White Sox Beat Astros 6-3 as Empty Seats and Boos Mark Game 1
The Chicago White Sox took Game 1 in Houston, beating the Astros 6-3 on 29 Sept. to open the American League wild-card series at Daikin Park. It leaves Chicago one win from moving on in this best-of-three opening round, where the first team to two wins advances.
Colson Montgomery hit a solo homer and Sam Antonacci drove in two runs to lead the White Sox attack ESPN. Munetaka Murakami added his first career postseason hit in the win MLB.com.
Chicago did it with a bullpen game, meaning no traditional starting pitcher and instead a string of relievers. Five White Sox pitchers combined to hold Houston to three runs. Smith threw three scoreless innings without a walk, and Grant Taylor followed with 2 1/3 innings MLB.com. Houston, by contrast, used eight pitchers in the loss.
The stands told another story. The announced crowd was 34,011 in a ballpark that holds 40,963. Large swaths of the upper deck sat empty for the 4:10 p.m. first pitch from Houston right-hander AJ Blumbaugh. The lower two decks were fuller but still showed gaps The Guardian.
Those who came made noise early. And not the good kind. Houston fell behind 3-0 in the first two innings and heard boos from the home crowd. Reliever Bennett Sousa heard them again in the seventh after spiking two breaking pitches, breaking balls that bounced well short of the plate.
Afterward, Houston players pushed back. First baseman Christian Walker said the team needs cheers and energy, not boos. Sousa said the Astros laid a lot on the line to give fans a playoff game and series and asked for their support.
Houston arrived here by history's back door. The Astros are baseball's first division winner at .500 or worse. They are also the first team to reach the postseason without a winning record in a full-length season. They missed the playoffs in 2025 despite finishing 81-81. This is their ninth playoff trip in 10 years.
That run once set the standard. Houston reached the American League Championship Series, the league's final four, seven straight times from 2017 to 2023. It made the World Series four times in that span, winning titles in 2017 and 2022. The 2026 regular-season crowds were middle of the pack at 30,519 per game, 14th in the majors.
Now Houston must win to survive. Game 2 was scheduled for 5 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. CT. History is tight. Only three teams in 24 previous wild-card series matchups won the series after losing Game 1, and two of those comebacks came in the fan-free 2020 playoffs. The loss was Houston's eighth straight home playoff defeat.
For fans, the empty seats say as much as the score. Day games have struggled before. Cleveland's opener against Detroit in 2025 started at 1:08 p.m., drew 26,186, and none of the three games topped 30,000. Tampa Bay drew 19,704 for a 2023 wild-card opener against Texas, the lowest for a non-COVID postseason game since the 1919 World Series.
