The return of Kyle Teel to the White Sox was nice, but what the fans at Rate Field really wanted was a win. After losing three of four to the Houston Astros, they needed to see the team that has responded to adversity time and time again this season.

The Sox displayed their trademark perseverance by beating the Minnesota Twins, 4-1. Three homers came from Braden Montgomery, Miguel Vargas, and Colson Montgomery – the latter two of whom are now the first hitters on the team to reach 30 home runs. Munetaka Murakami needs only one homer to join them.

Erick Fedde has had a decent campaign in his own right, and he continued that with five shutout innings. Hagen Smith followed with two of his own, and Bryan Hudson had one. Grant Taylor gave up a solo homer and even allowed the tying run to come to the plate, but he was able to escape any further damage.

However, the baseball gods never make anything easy, and it is for that reason that the Sox had their division lead cut into despite getting the victory. That's because the Cleveland Guardians swept a doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers by overcoming multi-run deficits in both games and walking both contests off.

The consequence is that the Sox now lead the AL Central by only 2.5 games. Luckily, the Twins weren't up to it Friday, or the division lead would have been cut in half despite starting the day with a three-game lead. Fortunately, they were spared that cruel fate.

No one said it was going to be easy to close out the division. Heck, it's nothing short of miraculous that we're talking about the Sox in this context only two years after losing 121 games. Many fans are probably still pinching themselves to make sure this is real life.

But the Sox need to go into every game here on with the realization that only they truly can help themselves. Any outside help they get is a bonus. While it's unrealistic to expect them to win every game as part of shrinking their magic numbers, they can't go into any game thinking that help from another team is coming.

All of this might be nerve-wracking, but it certainly beats watching baseball in September knowing the team has been long out of contention. No one should have it any other way.