to third, and then Spencer Jones went deep to left center — 380 feet — scoring both Domínguez and Goldschmidt to make it 4-0 before Chicago had even blinked. Jones finished 2-for-4 with a homer, 3 RBI, and a run scored, and Cam Schlittler was dealing on the mound: 6.1 innings, just 2 hits, 1 earned run, and 8 strikeouts. On paper, this game was over.
It wasn't. The White Sox chipped away in the seventh when Andrew Benintendi doubled to right, scoring Murakami and cutting the lead to 4-1. Then the eighth inning happened. Sam Antonacci launched a two-run shot to right — 346 feet — to make it 4-3, and then Murakami stepped up and crushed a solo homer to center at 404 feet to tie the game at four. That swing was the turning point: Chicago's win probability jumped from 25% to 57% on that single at-bat, a 33-point swing that flipped the entire complexion of the game. The story of the night, it appears, was Murakami — 1-for-4 on paper, but he crossed the plate three times and single-handedly dragged the White Sox back into contention.
Extra innings delivered the decisive chaos. In the 11th, Volpe hit a sacrifice fly to right to score Sánchez and give New York a 5-4 lead — but then Sánchez, now behind the plate, committed a pickoff error that allowed Murakami to score and tie it at five. The scoring sequence lists that error twice, both credited to Sánchez, leaving the game knotted heading to the 12th. Chicago's bullpen — Grant Taylor with 2.1 scoreless innings and Chris Murphy with a clean inning of his own — held New York off the board long enough for Edgar Quero to end it: a single to center scored Peters, and the White Sox walked off 6-5. Davis Martin allowed 4 earned runs in 6 innings and looked like the losing pitcher for most of the night. Instead, Chicago's pen and one catastrophic defensive moment turned this into a White Sox win.