ST. PETERSBURG -- The White Sox 1-0 tiebreaker win over the Twins on Tuesday night marked the first time in Major League history that a team had beaten three different teams in three days in order to earn a postseason berth.

It was also the first time this season a team had defeated three different opponents in three days. Ten other teams faced that potential challenge this season, but none of them even won the first two games.

Now the White Sox will try to make it four wins in a row, over four different teams, when they face the Rays at 2:30 p.m. ET on Thursday in Game 1 of their American League Division Series.

"After we got swept up there [in Minneapolis], I thought we were dead," said Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, after watching his team's lone 1-0 victory this season. "We beat three different teams in three days."

It was a fitting way to decide an AL Central Division in which all five teams finished just 14-1/2 games apart, by far the most closely packed division in the Majors this year. And all five teams in the division played a role in the final days with some highly competitive baseball.

It was a race in which the winner had to earn its way in. For the White Sox, who had lost five straight games, including three in Minnesota, before their historic streak of three wins over three teams, it was the right run at the right time.

Even with rainouts and makeup games around the Majors this season, none of the other attempts at three wins over three teams in three days had been successful -- and those were with far less on the line.

The adventure began over the weekend in two different cities, where Chicago and Minnesota had a chance to decide the division race. The problem was that they were facing two of baseball's hottest teams down the stretch. While the White Sox battled the Indians at U.S. Cellular Field, the Twins had the challenge of trying to beat baseball's hottest team, the Royals, whose success tempered Minnesota's dominance at the Metrodome and earned them a fourth-place finish over four consecutive seasons in the division cellar.

Both Cleveland and Kansas City showed why they had been so successful in September, taking the first two games of the series. With just a half-game separating the White Sox from the division-leading Twins, Chicago faced what was essentially its first elimination game on Sunday. The team stepped up with a 5-1 victory over the Tribe.

The Twins held onto their slim lead with a 6-0 blanking of Kansas City, but Chicago's victory made it impossible for Minnesota to clinch thanks to a scheduling quirk that went back to mid-September. Because the White Sox and Tigers hadn't yet made up one game of their rain-soaked, three-game series from two weeks earlier, the White Sox still had a chance to tie up the division and send it to a one-game tiebreaker.

Neither the White Sox nor the Tigers had a common off-day over the season's home stretch, so they could only make up the game the day after the regular season was over. Moreover, that game would only be made up if it had playoff implications. The race had to be within a half-game to require it.

Thus, once the Tigers saw the White Sox victory, they were on their way to Chicago, where Alexei Ramirez's grand slam sent the White Sox on their way to an 8-2 victory. That result preserved fourth place in the AL Central for the Royals and sealed Detroit's first last-place finish since 2003, when the Tigers lost 119 games. This time, they won 74.

While the tiebreaker was the second in as many years in the Major Leagues -- Colorado beat San Diego in an extra game last season to win the National League Wild Card spot -- it was the first tiebreaker for either the White Sox or the Twins. And because of a coin flip held earlier in the month, it was played in Chicago. That was one strength the White Sox had in their favor: All three games they had to win took place at U.S. Cellular Field, where the White Sox finished the season with a 54-28 home record.

Thanks to Jim Thome's home run on Monday night, Chicago's 54th home win was the biggest of all. With Tuesday night's 1-0 victory over the Twins, the White Sox finally had to hit the road, but it had already been quite a journey.