At long last, Boston ace reaches dream of Series

Game 1 starter has reaped benefits of trade from Chicago

While discussing a 107-year-old Chicago White Sox strikeout record he was closing in on back in September 2015, Chris Sale was staring at the lanyard holding my press credential.

It was near the end of another dominant season gone to waste, and Sale clearly was tired of the losing.

“It’s cool to talk about, to talk to your buddies and your family about stuff like this (record),” Sale told reporters. “But I see a (reporter) wearing a postseason lanyard right there. You don’t get to the postseason with strikeouts. You don’t get to the playoffs with fancy numbers and stuff like that.

”You get there by wins, and I think everybody in this clubhouse and everybody around Major League Baseball can tell you that there’s one thing that’s important, and that’s winning.“

A little more than three years later, Sale finally is where he always wanted to be: starting Game 1 of the World Series, which begins Tuesday night at Fenway Park.

It has been a long and adventurous journey for the Red Sox ace, who started out in the White Sox bullpen in the summer of 2010 and quickly developed into one of the game’s elite starters.

Sale was supposed to be leading the White Sox into the World Series, having signed a five-year, $32.5 million deal with two teamoption years during 2013 spring training that made him one of the game’s biggest bargains. The White Sox annually tried to surround him with enough talent to get to the postseason, but they finally gave up after 2016 and dealt him to the Red Sox in the trade that kick-started the rebuild.

Most lauded the deal that brought top prospects Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech to the White Sox. But Moncada’s first full major-league season this year was a disappointment, and Tommy John elbow surgery in September ended the promising beginning of Kopech’s majorleague career.

Sale, meanwhile, has started the last two All-Star games wearing a Red Sox uniform and has gone 29-12 with a 2.56 earned-run average and 545 strikeouts in 372 1⁄ innings. At one point this

3 season, he went 6-0 with an 0.20 ERA over seven starts, the best seven-start span since Bob Gibson posted an 0.14 ERA in 1968.

But we haven’t seen the best of Sale in October, and who knows how long he will be allowed to go after being hospitalized with a stomach illness after starting Game 1 of the American League Championship Series? Sale battled shoulder issues during the second half and probably missed a chance at winning his first Cy Young Award by resting his arm to be strong for the postseason.

But after waiting so long for this opportunity, Sale should be ready to return to his normal self on a prime-time stage with the nation watching.

Sale has one more season in Boston before hitting free agency, where he figures to command one of the game’s biggest contracts.