CLEVELAND – In some respects, the close friendship that’s formed between White Sox All-Stars Miguel Vargas and Munetaka Murakami was inevitable.
“I mean, just look at his face,” Vargas said. “He’s a funny guy, just looking at him. I think he’s the best guy ever.”
Vargas added that most of the Spanish-language slang that Murakami flaunted during his first media scrum in spring training, he knew upon arrival. The Sox international scouting team got nothing but raves on Murakami’s makeup as they dug in on him, and asked how long it took for him to get a feel of his new first baseman’s personality, manager Will Venable shrugged and said “Like, two days.”
“You saw really early on, day two, him having a conversation with Chase Meidroth out on the field,” Venable said. “He knew more English and spoke more English than I had anticipated, but obviously still very limited.”
Simultaneously, English isn’t the first language of Vargas nor Murakami. But where such a difference seemed like it should have been a hurdle, it wound up being their point of connection.
“As an individual who has English as a second language, I think he understands what I'm going through at the moment, so it's really easy I think for him to understand what I'm going through and for me as what he went through,” Murakami said of Vargas via interpreter. “That's where I can get really close with him in the mindset and how we approach language.”
Estimating it took him four-to-five years to become fluent in English after signing with the Dodgers as a 17-year-old, Vargas thinks Murakami is ahead of the curve. But more than that, the Sox third baseman thinks bridging those divides is foundational to this team’s lauded dynamic.
“That’s what this clubhouse is about,” Vargas told the Sun-Times. “We don’t judge nobody or try to make fun of somebody for their language. We all want to be part of the group and make everybody comfortable.”
“The universal language around here is just joking around, having fun,” said All-Star outfielder Trisan Peters. “That goes past those language barriers. It's the same thing with [Luisangel] Acuna, too. He doesn't speak a ton of English. We have a lot of fun with him, too.”
Positive clubhouse vibes often show up downstream of winning baseball games, and Murakami’s acceptance process had the advantage of his signing being the most-cited event by Sox players for when they believed this team could fly past their meager preseason expectations.
But now that the White Sox season has become defined by players like Peters, Meidroth and Vargas–all shed as non-essential by their previous organizations–playing beyond their perceived potential on the South Side, where the last contending roster was undone by the opposite phenomenon in 2022, there’s room to talk about vibes having tangible impact.
“When you have guys trying to prove themselves to their own dugout or to their own teammates, it's usually a toxic culture that usually isn't going to get you anywhere,” said Davis Martin, who has been around long enough to speak to different White Sox environments. “We built something special here where you know that good, bad, or indifferent of how you perform on the field, you know the guys love you for who you are.”
The ability to pick each other up is also on display on the field. The White Sox are not thought of as the deepest roster ever assembled, but proclaimed besties Vargas and Murakami combining to go 1-for-17 with three walks in the Wild Card series clearly wasn’t enough to sink them against the Astros. Someone will need to come huge for the Sox to knock off a Guardians team that outplayed them down the stretch, but it could be anyone.
“We’ve got guys who can take care of the team for a week, other guys can take care of the team for the next week,” Vargas said. “It’s how we’ve been doing it. Any guy at any moment can be that guy. We’re all ready to be that guy.”
