In his first season managing the Chicago White Sox, Will Venable's kindergarten teacher came to see him work. So did the principals and assistant principals of his elementary school, his middle school and his high school. All of them. Tonight that man managed the Chicago White Sox to a 7-3 win over the Houston Astros and the first playoff series this franchise has won since 2005. Two years ago the team he took over lost 121 games, the most any team has lost in a season since 1900. Here is why they all showed up. In May, when the Chicago White Sox played the San Francisco Giants a few miles from where he grew up, Venable left pregame field passes for two old teachers from San Rafael, California. One was Eugene Lang, who taught him eighth grade PE. This is what Lang said, thirty years later. "He was the best student I ever had. Will was so well liked because he included everybody on his team, so they all played really hard because of him, even the ones that weren't very athletic." Read that last part again. Even the ones that weren't very athletic. A gym teacher spends his career watching which kids get picked and which get left standing there. Thirty years on, the one thing he remembered is that the unathletic kids played hard for Will Venable, because he made sure they got to play. Now here is what a major league executive said in 2024, the week the Chicago White Sox hired him, before he managed a single game. This is Nick Hundley, his old teammate, now a special assistant with the Texas Rangers. "Players are going to play so hard for him because they know he cares more about their career than his own." Thirty years apart. Two men with no reason to ever speak. The same sentence. He does come from the game. His father Max Venable played 12 seasons in the majors, five with the San Francisco Giants. Max is 68 now, and this year he watched his son manage against the team he broke in with. "I told my wife, Molly, 'Man, if I were playing, I'd love to play for William just because of his demeanor and everything he brings.'" Will Venable did not want to play baseball. He went to Princeton for basketball, scored over 1,010 points and made first team All Ivy League. His mother would not let him quit baseball. He ended up a seventh round pick who spent seven years with the San Diego Padres. On October 31, 2024, a month after the worst season in modern baseball history, the Chicago White Sox hired him to fix it. "The idea that the team had been in a tough spot the last couple years, that really wasn't off-putting at all. I wanted to be part of something special." Now the honest part. They went 84-78. Two seasons is a small sample and this is no dynasty yet. But here is what Venable says people actually need. "You just need people around you to tell you, you are doing a good job and that they believe in you." He has been doing that since he was thirteen.