I was at Guaranteed Rate Field Tuesday around 4:25 p.m. CT, talking one-on-one with general manager Rick Hahn on the field.

Around 40 minutes earlier, I saw executive vice president Ken Williams walk through the home clubhouse and eventually moved to where the White Sox were taking batting practice.

By 5:45 p.m. CT on that same night, Williams and Hahn had been relieved of their duties.

I’ve covered seven White Sox managers for 21 years. Wednesday afternoon’s victory over the Mariners marked the first time I’ve covered the club where Williams and/or Hahn weren’t in charge.

My brief conversation with Hahn -- it lasted about five minutes -- started with Noah Schultz, the No. 2 White Sox prospect per MLB Pipeline. The lefty has dazzled on the mound with a 1.33 ERA and 38 strikeouts in 27 innings for Single-A Kannapolis but landed on the injured list with a left shoulder impingement on Aug. 20. At that moment, Hahn didn’t think the injury would be season ending for the southpaw with so much upside.

We talked about the prospects Hahn acquired in the seven White Sox trades leading up to the Deadline on Aug. 1 and concluded our conversation with me mentioning something I had heard about the future of the White Sox front office. I can honestly say at 4:30 p.m. CT, Hahn didn’t know the decisions were coming.

When the news broke, I was sitting in the Conference and Learning Center waiting for the debut of the "Fitted in Black" documentary, produced by the White Sox. Vinnie Duber, who does an outstanding job of covering the White Sox as well, was sitting next to me when I showed him the press release coming across my phone. We darted out of there and back to the pressbox.

Many stories have been told since Tuesday about what didn’t work with Williams and Hahn, and I’ve talked several times in this newsletter about how these last two years have been the worst I’ve covered for this team. The expectations were sky high through the rebuild, and in the prime of the competitive window, they won two playoff games and currently sit at an astounding 50-78.

But this duo put together one of the more underrated World Series champions in my lifetime in 2005 -- in terms of sheer dominance -- three playoff teams and other solid squads. There clearly just weren’t enough of them along the way.

Williams and Hahn are good men and good baseball men. They certainly will work again in this industry if that’s what they desire. Some of you will passionately disagree with me. That’s fine, but I know what I know after being around them for more than two decades.

A change was needed, based on the recent rough results and clubhouse issues. Even if Tuesday’s decisions from chairman Jerry Reinsdorf were unexpected, they both had to know they were coming.

“We have underachieved,” Williams said via text on Tuesday night. “This is what happens.”

Which one of these White Sox players did not hit at least 40 home runs in a single season?

A. Todd Frazier

B. Paul Konerko

C. Frank Thomas

D. Magglio Ordonez

Don’t call it a rebuild.

That definitive message came from White Sox manager Pedro Grifol prior to an 8-5 loss to the A’s, featuring two teams that entered Thursday's series opener a combined 81 games below .500. Grifol’s comments were focused on the ‘24 White Sox season and not the final 34 contests of this campaign in his first season in charge.

“Oh, it’s not a rebuild. It’s definitely not a rebuild,” Grifol said. “When you’ve got [Luis] Robert [Jr.] in center field and Eloy [Jiménez] and [Andrew] Vaughn and Timmy [Anderson], I don’t consider it a rebuild.”

Grifol had a meeting with Reinsdorf on Wednesday night. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale previously mentioned that meeting included Tony La Russa, who was the White Sox manager during the 2021-22 seasons, a three-time World Series champion and a close friend of Reinsdorf. Most importantly, La Russa is healthy again after an issue leading to him leaving the dugout in ’22. 

If there were any guarantees on the future for Grifol, who has two years left on his deal, he wasn’t sharing on Thursday.

“I’m not going to get into that,” Grifol said. “I’ll let time play that out.”

Chris Getz, who along with fellow assistant general manager Jeremy Haber, is running the day-to-day operations and has been rumored as a favorite for the general manager role. The timing of the Williams/Hahn announcements and the press release mentioning the anticipation a single person will be in place at the top of White Sox baseball operations by the end of the season seemingly indicated a preferred candidate was in mind when the decisions were made.

That’s just speculation at this point. One thing that’s not speculation is Reinsdorf’s desire to win, which was reinforced by Grifol after their meeting.

“A big-time competitor. Winning is at the top of his list. So is doing it right,” Grifol said. “And setting it up to win multiple years and try to sustain it.

“Just like everybody else here, we all want to win. Nobody likes what’s going on. So, it’s our responsibility and our job to get it right.”

• I hadn’t talked to Mychael Urban in many years, but I certainly had not forgotten him. We worked several years together when he was the A’s beat writer for MLB.com, including when Oakland swept the Twins in the 2006 American League Division Series. I covered with Urb and Kelly Thesier, the Twins beat writer who is an equally wonderful writer and person.

Urb and I had our share of fun evenings around Chicago over the years when the A’s visited -- it was impossible to do anything but enjoy yourself around Mychael Urban. As Susan Slusser so eloquently posted, "Urb covered A’s teams with big personalities, and he somehow had a personality just as big.

"Always wildly entertaining, never a dull moment," Slusser added.

It’s heartbreaking to think he’s gone, but again, he won’t be forgotten.

D. Ordonez

The man Konerko once called the "most talented teammate he ever had" topped out at 38 home runs in 2002.

Robert Jr. has 34 after Thursday night’s blast and is trying to become the eighth White Sox player to reach 40.

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