White Sox Fan Keeps Twitter Tattoo Promise Honoring Garcia Homer

CHICAGO — Gilbert Redman was alone in his apartment, sipping a cold one and watching White Sox implode during the early innings of Sunday night’s elimination game against the Astros.

White Sox utility man Leury Garcia stepped to the plate with two on and two out in the third inning and a shot at giving his team the lead with a single swing. Redman tweeted a prayer, offering the baseball gods a deal: “If Leury hits a homer here, I’ll get a tattoo in his honor.”

The Simeon High School teacher’s assistant, who moonlights as a server at Scofflaw in Logan Square, says he has tweeted this “stupid kind of stuff” before ever since he moved back to Chicago in July and bought tickets for the last half of the Sox Central Division championship season. “I’ve tweeted, if this happens, I’ll do this or that,” he said. Nothing ever came of it.

On a 3-1 count, Garcia knocked a fastball 439 feet to straight away center field, giving the Sox a 6-5 lead and momentum that spared them from being swept from the playoffs.

As Redman celebrated in his apartment, his twitter promise went viral. The White Sox official account spread the word to fans with a retweet: “A promise is a promise.”

Strangers goaded Redman on social media. “Now you have to do it,” stand-up comedian Dan McCullough wrote.

“Either do it, or delete your tweet and go into hiding,” some smart aleck from Texas tweeted.

Clearly, the Twitter-verse didn't recognize Redman as the man of his word that he is.

"There was never a doubt in my mind that I would do [get the tattoo]. No way I would renege on it," he said. "The fact that the Sox called me out on it was huge, and now we're here."

To be specific, "here" was Chicago Ink Tattoo & Body Piercing across from Portage Park on Irving Park Road. That's where I met Redman to watch the loyal Sox fan devote a section of skin in the honor of the switch-hitting hero who kept his favorite team's World Series dream alive.

Wearing a T-shirt that read, “Baseball Needs More Tim Andersons,” Redman hiked up his shorts without fear. Then, tattoo artist Adonis Torres permanently marked his right thigh in a tribute the night his tweet and Garcia's bat connected to become the stuff of White Sox playoff lore.

Below the date of Garcia's perfectly timed dinger — 10-10-21 — Torres needled "Legend" in black ink into Redman's leg. "I'm so stoked," Redman said.

After I tipped off the White Sox that the guy behind the Twitter tattoo promise was making good on it, someone from the team called Redman while he was still in a chair midway through the ink job.

"They told me they planned on showing Leury a picture when the tattoo is done, and get back to me," Redman said, his eyes smiling behind a surgical mask.

White Sox public relations director Sheena Quinn said Redman proudly cemented himself a spot in the team's collective heart.

"For so many of us, the White Sox are with us for life. We wear the Sox look proudly, and Gilbert Redman is truly part of the White Sox family, making the Sox a part of his look permanently," Quinn said. "He’s certainly a man of his word. Leury delivered last night, and so did Gilbert today."

And he didn't cry like a Cubs fan.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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