It wasn’t former President Barack Obama.
It wasn’t the Pope, either.
And it wasn’t even a member of the White Sox’s 2005 World Series championship team.
After a mystery ceremonial first-pitch guest was teased and speculation swirled that a major Chicago-adjacent name was on the way for the biggest home playoff game in more than two decades, the reveal turned out to be an actor most fans didn’t appear to recognize.
Belmont Cameli, a Naperville, Ill., native and lifelong White Sox fan, took the mound before Chicago’s 9-3 Game 3 loss to the Guardians on Wednesday.
Cameli is best known for playing hockey star Garrett Graham in Prime Video’s “Off Campus,” but he’s far from who fans hoped would be out there with a chance to clinch their first playoff series in Chicago since 1906.
MLB.com’s Scott Merkin appeared to start the speculation on Tuesday by teasing a “big name” for the first pitch in a post on X.
“No hints given, so have at it,” Merkin wrote, kicking off a guessing game.
NBC Chicago soon ran a story declaring that “rumors run wild,” floating names such as Windy City celebrities like Obama, Pope Leo XIV, Michael Jordan, Paul Konerko, Joakim Noah and Derrick Rose, among others.
The chatter spread across social media, too, with White Sox fans on Reddit, X and elsewhere tossing out everyone from Frank Thomas to Mark Buehrle to Hawk Harrelson and other members of the 2005 team.
The big reveal didn’t go over well, to say the least.
“Absolute miss here by the Sox,” the popular This Day in Chicago Sports X account wrote. “Not that it matters or that Sox fans needed the ‘first pitch’ to get them juiced but this is embarrassing.”
“Y’all were hyping up this first pitch so much i was starting to think it was the Pope and it actually ended up being the same dude that was at the Blackhawks game yesterday,” @nickyyknowsball wrote on X.
“Are you telling me Sox fans thought the Pope of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church was throwing out the first pitch today and it was just a guy from one of the horny hockey shows?” @W_B_Rick wrote on the platform.
The first-pitch dud may have been an omen for the White Sox, who took the lead in the first inning but could not hold it in a blowout loss.
