The White Sox unveiled a graphic installation Monday that pays tribute to the new pontiff and that moment during their last championship run. The pillar artwork features a waving Pope Leo XIV, along with a picture from the TV broadcast of the future pope sitting with good friend Ed Schmit and his grandson, Eddie.

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Pope Leo XIV, who was elected as the first American pontiff in the more than 2000-year history of the office on May 8, is confirmed to be a White Sox fan. He is originally from the South Side of Chicago and was miraculously spotted on TV at Game 1 of the World Series in 2005.

The Archdiocese of Chicago will celebrate the historic election of Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV on June 14 at Rate Field, home of the White Sox.

A mural of Pope Leo XIV sits atop Section 140, where he sat during Game 1 of the 2005 World Series. "I think now the most famous seat belongs to the pope," a team official said.

Then Leo came along. Plagued by the tempests of drugs, murder, corruption and other vices of biblical proportion for much of the past five decades, residents in this tiny burg just south of Chicago are seeing a ray of divine hope in their most famous native son,

In Chicago, whether it’s architecture or Catholicism, we do ordinary very well. It’s one reason we now call Pope Leo XIV our own.

"He’s the one who gave me permission to stay there" in 2000, James M. Ray, the former priest, told the Chicago Sun-Times about Robert Prevost, newly installed as pope but then head of the Midwest province of the Catholic church’s Augustinian order.

Whitey Rigsby had just landed in Chicago to attend a Villanova function and was still on the plane when his wife, Becky, called after the white smoke rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. The pope wasn’t just an American,