CHICAGO — His first name, perfect for puns. His surname, natural for the South Side.Former UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky has been the chalk pick for months, and on Saturday, probability became reality when the Chicago White Sox selected him as the No. 1 overall pick in the amateur draft.His given name is pronounced “Rock,” as in rock star. His last name, Cholowsky (Chill-OW-skee), is best pronounced with a thick Chicago accent, like Grabowski, and not at all how commissioner Rob Manfred bungled it on TV.“I don’t think it’s too hard,” Cholowsky said of his last name. “I sent in a video the other day with the correct pronunciation. I didn’t hear it get butchered. I heard ‘Roch’ and kind of lost it.”As we saw on the draft broadcast, Cholowsky was overcome with emotion after going No. 1. The White Sox have been known to make grown men and women, not to mention kids, cry, but this time it was for a positive reason.“The tears were all happy tears,” he said.Why this July will be an exciting month for MLBKen Rosenthal and Johnny SweetHappy tears have been spotted at 35th and Shields all season long. The White Sox are winning, and the future is suddenly bright. Cholowsky had been the favorite to go No. 1 since the White Sox won the rights to the pick at the Winter Meetings. But a lot has changed for the better on the South Side since then.Cholowsky visited Chicago for a few days in early June, talking to coaches and executives, hanging out with players and listening to Jerry Reinsdorf’s baseball stories. The kid is a quick study on how it works here, because he said visiting the 90-year-old Reinsdorf’s office was the coolest part of his trip.After digesting Reinsdorf’s tales of yesteryear, digging the vibes of the young, winning Sox clubhouse (he saw Braden Montgomery hit a walk-off homer in his big-league debut), and walking through the city streets in summer, he left with a simple message for his advisor, Sam Samardzija, who knows Chicago well.“I left the next morning and called my agent and told him that that’s where I want to be,” he said.Cholowsky said he learned two days before the draft that he was the Sox’s presumptive pick, but he didn’t find out that Samardzija and the Sox worked out a deal until Saturday, not long before the draft. Cholowsky said he was “stressed out” about the situation, so maybe the tears represented a release from the pressure, too.“It was a very emotional last few days,” he said.On Friday night, the Sox traded former first-round pick Jacob Gonzalez to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a competitive-balance selection. With that pick at No. 34, they took Landon Thome, the Chicago-area standout and son of former Sox slugger Jim Thome. Seven picks later, they added another left-handed high school hitter, Cole Prosek, out of Mississippi. The Sox have a promising farm system, but they’ve also called up a lot of talent this season. The time was now to spend at the top.“We wanted to maximize this draft,” White Sox general manager Chris Getz said. “We felt like this was a draft to get creative and add picks and value and pool money.”With Gonzalez gone, the Sox could use a big-league-ready infielder in Triple-A Charlotte, but don’t look for Cholowsky in Chicago this year. He’s not Chris Sale or Garrett Crochet.“I know that I’m not going straight to the big leagues,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of work that needs to be put in, but seeing how well the team at the top is doing and the moves that they’re making, the way that those guys are playing, it’s definitely a lot more motivation to get up there and join those guys at some point.”High school shortstop Grady Emerson and college catcher Vahn Lackey took their turns as prospective top picks in the run-up to the draft, and on Saturday Getz reiterated what Sox scouting director Mike Shirley had been saying in interviews. Along with Cholowsky, those were the players they were considering at No. 1.These deals are all negotiated in advance, and agreement on the signing bonus is often a factor in selections. Was that the case here?“At the end of the day, we were most comfortable with Roch Cholowsky with our first pick, regardless of what the signing bonus was going to be,” Getz said. “Now, there was a fair amount of debate on which was the best selection for the Chicago White Sox.”While Cholowsky hit .320/.452/.636 with 21 home runs and 60 RBIs for the Bruins and won a slew of Player of the Year awards, including his second consecutive nod in the Big Ten, he ranked only 33rd in the conference in OPS (.953) and hit just six homers in 30 Big Ten games. Top-ranked UCLA failed to make it out of the regional it hosted, losing twice to St. Mary’s, and Cholowsky went 2-for-12 with an RBI in three games.Was he coasting on a great sophomore season and beating up on nonconference pitching? Did the Sox worry about his declining Big Ten production?“We looked at it, yeah,” Getz said. “We looked under the hood, and there was still a lot of consistency with underlying numbers.”He added: “He is a famous player, a guy that was projected to be the No. 1 overall pick coming into the season,” Getz said. “So you know there’s a lot of eyes, and there’s a lot of critiquing, and oftentimes there can be fatigue.”His swing also needs some work. Cholowsky said Sox director of hitting Ryan Fuller told him that “other people questioned some of the ways that I swing the bat or how I set up.”Cholowsky said Fuller told him they don’t want to reinvent his swing, but they want to improve it. Getz, obviously, agrees.“When you really break down the swing, there are some things that probably need to be adjusted,” Getz said. “And knowing that he’s been very open-minded, excited to really dive in on his offensive game, we feel like if we unlock that, we’ve got an even better player than where he currently is.”If the Sox can help him improve, as they did with current shortstop Colson Montgomery, we should see him in the majors soon, and they’ll find a position for him (or Montgomery). Even if he doesn’t, he’ll get the runway to try. Still, the Sox drafted him because he’s close. But we won’t know what his ceiling is for some time.The White Sox hadn’t picked No. 1 since 1977, when they took a high school hitter out of Maryland named Harold Baines. The fan favorite has the fourth-most bWAR (38.8) of any Sox first-round pick and is so beloved by Reinsdorf that his number was retired while he was still playing for another team (it’s a long story) and has a statue in his honor in the ballpark. Cholowsky doesn’t have to live up to those lofty standards. And the Sox don’t need a savior.He is joining an organization that looks much different from the club that won the right to draft first back at the Winter Meetings. Compared to where they were a year ago, it’s almost unfathomable how much has gone right for a club that looked hopeless.Last year at the All-Star break, the Sox were 32-65 and 27 games back in the AL Central. Despite coming off the worst season in major-league history, they were drafting No. 11 because of a recent rule change aimed at punishing tanking teams. After winning 21 more games in 2025, the Sox got a karmic reward by landing the No. 1 pick.This season, they’re 49-45 and in first place in the AL Central going into the final game before the All-Star break. They have three All-Stars and a fun second half ahead of them.“The fact that we had the first pick today, and we’re currently in first place, is something that I don’t take for granted,” Getz said. “Not an easy thing to do, but (it) certainly represents the progress we’ve made as an organization.”When will Cholowsky sign? He said he’s ready right now. Can you blame him?