Will Venable has the Chicago White Sox ahead of schedule

Will Venable should not be here, speaking like this — or as this. At least not yet. It is entirely too soon. This should happen far off into the future, after years of toil and torment.

Instead, in just his second season as manager of the Chicago White Sox, the 43-year-old Venable can celebrate a team that was historically awful in recent years, now leading its division and poised for a postseason run.

“Yes, we have some talented guys on the field, but it’s this thing that is really hard to define,” Venable said. “This connectivity between our players, the way that they go about their business, the way that they treat each other, the way that they respond to adversity and really lean on each other for different things.

“It’s really cool to watch [Chicago general manager Chris Getz’s] vision come alive. And we’re seeing the results.”

Venable was speaking from his office in the visitor’s clubhouse of Detroit’s Comerica Park on Sunday. A few hours later, Chicago completed a three-game sweep of the Tigers, its first in Detroit since 2022. This is the same club that in 2024 lost 121 games, an MLB modern era record. The White Sox enter today’s game against the Atlanta Braves (ESPN Unlimited, 2:10 p.m. ET) with a 66-60 record and a four-game lead in the American League Central division.

While much attention this year has gone to White Sox superfan Pope Leo XIV, the manager’s own efforts have somehow escaped national notice. But Venable, one of two Black managers in Major League Baseball along with Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has proved to be the steady hand for a team well ahead of schedule.

The franchise’s home on 35th and Shields has found new life. And Venable, not the Pontiff, has delivered hope to the South Side.

“Will’s personality is such where he’s very calm and measured,” said Bud Black, who managed the San Diego Padres when Venable played for them from 2008 to 2015. “But there’s an intensity there.

“When you’re next to him in the dugout, you can see an intensity in him. When he’s at the bat rack, when he’s preparing to hit, you can see the look in his eye, the competitive spirit.”

In many ways, Venable was born for this. Raised in San Rafael, California, in the heart of Marin County, he is the elder son of Max Venable, 69, a former outfielder and designated hitter who played 12 seasons for four MLB clubs. Will spent his summers alongside his dad, immersing himself in clubhouse life.

When Max played winter ball in the Dominican Republic, his wife, Molly, brought their sons, Will and Winston, who later played briefly for the NFL’s Chicago Bears and had a four year-career in the Canadian Football League.

After Max signed with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan, the family joined him. While Max finished his career, Molly home-schooled the boys.

The standard story has a young Will Venable dreaming of playing in the majors. In reality, he wanted no part of it.

It wasn’t an act of rebellion. There was just … something else.

“I was so fixated on being in the NBA and being a [basketball] player,” he said. “I had just such a deep love for basketball. I could not envision my life without basketball, ever.”

His fixation paid off when stellar basketball play over four years at San Rafael High School caught the attention of then-Princeton coach John Thompson III. However, Venable’s mother — not his father — kept him playing baseball as well. Will stuck with it until his 2000-01 senior year, when he dropped baseball to run track. His career on the diamond could have ended there.

On Will’s basketball recruiting trip to Princeton, Max brought him into the office of Scott Bradley. A veteran of nine MLB seasons, Bradley was Princeton’s head baseball coach from 1998 through the 2026 season.

Years later, Bradley, 66, remembered Max’s prediction about Will: “I think at some point, he’s going to want to play.”

By Will’s account, this was always the plan. He still had to balance basketball and the academic rigors of an Ivy League school; he graduated with an anthropology degree in 2005. Playing one sport at Princeton could be a humbling experience, but two?

Nearing the end of his freshman year, Venable believed he could do it — or at least try. A visit to Bradley meant going to the batting cage. He hadn’t been in one for quite some time, and it showed. But soon came line drive after line drive.

“The best hitter on our team just left the cage,” Bradley told his assistant.

In 2003 as a sophomore, Venable was not Princeton’s best hitter. Limited by a late start and few at-bats, he batted just .244. Yet, despite the struggles, Bradley watched him adapt to breaking balls thrown by Division I pitchers. Again, the coach predicted Venable would become the Tigers’ future star.

Max, who was starting a coaching career in the minor leagues, helped. Over the next few years, father and son spent hours on the phone discussing the nuances of baseball. In 2004, they met for a coaching session in Dayton, Ohio, where Max was the hitting coach for the Cincinnati Reds’ High-A affiliate.

“I had this amazing father who is the best dad you could ever have,” Venable said, “and he never really coached me growing up. He was always away. I was doing basketball things. Once I got more serious about baseball and then would visit him, it was awesome because we kind of caught up on lost time.”

Years later, Max was his son’s hitting coach in the minor leagues — first at Single-A Fort Wayne (2006), and then at Triple-A Portland (2009).

Will Venable left Princeton as a Tigers legend. Though drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in the 15th round after his junior year, he opted to delay turning pro. As a senior in the 2004-05 school year, he became the second athlete named All-Ivy in both basketball and baseball, following fellow Princeton alumnus and future San Diego Padres teammate Chris Young. After graduating, Venable signed with the Padres as a seventh-round pick in 2005.

He debuted in the major leagues in August 2008 and stayed with the Padres for seven years. Despite a standout 2013 season with 22 home runs and 22 stolen bases, his career OPS sat at a pedestrian .719 when he retired in 2016. By his own account, his inquisitive nature and constant search for an edge did not serve him well.

“I chased feelings instead of being consistent and sticking with something,” Venable said, looking back. “I’m not proud of how much I tinkered.”

Still, his smarts had earned him notice. When he joined the Cubs as a special assistant in 2017, general manager Jed Hoyer and Theo Epstein — still running the show as the president of baseball operations — gave him a first-hand look into the front office. But the following season was when Venable realized where he could do the most good: He was given the chance to move down to the field as the team’s first-base coach.

Little did he realize where this would lead.

Since their time together as players in San Diego, Venable, Young and Nick Hundley said that “one of these days, we’re going to find our way back together as teammates in another form.” It happened in Texas.

After serving as the Boston Red Sox’s bench coach in 2021 and 2022, Venable joined the pair the following season when Young, now general manager of the Rangers, brought him on as “associate manager” to Bruce Bochy. With Hundley already on board as Young’s special assistant, Venable had gotten the reunion he wished for, and it quickly delivered results.

The Rangers won the World Series that season, and Venable — who was viewed as heir apparent to Bochy and had long declined overtures from other MLB clubs — soon sensed a change in the 69-year-old manager, a renewed desire to keep going.

Venable coming to Texas had been about succession, about winning alongside his friends. But it was time to go.

But to … the White Sox? Those White Sox?

In Getz’s first year as general manager, the team had reached an historic low, losing 121 games in 2024. But his plan to bring the team’s operation into the modern era with modern methods, driven by “high-quality people,” drew Venable in and kept him there.

“The idea that the team had been in a tough spot the last couple years, that really wasn’t off-putting at all,” said Venable, who was named Chicago’s manager on Oct. 31, 2024. “I was just really confident that this organization was headed in the right way. I wanted to be part of something special.”

Now the White Sox are on the precipice of just that. After beginning the season 6-13, Chicago has found its footing.

If the White Sox division lead holds, October may finally reveal the combination of intensity and calmness that Bud Black once saw in Venable.

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