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The seventh-place Chicago White Sox generated some welcome excitement for 25,000 fans at Comiskey Park on July 9, 1921. The White Sox weren’t doing much against the American League in general, but they had a handle on the New York Yankees, with six wins in nine head-to-head games so far in 1921. Eventually they were […]

On September 9, 1921, the Chicago White Sox opened a three-game series with the Detroit Tigers at Comiskey Park. The White Sox were in seventh place with a 56-77 record, 27 games behind the New York Yankees, and the Tigers were in sixth place with a 64-72 record, 20½ games back. The only question in […]

Inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, Eddie Collins is considered one of the best second basemen of all time. Renowned manager John McGraw, whose New York Giants clubs were defeated by Collins’s teams in three World Series, said, “Eddie Collins is the best ballplayer I have seen during my career on […]

In adding to his legend, Babe Ruth drove a pitch into Yankee Stadium’s right-field bleachers to steal a victory away from the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox had scored three runs in the top of the 10th and believed they had the game in the bag, but Ruth’s walkoff grand slam in the bottom […]

The Chicago White Sox’s 1921 season was the beginning of the club’s Dark Ages. Between 1916 and 1920, the White Sox won a World Series championship and two American League pennants and finished second twice. But for the next 30 years they were perennial second-division finishers, getting no closer to the top than third-place finishes […]

Philadelphia is not known the to be coolest place to summer in, and the summer of 1926 was no exception. Temperatures had been rising steadily after a rainy fourth of July and reached 94 degrees on July 9 with a forecast for even warmer weather on July 10.1 The weather was having a tragic effect […]

Providence, Rhode Island, was an awfully small city for two egos as big as those of Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney, the starting pitchers for the hometown Grays in 1884. As early as spring training the surly veteran Radbourn, a wily strategist from Bloomington, Illinois, and the boastful young Sweeney, a blunt power […]

Walter Johnson, “The Big Train,” one of the most storied and talented pitchers ever to grace a major-league pitcher’s mound, threw only a single no-hitter in his 21-year career. If one argues that such a game defines a pitcher’s “best game,” then certainly the sparkling one-hitter Johnson threw at the Chicago White Sox on May […]

When one thinks of home-run hitters and the Milwaukee Braves, Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews immediately come to mind. However, Joe Adcock, the hulking 6-foot-4-inch former basketball player at Louisiana State University, had the reputation of smashing some of the longest home runs ever witnessed. Although measuring the distance home runs travel has historically been […]

Few rookies ever made a bigger splash in their debut than Chicago White Sox first baseman Art Shires.1 Most of the fanfare came from Shires, who nicknamed himself “The Great” and was also known by the sobriquet “Whataman.” The native of Italy, Texas, starred for Waco of the Class A Texas League, where he batted […]

The Chicago White Sox finished the 1921 season in seventh place in the American League, 36½ games behind the pennant-winning New York Yankees. In 1922 the White Sox played 35 of their first 47 games on the road and when June began, they were again mired in seventh place, but only 7½ games back. On […]

Before Jackie Robinson had been in the National League a month, some observers were ready to write him off and declare baseball’s “great experiment”1 a failure. “There is no assurance that Jackie Robinson will continue as [the Brooklyn Dodgers’] first baseman,” sportswriter Lou Smith informed readers of the Cincinnati Enquirer hours before Robinson’s first appearance […]

America’s Memorial Day festivities in 1948 included parades honoring fallen veterans and doubleheaders graced by the heroics of World War II comrades-in-arms. At Shibe Park in Philadelphia, former Navy and Marine Corps pilot Ted Williams drove in three runs in a win over the hometown A’s. Cincinnati Reds portsider Ken Raffensberger, inducted into the Navy […]

It was only the third day of the 1924 season. A crowd of about 1,000 turned out to Comiskey Park on a Thursday afternoon to watch their White Sox host the St. Louis Browns. According to the Chicago Tribune, the weather forecast was predicted to be “rain and colder” with game time temperatures in the […]

It was almost November, but Rube Foster‘s 1920 Chicago American Giants were still at it, and taking on Jack Quinn, the spitballing 18-game winner for that season’s New York Yankees. The owner-manager’s team and, indeed, Foster’s league, the Negro National League of Colored Base Ball Professionals (NNL), did not survive and thrive by avoiding challenges. […]

In a four-year voyage to an all-too brief career in big league baseball, Val Heim embarked in 1938 from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He sailed on to Jackson, Mississippi, Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Waterloo, Iowa, before commencing his big-league career at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, in late August 1942. His excursion began with an […]

The lifeless body had lain on the floor of a St. Paul, Minnesota, speakeasy for about four hours before authorities received an anonymous telephone call near midnight on May 9, 1924. On-scene inspection revealed some ten stab wounds to the victim’s upper torso, including four to the heart. Predictably, the deceased was no stranger to […]

“Mertie is a rather giddy young man, parts his hair in the middle, wears patent leathers, and dotes on the ladies.” — The Sporting News1   Mert Hackett was a catcher for five years in the 1880s, including three with Boston of the National League where he was their reserve catcher on the 1883 club […]

On the evening of September 21, 1964, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Art Mahaffey was pitching a gem of a baseball game. In the top of the sixth inning it was a scoreless duel in between Mahaffey and the Cincinnati Reds’ John Tsitouris at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. With two outs, 25-year-old Reds rookie Chico Ruiz […]

Ed Gharrity was a player, manager, umpire, scout, and coach during his professional career. Invited to spring training with the Washington Senators in 1916, he made an immediate positive impression. Catching for the rookies in an intrasquad game against the regulars in Charlottesville, Virginia, he threw out four would-be basestealers in the 1-1 tie. That […]

From the trade of Max “Camera Eye” Bishop before the 1934 season to the arrival of Benny McCoy in 1940, second base was in a state of flux for the Philadelphia Athletics. An infielder from Wisconsin, Stan Sperry, was once said to be a possible answer to manager Connie Mack’s “prayer for a second baseman.” […]

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” This remark has been credited (dubiously) to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, a contemporary of Boston pitcher Jim Sullivan. This saying could apply to Sullivan starting in the mid-1890s, when he experienced deep sorrow repeatedly. At least […]

Even casual baseball fans know of the 1927 New York Yankees, considered the best team of all time by many. Featuring “Murderers’ Row” at the heart of the batting order, they rolled to the American League pennant with a 110-44 record and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. But, as great as the […]

Baseball is thankfully free of artificial boundaries of time which confine other sports. This freedom helps to shape the unique magical charm that is an evening at the ballpark. Fans never know whether it will be a two-hour squeaker or whether they may be enchanted until past sunrise by the first-ever wild 12-hour 46-inning slugfest. […]