August 17, 1986: White Sox rookies help Steve Carlton secure first American League win

In the sixth inning, Yount struck out, then Oglivie hit a ground ball to Guillén. The crowd of 19,064 rose to its feet with cheers that seemed overly enthusiastic for celebrating a routine grounder, leaving Carlton confused. Finally, he turned and saw the scoreboard announcement that with that out, he’d pitched 5,000 major-league innings, the 10th player in history to do so.

Carlton tipped his hat to the crowd, turning to each corner of the stadium, then proceeded to strike out Thomas to end the inning.

The veteran finally lost steam in the eighth, walking Bill Schroeder to snap a string of 11 straight outs. Ernie Riles followed with a grounder to third baseman Hulett that allowed Schroeder to take second. When Molitor singled to center field, scoring Schroeder and cutting the lead to just one run, manager Fregosi went to his bullpen.

Bobby Thigpen, who’d been 20 months old when Carlton made his major-league debut in April 1965, came to the mound for the fifth time since being called up two weeks earlier and zeroed in on a familiar target. As batterymates in Birmingham and with the Single-A Appleton Foxes the previous season, he and Karkovice had become friends. “We spent a lot of time together,” Thigpen said of his catcher. “We went to the movies and to the beach. He even helped with my golf game.”15

Yount singled, sending Molitor to second, but Thigpen retired Oglivie and Thomas to get out of the inning.

When Baines added a one-out single in the bottom of the eighth, then reached second on a groundout, Bamberger pulled reliever Mike Birkbeck after 2⅔ scoreless innings, trusting his own rookie reliever to get the final out.

But 24-year-old Dan Plesac foundered, giving up an RBI single to Hassey, his third hit of the day. Hassey had been acquired at the trade deadline to be Fisk’s backup, but bad knees limited him to just nine more starts behind the plate the rest of the season. “I don’t care for DH,” he told reporters. “Right now, it’s all that I’m capable of doing, but I’d rather be catching.”16

After that, rookie Russ Morman drew a walk,17 and Guillén cracked a single into right field that scored Hassey. Plesac’s only out came when Guillén tried to stretch the hit into a double and overran second base.

Up 7-4, Thigpen came back out for a three-up-three-down ninth,18 earning the first of his 201 career saves, all of which came in a White Sox uniform, including a record-shattering 57 in 1990.19 “The first save is a big thrill,” Thigpen said, “but it’s even bigger when you can save one for Steve Carlton.”20

Carlton’s 320th career win was his first in the AL. He made eight more starts for the White Sox, posting a record of 4-3. He signed with the Cleveland Indians for 1987 and was traded at the deadline to the Minnesota Twins.21 In 1988 he had a 16.76 ERA in four appearances for Minnesota before finally retiring for real and becoming a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1994.

Karkovice won Chicago’s starting catcher job for Opening Day 1987, but struggled at the plate and was demoted to Triple A. Though widely recognized as one of the top defensive catchers in baseball, Karkovice spent six seasons of his 12 years in the majors backing up Fisk, who continued to play until 1993 in pursuit of the career record for most games played at catcher.22

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Thomas E. Merrick and copy-edited by Kurt Blumenau.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org, as well as the following:

• Steve Daley, “Top Sox Pick Is No Minor Talent,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1982: Section 4-1.
• Larry McCarthy, “Karkovice Goal: Make ‘Bigs’ by ’85,” Orlando Sentinel, June 7, 1983: C-5.
• Paula J. Finocchio, “Karkovice Takes Aim at Fisk’s Job,” Orlando Sentinel, March 31, 1985: 25.
• Rubin E. Grant, “Barons Get Big Bang out of Karkovice,” Birmingham (Alabama) Post-Herald, August 12, 1986: B5.
• Larry Guest, “Karkovice Gets His Mitts on the Big Time,” Orlando Sentinel, August 29, 1986: C1.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA198608170.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1986/B08170CHA1986.htm

Notes

1 Fisk opened the 1986 season as Chicago’s starting left fielder. The team awarded the starting catching job to Joel Skinner, a longtime prospect who’d been up and down between the majors and Triple A since making his big-league debut in 1983. When he faltered in the position, Skinner was demoted to backup and Fisk took over as starting catcher. At the trade deadline, the White Sox traded Skinner to the New York Yankees in a deal that included Ron Hassey, who was supposed to be Fisk’s new backup. As mentioned in the article, doctors wouldn’t clear Hassey to catch, leaving Fisk the team’s only catcher for nearly three weeks.

2 The victory raised the Brewers to a .500 record, but in the highly competitive AL East, their 58-58 mark left them stuck in last place.

3 Ed Sherman, “Sox Newcomers Belt the Brewers,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1986: Section 3-1.

4 Sherman, “Sox Newcomers Belt the Brewers.”

5 When the Phillies released him, Carlton was 4-8 with a 6.18 ERA, more than double his career ERA of 3.08 through 1985. He was also 18 strikeouts shy of becoming the second pitcher in history to record 4,000 career Ks. Nolan Ryan had been the first to do so in 1985. Carlton would earn the distinction in his final game with the Giants.

6 Technically, Carlton didn’t retire despite announcing he would. Instead, he was put on waivers, which allowed him to sign with Chicago. Had he officially retired, he would have needed to wait 60 days for reinstatement before he could sign with any team.

7 Greg Maddux, who made his major-league debut across town for the Chicago Cubs three weeks after this game, became the first pitcher to match Carlton’s feat when he won his fourth Cy Young Award in 1995.

8 Tom Flaherty, “Carlton Lets His Pitches Do the Talking,” Milwaukee Journal, August 18, 1986: 1C.

9 Tied with George Bell of the Toronto Blue Jays. They trailed Toronto’s Jesse Barfield (30) and Dave Kingman (28) of the Oakland A’s. Mike Schmidt of the Phillies led the NL with 26. Deer went on to hit 33 homers, finishing tied with Oakland’s José Canseco, the AL Rookie of the Year, for fourth in the AL and fifth in the majors.

10 In Deer’s first at-bat of the season, he hit a solo home run off White Sox ace Tom Seaver, who had been traded to the Boston Red Sox in June and was no longer with the team for this game, meaning his first and last homers against Chicago were both off active 300-game winners. Phil Niekro was the only other man pitching in 1986 with at least 300 career wins, but Deer failed to homer in his five plate appearances against him that season.

11 Flaherty, “Carlton Lets His Pitches Do the Talking.”

12 Tom Haudricourt, “Carlton Tops Brewers for First AL Win,” Milwaukee Sentinel, August 18, 1986: Part 2-1.

13 Sherman, “Sox Newcomers Belt the Brewers.”

14 United Press International, “Carlton Closes Down Brewers,” Chippewa (Wisconsin) Herald-Telegram, August 18, 1986: A7. Leary surrendered three runs on nine hits and two walks in 3⅔ innings.

15 Jerome Holtzman, “Karkovice Keeps His Own Counsel,” Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1986: Section 4-1.

16 Ed Sherman, “Dawson Free Agency Status Puts Deal on Hold,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1986: Section 3-3.

17 Morman had been called up from Buffalo at the same time as Boston.

18 Rookie John Cangelosi came in as a defensive replacement for George Foster – another longtime National Leaguer who had just joined the White Sox – in left field to start the ninth, making Baines and Cruz the only players on the field with at least two years of major-league experience.

19 The record Thigpen broke was a work in progress at the time of this game. Dave Righetti had 28 saves for the Yankees when this game was played. He added 18 more to finish the 1986 season with 46, one more than the record set by Dan Quisenberry in 1983 and matched by Bruce Sutter in 1984.

20 Sherman, “Sox Newcomers Belt the Brewers.”

21 The Twins won the 1987 World Series, but Carlton was left off the postseason roster after going 1-5 with a 6.70 ERA down the stretch.

22 When the White Sox won the AL West in 1993 and returned to the postseason for the first time in a decade, Karkovice and Guillén were the only players who remained from this youth-movement roster. Thigpen began the year with Chicago but was traded to the Phillies in August.