It's time for Part II in our three-part series on the worst franchises in the history of the major leagues. In Part I we covered the Philadelphia Phillies. Part II takes us to the South Side, for a little discussion of the team Hawk Harrelson mistakenly refers to as "the good guys".
Chicago White Sox
Year of Origin: 1901 League Championships: 5 World Series Championships: 2 Last World Series Championship: 1917
The White Sox won the very first American League pennant in 1901. In 1906 the Hitless Wonders upset the Cubs for the team's first World Series title. Eleven years later the White Sox were back in the World Series, and they won it again, this time in six games over the New York Giants. Then came the loss to the Reds in the 1919 World Series; the allegations of thrown games; the suspensions of eight players; the civil trial (Siddown, Buck. Nobody wants to hear about your batting average); and finally, the lifetime suspensions handed down to the eight Black Sox. In their first twenty seasons, the White Sox won four pennants, two World Series, and finished in the first division eleven times. The Black Sox scandal broke late in the 1920 season. The White Sox finished second that year. They would not finish as high as second again until 1957. I have a program from a White Sox game I attended at the Original Comiskey back in 1990 (the third-to-last game at that park, in fact), and it doesn't even mention the '19 pennant. Just skips right from 1917 to 1959. 1919? What? Oh, we don't know what you mean. Are you talking about the Volstead Act? It's like the White Sox have won three pennants, not five, since they can't 'pimp' 1901 (no World Series) or '19.
The White Sox haven't been especially awful in the long, long drought since their last World Series Championship, way back in 1917. They've finished in last place only seven times in their history. The Pale Hose never rolled out 100-loss seasons in clumps like the Phillies. Usually some team(s) is(are) worse than them. It's just that when it comes time for postseason play, to paraphrase Cake, they're never there. In the last 85 seasons, they've won a single, solitary American League pennant and have played a grand total of sixteen postseason games. Florida played seventeen in the 2003 PS alone. My money is on the Sox playing Florida the next time they get to the World Series. With the Marlins winning in seven, of course.
Totality of the futility:
1959- Chicago is last in the AL in home runs but first in steals, ERA, and fielding and wins its first pennant in 40 years (beat out the Tribe by five games: this is the last time the Indians will compete for a pennant for 35 years). The Go Go Sox meet the freshly-transplanted Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. Thanks to some unexpected slugging, the Sox win Game One 11-0; the Dodgers hold them to twelve runs the rest of the Series and win in six.
1983- Tony LaRussa's Sox win 99 games and take the AL West by 20 full games, behind the pitching of 22-game winner Richard Dotson and 24-game winner LaMarr Hoyt, who later 'mars' his career with drugs, as well as the 35-home run slugging of rookie Ron "Barry Bonds Won't Sign For Me" Kittle. They beat the Orioles 2-1 in Game One of the ALCS, then lose the last three. Chicago scores one run in the last 31 innings of the Series.
1993- After several years of banging on the door, Chicago wins the AL West. But the White Sox lose the first two games of the ALCS to the Blue Jays at Comiskey. They rally to tie the series in Toronto, but lose the last two games and the Series.
2000- The Sox win the AL Central and boast the league's best record. Despite this, they are swept by Seattle in the Division Series. They lose the first two at Comiskey, making them 0-9 at home in the PS since Game One of the '59 World Series. Sigh. This was during the Tribe's six-in-seven run as AL Central champs. The White Sox kind of sub-let the division in '00, if you will. Then they went out and pissed up a rope against the Mariners. Basically shamed the whole division. Yeah, the Tribe lost in the playoffs not too few times, but they always lost with class. There is a difference, you know.
And that's it. That's the White Sox October story, going all the way back to the year Quiz Show takes place. There aren't even any dramatic losses. No Donnie Moores or Calvin Shiraldis: just the White Sox, in the words of a 35-year old man I worked with at Burger King, "takin' a strippin'."
It should be mentioned that Chicago led AL Central by a game over the Tribe when the strike hit in 1994, were 3-and-a-half up in the wild-card race, and probably would have made the playoffs that year. Probably.
Not only do the White Sox fail to win, they fail to get their due & dubious 'props' for not winning. I doubt HBO is going to run out any specials on the angst of long-suffering White Sox fans (are there any 'celebrity' Sox fans? I can't think of any. Although if they make it to the WS this year, no doubt Bill Murray will show up on the South Side at some point). The White Sox are the last of the true 'second' teams in a town not big enough for two. The St. Louis Browns, the Boston Braves, the Philadelphia A's are gone, but the Pale Hose soldier on...
The South Side
...in the same deteriorated area they've played in since the Original Comiskey was erected in 1910. The status of the White Sox in Chicago is a true expression of the old phrase, "location, location, location". If you like daytime baseball in a lovely little yuppie neighborhood dotted with, bars, eateries and snazzy apartments in a delightfully quaint ballpark which I will attend one of these days... go see the Cubs. If you want to walk, feet crunching over crack vials, through a guantlet of panhandlers framed against a background of projects on your way to watching a game in a park that looks and feels like it was designed in East Germany... go see the White Sox. I have. You don't leave Comiskey so much as you 'get the hell out of there'. The old park at least had a little character, but it also had concourses that were about as wide as hallways, assloads of obstructed view seating, was a crumbling ruin, and when you looked down through apertures in the outer wall you still got a good look at some serious ghetto fabulousness. In the 1980s there were overtures made to the White Sox from interests in the Tampa-St. Pete area, but as history has shown, that would have been just a continuation of the problem. I don't know what the Sox have to do to take their town's loving eyes off 1060 West Addison. Maybe win a pennant?
Sweet Riot
And yes, there was Disco Demolition Night, July 12, 1979, when Bill Veeck's son Mike allowed a Chicago disk jockey named Steve Dahl to promote a mass burning of disco records on the field between games of a doubleheader with the Tigers. Veeck fils wanted an attendance boost and figured he would get one with Dahl, who had built a large following that summer with his anti-disco jeremiads (Dahl had been canned by another station when it switched to an all-disco format, and he was a bit peeved by this). And Veeck indeed got the attendance boost he wanted. What he hadn't counted on was the nature of Dahl's fans, dubbed the "insane coholips", who were primarily burnouts who hated disco (because it was necessary to hate something), and also didn't care about the Sox or baseball in general. There ended up being something like 65,000 people at the ballpark that night- 50,000 inside, and maybe another 15k milling around outside. Probably about 20,000 of them were White Sox fans there to see the game. The rest were "insane coholips" . The first game was marred by extra-curriculars like cherry bombs thrown at players from both teams. After the first game, this Dahl character (wearing a general's helmet like he was Tony Stagno), circled the field in a jeep, blew up a shitload of Hot Chocolate and Van McCoy records in the outfield, and 15,000 assholes invaded the playing surface and started tearing it up. Riot police were brought in, but the White Sox were forced to forfeit the nightcap. Mike Veeck wound up being blackballed from organized baseball for a decade. Chicago finished 73-87 in '79, good for fifth in the AL West, so the forfeit didn't hurt them too badly. Had I been there, I would have been picking Donna Summer records out of the air, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
The Damage is done Posted: 7/1/2005by: Groucho I meant to write this in a more timely fashion but better late than never, right? (WRONG!) There's one hell of an essay to be written on why the Cubs and White Sox have been almost equally bad over the last twenty years but why their attendance figures (which were roughly the same in the early '80s) have gone in opposite directions, and the neighborhoods surrounding the park are only part of the reason. I may even write it myself some sleepless night... But Sox fans in their early-30's will remember when the tv broadcasts were on low-rent UHF station channel 44 in Chicago, with Harry Caray doing play-by-play and Jimmy Piersall as color man. Screw the baseball game, intoxicated Caray and always unpredictable Piersall, now THAT was potential dynamite, and the station advertised the games accordingly.
(Side note: in 1981, Piersall made an appearance on a local talk show with legendary Chicago newsman Mike Royko. Royko asked about a movement among the players' wives to have Piersall fired for criticizing their husbands. On live television, Piersall responded by calling the women "horny broads" and intimated they were golddiggers. Not surprisingly, neither Caray nor Piersall were back with the Sox the following year)
The conceit favored by most Sox fans (and not without merit) is that they are the town's 'connoisseurs' of baseball. They know the game, unlike the hoards of touristy morons who crowd Wrigley. But apparently, the true lovers of baseball can only account for 60% of the new Comiskey's capacity on a regular basis, even with the best record in baseball.
All in all, a fine series of articles. Fair Enough Posted: 7/1/2005by: Jesse L. You probably have something there, Travis. I haven't been to the South Side since May 17, 1999, so there no doubt have been some changes I'm not aware of. My description is equal parts recollection and artistic license (the thing about crack vials). You clearly don't do research. Posted: 6/29/2005by: Travis I don't know when the last time you have been to the Southside of Chicago but it is built up better than what you describe. Bridgeport is a nice, safe place and US Cellular field has been renovated and is one of the best places to watch a game. If you want to get watch baseball with knowledgeable fans then come to the Southside. If you want to get drunk and party with no regard to baseball being played then go to Wrigley. Hmmm Posted: 6/24/2005by: Jesse L. I'll admit, I hadn't anticipated this turning into a "bash Hawk-and-Wimpy" thread... but I'm not unhappy that it did. hey sean Posted: 6/24/2005by: sigh pedro's gonna shit on you tonight fucker Yankees fan - All teams with 'sox' suck Posted: 6/24/2005by: Sean Man, nice article. Now that my yankees sucked donkey rod in the last four games of the ALCS last year and handed the boston red 'sucks' a title, the white sox have become (aside from the cubs) the gold standard for long lasting futility in MLB. In the third installment of this article i'd like to see another franchise discussed that sucks more penis than a two dollar crack whore - the New York Mets. Heave the Hawk Posted: 6/24/2005by: Jim Fath Ken "Hawk" Harrelson is one of the THE worst sports announcers I've ever heard. When I moved to Chicago in 03 I happened to tune into a Sox game. When I heard the "Hawk" I thought it was some regular schmoe from the streets up in the booth. Like maybe he won some contest or something and he gets to call an inning. I was surprised to learn about him that he's been a fixture with the SOX for quite some time.
He's fucking awful. There are always long 1-3 minute gaps in between sentences, blantent rooting. Yelling things like "Stay FAIR!" or "GET FOUL". He calls the sox "the Good Guys" and opposing teams "Bad Guys" Maybe that would be ok if ever played for Chicago but outside of being a terrible GM for the Sox in 1986 (He fucking fired Tony LaRussa) the Hawk has no ties to the team or the city what so ever. It really does sound like they put a mic on some asshole out in the bleachers when ever he calls a game. MANY bars that have the SOX on TV will mute out the Hawk and tune into the Radio. yes he's that bad.
When people ask me why Chicagoians love him I'm quick to point out that they don't. I know of 1 guy that likes him and this guy is a Saints fan so you know he's retarted to begin with. There is even a dedicated and fairly elaboreate website calling for the Hawks removal http://www.heavethehawk.com Answer Posted: 6/24/2005by: Jesse L. I've got to step in here and defend Tom A... I don't really know what goes on in the World and Entertainment threads, but what I do know about Tom A. is in the Sports threads he comes with props and solid takes... I enjoy his comments and am glad to get them (even if he is a Twinkies fan).
How about less hateration all around?
Question Posted: 6/24/2005by: Pat Finn When is Tom A. ever going to shut the fuck up and be banished from this site for all of eternity? White Sux Posted: 6/24/2005by: Tom A are/have been wretched, indeed. They also sported some ridiculous uni's in the 70's - those black and white things that looked like a cross between softball uniforms and pirate garb; they even wore f'n SHORTS one game - and they have had some colossal collapses to blow leads in the division in the last few years. Oh, and another reason they are crap: Frank Thomas is on their team.
Great info and writing; I especially liked the description of a trip to Comiskey (been there, done that, have the night tremors). This line is classic:
You don't leave Comiskey so much as you 'get the hell out of there'.
