The Chicago Tribune Book of the Chicago White Sox: A Decade-by-Decade History

by Chicago Tribune Staff

Overview

The Chicago Tribune Book of the Chicago White Sox is a decade-by-decade look at one of the American League's original eight teams, starting with the franchise's Windy City beginnings in 1900 as the Chicago White Stockings (the former name of crosstown rivals the Cubs) and ending with the current team.

For more than a century, the Chicago Tribune has documented every Sox season through original reporting, photography, and box scores. For the first time, this mountain of Sox history has been mined and curated by the paper's sports department into a single one-of-a-kind volume. Each era in Sox history includes its own timeline, profiles of key players and coaches, and feature stories that highlight it all, from the heavy hitters to the no-hitters to the one-hit wonders.

To be a Sox fan means to know breathtaking highs and dramatic lows. The team's halcyon days—starting with the championship it won during the first official season of the newly formed American League in 1901—have always been punctuated with doldrums and stormy stretches, including a period of time in the '80s when it looked likely that the team would leave Chicago. But with the diehard support of their fans, the "Good Guys" have always made a comeback—including the team's landmark 2005 World Series win, the first by any Chicago major league team in 88 years. This book records it all.

The award-winning journalists, photographers, and editors of the Chicago Tribune have produced a comprehensive collector's item that every Sox fan will love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781572842441
Publisher:	Agate
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	220,463
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

The Chicago Tribune, founded in 1847, is the flagship newspaper of the Chicago Tribune Media Group. Its staff comprises dedicated, award-winning journalists who have authored many bestselling books.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword
Introduction
About this book

Chapter 1: The 1900s Room for Two
Chapter 2: The 1910s Splendor and Scandal
Chapter 3: The 1920s Wrath and Wreckage
Chapter 4: The 1930s Star–Crossed
Chapter 5: The 1940s Running on Empty
Chapter 6: The 1950s On the Go
Chapter 7: The 1960s Coming up Short
Chapter 8: The 1970s Low Notes, High Notes
Chapter 9: The 1980s Regime Change
Chapter 10: The 1990s New Home, Old Feud
Chapter 11: The 2000s At Their Peak
Chapter 12: The 2010s Future–Focused

Extra Innings: The Best of the White Sox
The Trophy Case
The Postseason Series
The No–Hitters
The Top 10 Managers
The Top 5 Best Trades
The Top 5 Worst Trades
The Broadcasters

Credits
Index

Preface

Introduction:Chicago and Its Sox: A Tale of Tough Love

By Phil Rosenthal

The White Sox aren’t just a Chicago team. They are, in many respects, the Chicago team. Every sports organization within a traffic jam of the Loop wants to claim it embodies some aspect of the city. Tough and rough, striving and surviving, hard–working, hustling, resilient and so on. None can make a more convincing case than the White Sox, whose ties to the place and its ethos predate their 1900 arrival in the city and endure win or lose, despite being at the center of baseball’s worst scandal and the occasional threat to pull up stakes for outposts such as Milwaukee, Denver, New Orleans and St. Petersburg, Fla. Nelson Algren’s oft–cited comparison of undying affection for Chicago with loving a woman with a broken nose (“You may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real”) has to resonate with White Sox fans.

No one who recalls the first glimpse of green grass as they walked into old Comiskey Park can deny its awesome beauty. Same for the spray of fireworks after a Sox home run. Or 40,000 fans singing “Na, na, na, na” in unison to Nancy Faust’s handiwork at the organ. Or the old ballpark smells of popcorn, peanuts, sausage, spilled beer and smoke. Or the way Hoyt Wilhelm’s fluttering knuckleball, later taught to Wilbur Wood, dizzied opponents. Or the speed, grace and raw power of Dick Allen’s swing. Or Jim Landis’ command of center field. Even the recollection of Sherm Lollar, running with a figurative piano on his back, can evoke a smile.

Yet clear–eyed determination and faith is required—and in many ways is taught through generations—to embrace the White Sox, winners of three World Series titles but only one since 1917. They went 40 years between pennants from the 1919 Black Sox scandal to 1959, another 46 after that to 2005 championship and, as of this writing, who knows? There’s no trying to pretty up the dry spells with talk of curses or attempt to pass off losing as lovable in any way. Rather, there’s tacit acknowledgement that struggle and disappointment are part of life and recognizing that is as important as the pursuing triumphs and savoring them.

Former President Barack Obama famously adopted the White Sox as his baseball team and hat of choice as he adopted Chicago as his home. It is, for many, less a choice than an inheritance. Mayor Richard J. Daley’ passed on his devotion to Mayor Richard M. Daley. Former Vice President Dan Quayle, despite a flirtation with the Baltimore Orioles when living in Washington, became a White Sox fan growing up in eastern Indiana ostensibly because his father was something of a contrarian and drawn to them during his old youth in Chicago suburb of Cubs fans. “We didn’t have air conditioning in our house back in the ’50s, and so I would stay up until like 12, 1 o’clock at night, keeping score,” the younger Quayle would recall. “Nellie Fox, Chico Carrasquel, I used to keep all those box scores in my living room as a kid.”

The White Sox story begins with another kid, the son of an Irish immigrant–turned–Chicago politico who wanted him to be a plumber. It was a rare instance in which Honest John Comiskey’s powers of persuasion failed him. Not yet known as The Old Roman, or old anything, young Charles Albert Comiskey left home in 1876 at age 17, already seduced by baseball and looking to follow his dreams as a ballplayer. When he moved back home for good, 24 years later, it was as owner of a minor–league team with a secret strategy that, in the spirit of Daniel Burnham’s proscription on little plans, not only would become Chicago’s second major–league ball club but give the nation its second enduring major baseball league.

Comiskey already had distinguished himself in the sport. As a first baseman, he was one of the first to defensively position himself away from the bag toward second to better field grounders rather than constantly hug the base. By age 24, he was doing double duty as player–manager in only his second season with the St. Louis Browns of the nascent, ultimately short–lived American Association, a major–league rival of the National League, and on his way to four successive pennants. Showing an entrepreneurial spirit, Comiskey was among the stars to ditch the Browns for the Chicago Pirates in the new Players League in 1890, but that only lasted a year. He returned to St. Louis for a final season, then joined Cincinnati of the National League for three seasons. Ready to move on after three years as the player–manager there in 1894, Comiskey acquired the Sioux City, Iowa, franchise in the Western League. The minor Midwestern league was overseen by a former sports writer Comiskey knew from Cincinnati, Ban Johnson. Comiskey immediately moved the club to St. Paul, Minn. But the Chicago politico’s son and Johnson both knew this was just the first move on a chess board only they saw.

Relocating the minor–league St. Paul Saints to Chicago required permission of the National League and specifically the NL team then playing on the West Side and known as the Orphans but today known as the Cubs. Whether the old guard was outmaneuvered or Comiskey merely made the best of what he was given, the demands that his relocated team make its home on the city’s South Side and not use “Chicago” as part of its name actually worked in Comiskey’s favor. For one thing, it encouraged him to appropriate a nickname the Orphans had discarded some years earlier that nevertheless was deeply embedded in the public’s mind as synonymous with Chicago baseball: White Stockings. It also gave the one–time Saints a home turf of their own. A year and a Western League championship later, Comiskey and Johnson made their big move. The American League was born and the Chicago White Sox were a cornerstone.

Johnson sought to make peace with the National League rather than destroy it, a détente that made the World Series between the two leagues’ champions possible but contributed to Comiskey’s relationship with him going sour. But each had empires to run, and Comiskey’s was the White Sox. The Sox would meet and beat the Cubs in the 1906 World Series and in 1910 Comiskey opened his monument to baseball that would take on its benefactor’s name and stand for 80 years before they razed paradise and made it a parking lot.

When the prosaically named New Comiskey Park or Comiskey Park II opened across the street, the old place was not quite gone, an open wound in its shadow mostly reduced to rubble. The new stadium, which local politicians committed public money to build in response to a threatened move to Florida, was imposing in its way but smacked of compromise. There are those still mourning the loss of McCuddy’s, the tavern just outside the old ballpark (and interred under this one) from which Babe Ruth may or may not have sought refreshments between double–header games with the Sox. The new place that usurped its site offered creature comforts for the free–spending corporate crowd, a requisite for sports as the 20th Century gave way to the 21st and no one would dispute the old ballpark was crumbling and a bit dirty. There was, however, an intimacy to the original Comiskey Park despite its size. The new one initially came off clean to the point of sterility and some of the seats seemed far, far away. Billboards blocked the view beyond the outfield, which would have shown that the ballpark, which like its predecessor called 35th and Shields home, now was oriented away from downtown.

It took years and millions in naming–rights money to make what became U.S. Cellular Field and then Guaranteed Rate Park as friendly to fans as the state’s lease agreement is to the team’s bottom line.

The food is good. The sight–lines are clean. There’s parking outside, plenty of space inside to walk around and an area where young fans more interested in playing ball than watching can work on their skills. But from the beginning, when Comiskey converted a cricket field a few blocks away, the chief lure has been to come together with friends and family to watch men play in the grass and dirt. Guys like Big Ed Walsh, Ted Lyons, Billy Pierce, Early Wynn, Mark Buehrle, Doc White, Tommy John, Red Faber, Eddie Ciciotte and Chris Sale on the mound and Frank Thomas and Bill Melton at bat. This is the team of Nellie Fox, Eddie Collins, Jim Thome, Robin Ventura. Buck Weaver, Ron Kittle, Pat Kelly, Carlos May and Ray Schalk. It is the Latin/Hispanic lineage that runs through Minnie Minoso, Luis Aparacio, Chico Carrasquel, Jorge Orta, Ozzie Guillen, Jose Abreu and, in a single outfield at one point in 2017, Avisail Garcia, Leury Garcia and Willy Garcia—a Venezuelan and two Dominicans.

Bill Veeck, the wise and whimsical two–time owner of the franchise, sagely observed, “The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball.” For White Sox faithful, it also has been the sound of Bob Elson, Jack Brickhouse, Harry Caray, Jimmy Piersall, Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone calling games, cajoling, coaxing, critiquing, complaining over the air. There have been seasons in which they have been the team’s biggest stars.

Veeck’s first turn with the Sox came in the 1950s after assuming control when Comiskey’s grandchildren could not reconcile their differences. His initial term included the 1959 AL pennant and subsequent World Series loss to the Dodgers, recently transplanted from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Veeck would sell to the White Sox to the Allyn family in the 1960s and buy them back in the 1970s, but lacked the deep pockets needed to compete. Other league owners, who didn’t care for Veeck’s maverick streak, shot down his first attempts to sell, only agreeing to sign off on the transaction when the buyer was the group led by attorney and real estate genius Jerry Reinsdorf.

Within two years under Reinsdorf, the White Sox finished with baseball’s best record in 1983 only to be bounced from the playoffs by Baltimore. They made the playoffs again 10 years later, bounced this time by Toronto. Hopes were high in 1994 until a strike aborted the season, with Reinsdorf among the hard–liners on the owners’ side. Their next playoff appearance, 2000, ended with Seattle sweeping them out of the first round.

This is one of the many fascinating aspects of Reinsdorf’s reign. His group won over the support of baseball’s bosses in part because as a local owner he was seen as unlikely to move the team and he always spoke of how upset he was when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, yet he threatened to move the White Sox if he didn’t get his new stadium. He alienated some fans by getting ahead of the working–class fan base in trying to peddle games on pay TV. But much is forgiven because he presided over the only White Sox World Series championship team in memory.

The 2005 White Sox will not soon be forgotten by their fans. They went wire–to–wire with a season–long run in first, a feat to that point matched only by the 1927 New York Yankees, 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1984 Detroit Tigers and 1990 Cincinnati Reds. Then came the novelty of playoff series victories—victories!—over the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for the AL pennant, the latter featuring complete–game triumphs by Sox pitchers Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and Jose Contreras. Their World Series opponent was the Houston Astros, then still in the National League. Mayor Richard J. had the air–raid sirens go off when the Sox clinched in ’59. Richard M. did not. There remained work to do.

Opening the 2005 World Series, the White Sox scored victories in the first three games with Houston despite allowing early leads to slip away. For example, the Sox appeared destined for a split of the first two games at home until Paul Konerko’s Game 2 grand slam in the seventh gave the White Sox a 6–4 lead. The Astros rallied to tie with two in the ninth. But Scott Podsednik, hardly counted on for power, hit a walk–off two–run homer. Back in Houston, the Astros tied Game 3 in the eighth inning, but the Sox won in the 13th on a two–run home run by late–season acquisition Geoff Blum. That five–hour, 41–minute victory, ending around 1:20 a.m., set up the nail–biter in Game 4 later that day.

Neither Sox Game 4 starter Freddie Garcia nor Astros starter Brandon Backe allowed a run through seven innings. But Houston reliever Brad Lidge, who already ensured his place in White Sox lore when he served up Podsednik’s Game 2 game–winner, surrendered an eighth–inning single by Jermaine Dye to score Willie Harris. So the Sox took a 1–0 lead into the ninth and many White Sox fans no doubt can close their eyes and relive that final half–inning to this day.

There’s Juan Uribe, sprinting from his shortstop position, chasing a 2–2 foul ball by the Astros’ Chris Burke while falling into the stands off the leftfield line, well past third base. Uribe somehow makes the catch for out No. 2 with his back to the infield, quickly regains his footing and turns to check Houston’s Jason Lane by second base. Lane, who led off the bottom of the ninth with a single off reliever Bobby Jenks and advanced on a sacrifice bunt, represents the tying run with the White Sox needing just one out for a sweep of Houston and their first World Series title in 88 years.

Astros manager Phil Garner, to the surprise of no one, recalls Lidge from the on–deck circle for pinch hitter Orlando Palmeiro. Guillen, now the White Sox manager, sends pitching coach Don Cooper out to make sure Jenks, 24, remained on an even keel. Jenks’ first pitch to Palmeiro was high and outside for a ball. His next two were fouled off before Palmeiro bounced one high over Jenks’ outstretched glove hand. Uribe, again charging hard, this time across the middle of the infield, fields it and fires to Paul Konerko at first just in time. Konerko has the presence of mind to pocket the ball to present to Reinsdorf back in Chicago at the city’s downtown victory celebration.

At 11:01 p.m. Central time on that Wednesday, Oct. 26, the pent–up tension, frustration, disappointment and dashed hopes of decades were finally exorcised for generations of White Sox fans. Alone and in groups, at home, in bars, on the streets, they exhaled. They yelled. Many cried. They have been chasing that feeling ever since, hope renewed each year when the sound of bat on ball heralds the arrival of spring—no matter what the weather is actually like along the southern end of Lake Michigan—in the city of broad shoulders that the White Sox represent in black and white.