White Sox 9, Cubs 8 (10 innings): First time, long time

Edgar Quero and Tristan Peters both spent their offseason trying to add power to profiles otherwise built around contact ability and their place on the defensive spectrum.

And until the bottom of the eighth inning of a 4-all tie in the rubber match of the most anticipated Crosstown series in years, each still had a zero in their home run column. But both broke through in a fashion that was cathartic beyond their wildest dreams, as did the Sox themselves.

"Couldn't ask for a better moment," Peters said. "Probably the most emotion I've ever showed on a field, and what a series to do it in too. It was amazing."

Peters ripped a Phil Maton sweeper for a go-ahead three-run blast in the eighth, only to watch as a Miguel Vargas error set the stage for Seranthony Domínguez to yield the lead on a game-tying Michael Conforto home run to dead center to ninth. But after the Cubs were able to push ahead in the 10th with a Alex Bregman chopper slow enough to bring home the extra runner off Tyler Davis, it only queued the moment for the hitter on the White Sox who needed it most.

Edgar Quero, slugging .163 entering the day, obliterated the first pitch he saw from old friend Ryan Rolison to left-center for a walk-off home run against the first place Cubs, and sealing up an instant classic of a White Sox victory. After a quarter-season of struggle, the 23-year-old delivered the highlight of his career...for now.

"This is pretty close to my MLB debut," Quero said, grinning widely. "It’s tied right now. Hopefully I hit another one in the World Series like that, Game 7 to win the ballgame. That’s it."

"I’m sure it’s built up in there, I know he’s very excited about that one," Will Venable said of his catcher's emotions. "We believe in Edgar and he’s working so hard to get himself back on track and obviously that’s a good sign right there."

Peters' homer off Maton's center-cut sweeper cashed in a surprising two-out eighth-inning rally off Maton started by an Andrew Benintendi walk, followed by a Quero single, and had the feel of a backbreaker. Instead, Venable was re-affirming that Domínguez is still his closer postgame after he blew his third save of the season before recording the second out of the ninth.

Domínguez walked Bregman before striking out Ian Happ, but when Miguel Vargas corralled Seiya Suzuki's hard smash to third, his skipped throw rolled under Munetaka Murakami's glove for a two-base error. With his control already abandoning him, Domínguez fell behind Conforto 3-1 before splitting the plate with a sinker that was lifted out to dead center to re-tie the game.

"The whole dugout was like 'All right, let's go. We still have a chance to win it,'" said Colson Montgomery. "I think we just keep proving to ourselves that whatever happens in a game, if we get down, if we get up, this game is so hard and also you know those other guys are good too. They strung some good at-bats together. They were able to tie the game. But if we just stick to our process and stick to our game, we'll be able to come out on top."

With the way the game started, at least adversity was a familiar sensation.

After Erick Fedde's first of four walks on the afternoon, Venable and head trainer James Kruk went out for a mound visit that would provide a lens through which to view the right-hander's entire laborious outing. They examined a cut on Fedde's right thumb that he insisted was no real hindrance, but correlated pretty sharply with an inability to command his trademark sweeper.

"It wasn’t really affecting me," Fedde said of the cut. "It was just more the subconscious trying to stop the bleeding. I’m sure it maybe looked worse on TV, but I kept like wiping it or licking it to try to stop the bleeding onto the baseball."

He had bounced a pair of two-strike breaking balls in the first right before Michael Busch blistered a full count cutter for a two-run homer two batters into the game, and after a pair of singles from Bregman and Suzuki, another bounced sweeper eluded Quero for a run-scoring wild pitch to make it a three-run Cubs first. Even in putting up two zeroes afterward, Fedde toiled to the tune of 84 pitches through three innings.

That kind of workload made coming back out for the fourth with the lineup about to turn over a lower upside proposition. Sure enough, after scuffling No. 9 hitter Dansby Swanson poked the third-straight low-and-away sweeper for a single and a five-pitch walk to Nico Hoerner, Sean Newcomb was dropped into the sort of crisis where just one run across, coming on a Bregman deflected comebacker infield single registered as fine work.

Cubs starter Colin Rea started his day with a 1-2-3 inning and never got moved off his four-seam heavy attack, so the manner in which he wound up ceding an early 4-1 lead before he could even qualify for a win kinda snuck up on you.

Montgomery's 100th career-hit was legitimately well-struck but also legitimately booted by Busch to lead off the second. The big shortstop went first-to-third on the first of three Benintendi hits on the afternoon, and scored on an Quero single up the middle, even though Benintendi was easily gunned down trying to pull off the same voyage.

Benintendi's second knock was a gap-splitting flared double to left-center in the fourth, plating Vargas after he took a fastball off the hand to lead off the frame.

There were apparently no ill-effects. Pete Crow-Armstrong robbed Derek Hill of extra bases after a Peters lead off walk in the fifth, slamming into the center field wall as he hauled in a 101 mph drive. But after Sam Antonacci served a single to left and Murakami flashed his surprising speed to beat out a double play ball, the Cubs Gold Glove-winner couldn't haul in Vargas' two-out missile to right-center, getting nothing but a face full of fence as a two-run game-tying double rolled onto the warning track.

At least the middle of the bullpen held firm. Bryan Hudson was the pitcher of record for escaping a scoreless eighth with a deep Busch fly out to center to strand a pair. Newcomb and Grant Taylor both worked two scoreless frames to account for Fedde being limited to nine outs, with the latter's second inning of work being capped off by Antonacci laying out for Conforto's soft flare to left and somehow not ripping his shoulder clean off his body.

Bullet points:

*Announced attendance was 38,608. They sold out the whole weekend.

*Quero went 4-for-6 on challenges behind the plate, but the second one was an obvious miss that Domínguez could have used later. He recorded his first three-hit game of the season, and his first game in which he recorded both a run and an RBI.

*Benintendi reached base four times, and has five hits in his last two games.

*Domínguez has allowed five home runs in just 18 2/3 innings of work, which is a 2.41 HR/9.

Record: 24-22 | Box score | Statcast