Houston ? People in Chicago are speaking a strange, foreign, unintelligible language these days. People are saying things that sound suspiciously like, “So, do you think they’ll sweep?”

What a weird, beautiful tongue it is, and if somebody can translate it for a Chicagoan who isn’t familiar with it, that would be swell. It sounds a little like people are saying, “Four games to none has a nice ring to it, no?”

But that couldn’t possibly be. Nobody from our godforsaken baseball town would ever be in a position to make such a bold statement about the White Sox, who lead the Astros two games to none in the World Series.

What’s that you say? You are asking if the Sox will sweep? I think I’ve identified the dialect now. It’s not Cockney. It’s Cocky. No, it’s better than that. It’s the language of knowing you’re good. That, or it’s the language of early-onset dementia.

The Sox by far – by miles – are playing their best baseball of the season. It is so stunning, so amazing, so unimaginable as to be almost incomprehensible. You say the little track star in baseball spikes, Scott Podsednik, hit a home run in the ninth inning to win Game 2 at U.S. Cellular Field? I say I won’t believe it until I see the replay for the 50th time.

The Sox’s unofficial postseason theme song is the wretched “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey. It’s not just a bad song; it’s a song that doesn’t reflect what’s going on inside the typical Sox fan. The typical Sox fan is filled with disbelief right now. As he or she should be.

The team is not just winning, and it is not just dominating. It is doing historic things. It has won 14 of its last 15 games, dating back to the last five games of the regular season.

“Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd probably gets closer to the feelings in Chicago.

Game 3 is tonight at Minute Maid Park, and the Sox’s biggest concern, besides Houston pitcher Roy Oswalt, is that the Astros will be an incensed bunch. Some comfortably dumb idiot at the Cell allegedly pulled the hair of Craig Biggio’s wife during Game 2 Sunday night. The Sox were angry about the incident too.

“I told the police, ‘Don’t put him in jail, bring him to me in the dugout,'” Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said Monday.

Teams get motivated different ways, but via follicle? It’s not a crazy idea. Remember, the Sox were motivated by the skin of their teeth.

Sox fans might not want to go back to the August-September swoon and relive the pain of it, but that’s where we need to go if we want to find out what is happening now. And I’m not sure even that will make sense.

As it turns out, these Sox were formed and shaped by that hardship, in the way land sometimes was formed and shaped by glaciers. That’s not to say all those victories that came before the free fall didn’t mean much. It’s just that the ensuing death and rebirth meant much, much more to what the Sox are now.

The players knew that whatever they faced in the postseason couldn’t possibly be as difficult as what they had been through.