Comcast SportsNet Chicago Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary of White Sox Championship With New Documentary

Its been a decade since Ozzie Guillen’s 2005 White Sox stunned the baseball world – and probably more so Chicago – with a World Series championship, and Comcast SportsNet Chicago is looking to mark the occasion with the premier of a brand new, original documentary, Believe: The Story of the 2005 Chicago White Sox.

'Believe: The Story of the 2005 White Sox' premiers Sunday at 7 p.m. CT on Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

‘Believe: The Story of the 2005 White Sox’ premiers Sunday at 7 p.m. CT on Comcast SportsNet Chicago.

Produced, written, and edited by Comcast SportsNet’s Emmy-award winning pairing of Sarah Lauch and Ryan McGuffey, Believe (which premiers Sunday at 7 p.m. CT on CSN Chicago) is a 90-minute original documentary that will give viewers the chance to relive the White Sox improbable run to breaking an 88-year championship drought for the city.

For Lauch and McGuffey, taking on the story was a no-brainer and it was a project they had ear-marked to do for some time.

“There’s always a story behind a great story and that 2005 team was a great story,” says McGuffey, Senior Producer of Original Content at CSN Chicago. “I don’t think anybody expected it nationally and in Chicago. When teams win a championship its easy to say they were a likable team but this really was a likable team. There were a lot of personalities and characters and there are a lot of guys who have stood the test of time.”

Lauch and McGuffey compiled more than 12 hours of original interview footage with 25 interview subjects and logged more than 500 hours of production work over more than a year to put this documentary together.

New footage was shot with Sony XDCAMs and the program was edited together using an Avid Nitris editing system.

Naturally, tracking back to an old championship required digging deep into the Comcast SportsNet archives. Fortunately for Lauch and McGuffey, CSN Chicago launched in 2004 and its first season with the White Sox was this 2005 championship campaign.

During that season, CSN Chicago was in the middle of transitioning from 4×3 to 16×9 and that baseball season saw a hybrid of formats. Home games were produced in 16×9, while road games remained in 4×3. That led to a few challenges for the regular season content. Fortunately all of the Postseason archives pulled in from national network partners were in full HD.

“I knew when we went back in the archives to look at the playoffs for 2005 that we would have some issues because we weren’t bringing ESPN and Fox in in true HD,” says Lauch, who is Senior Producer of Original Content at CSN Chicago. “That was a little worrisome because we were editing in full HD. We had melts to pull from so to have clean HD video of all of the playoff games and the World Series was huge because I didn’t have to worry about using the game broadcast in the 4X3 with the black bars and graphics all over it.”

Believe: The Story of the 2005 Chicago White Sox is narrated by Chicago southside native, Primetime Emmy & Tony Award winner, and current star of Showtime’s series Homeland, and lifelong White Sox fan Mandy Patinkin. CSN will also re-air this documentary special on Friday, April 17 at 3:30 p.m. and on Sunday, April 19 at 3:30 p.m.

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