Mr. White Sox Joins the Hall of Fame

Orestes “Minnie” Minoso, a.k.a. “Mr. White Sox,” has finally been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Needless to say, the honor was long overdue. 

     Born in Havana, Cuba, Minoso was the first significant Latin American star in major league history. He finished second in voting for the American League Rookie of the Year in 1951. He finished fourth in voting for Most Valuable Player in 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1960. He won three Gold Gloves and was a nine-time All-Star.

     

MINNIE MINOSO

When Minoso made his debut with the Sox on May 1, 1951, he became the first Black player to appear in a major-league game for either Chicago team (almost three full seasons before Ernie Banks and Gene Baker joined the Cubs).

In his first seven seasons, Minoso hit over .300 five times, knocked in 100 or more runs three times, and led the league in stolen bases three times. His aggressive style ignited the Go-Go White Sox, and he became the most popular player on the South Side. But then he was traded to Cleveland, and he missed the pennant year of 1959.

Minoso returned to the White Sox in 1960. A record opening-day crowd of 41,661 at Comiskey Park gave him a hero’s welcome, and he gave them their money’s worth. He went 2-f0r-4 and drove in six runs on a grand slam, a sacrifice fly, and a walk-off home run leading off the bottom of the ninth. He also threw out two Kansas City baserunners at home plate. The Sox prevailed 10-9.

“I’m comfortable here,” he said after the game. “I was here before and I feel like this is my home.” 

When it was all said and done, Minoso had played on the South Side from 1951 through 1958, 1960 through 1961, and in 1964 (he also played briefly in 1976 and 1980, thanks to owner Bill Veeck’s fondness for publicity stunts). 

Minnie’s number 9 was retired in 1983, a statue of him was erected in 2004, and he remained a constant presence at White Sox home games through 2014. He passed away during spring training in 2015.

 

  

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Minnie Minoso

On May 1, 1951, Orestes “Minnie” Minoso made his debut with the White Sox, thus becoming the first black player to appear in a major-league game for a Chicago team (almost three full seasons before Ernie Banks and Gene Baker joined the Cubs). 

 

 

MINNIE MINOSO

 

“I’m the first guy to bat,” Minoso recalled years later. “First pitch comes right over the plate and I hit a home run to center field. The people who wanted to boo me didn’t get a chance. But later they got a chance. The bases were loaded and I was playing third base. A hit bounced off the bag and hit my ankle, then went through my legs. I was charged with an error, and two runs scored. My first game on the White Sox I was at the top and then sunk to the bottom. Same day, good and bad.”

As time went on, there was a lot more good than bad. In his first seven years, Minoso hit over .300 five times, knocked in 100 or more runs three times, and led the league in stolen bases three times. His aggressive style ignited the Go-Go White Sox, and he became the most popular player on the South Side. But then he was traded to Cleveland, and he missed the pennant year of 1959.

Minoso returned to the White Sox in 1960. A record opening-day crowd of 41,661 at Comiskey Park gave him a hero’s welcome, and he gave them their money’s worth. A more eventful day would have been difficult to imagine.

In the first inning, Minoso beat out a bunt for an apparent base hit but was called out for running outside the baseline. A lengthy rhubarb ensued.

In the second, he hit a screaming liner and was robbed on a circus catch by Kansas City center fielder Bill Tuttle; he was credited with a sacrifice fly when Luis Aparicio scored on the play.

In the fourth, Minoso hit a grand slam. In the fifth, playing left field, he narrowly missed colliding with Aparicio as both men chased a pop fly; he dropped the ball for an error.

In the seventh, he raced into the left-center field gap to spear a line drive that would have scored two runs.

In the top of the ninth, with the score tied 9-9, he threw out the go-ahead runner at the plate. In the bottom of the ninth, he belted another home run to win the game. 

Minnie was back, as his two home runs, six runs batted in, two sensational defensive plays, and countless ovations from the crowd amply demonstrated. “I’m comfortable here,” he said after the game. “I was here before and I feel like this is my home.” 

 

Born in Havana, Cuba, Minoso was the first significant Latin American star in major league history. He finished second in voting for the American League Rookie of the Year in 1951. He finished fourth in voting for Most Valuable Player in 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1960. He won three Gold Gloves and was a nine-time All-Star.

Minoso played for the White Sox from 1951 through 1958 and 1960 through 1961 before seemingly ending his career back with the South Siders in 1964. But Bill Veeck, ever on the lookout for marketing stunts, put Minoso on the active roster in his second go-round as Sox owner from 1976 to 1980. Minoso got one hit in eight at-bats in 1976 at the admitted age of 50 (many people suspected that he was older), and he went o-for-2 in 1980.

Minnie remained a constant presence at White Sox home games through the 2014 season. He passed away during spring training in 2015.

 

  

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.  

 

Worth a Thousand Words: The Veecks

 

It has often been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. We try to prove that from time to time by presenting a compelling image and not beating it to death with too much verbiage. 

     The photograph below shows the Veeck family of Hinsdale in the late 1920s (the exact date is unknown). Grace DeForest Veeck (1878-1964) and her husband Bill Veeck Sr. (1876-1933) stand on either side of their son Bill Jr. (1914-1986).

 

THE VEECK FAMILY, LATE 1920s

 

Bill Veeck Sr. was a Chicago newspaperman whose frequent and pointed criticisms of the Cubs prompted the team's owner William Wrigley Jr. to challenge him to put his money where his mouth was. Veeck took him up on it, signing on as vice president in 1917. He was promoted to president and general manager in 1919, and served in that role until his untimely demise in 1933. Under Veeck's stewardship the Cubs won pennants in 1918, 1929, and 1932, and smashed all previous attendance records. Their figure of 1,485,166 in 1929 stood as the major-league record for 17 years.

 

Bill Veeck Jr. worked for the Cubs before his father's death and for several years thereafter. He was responsible for two iconic features of Wrigley Field: the towering center-field scoreboard and the ivy on the outfield walls. He served in the Marine Corps during World War II, losing a leg in the process, then undertook a career as a nomadic owner of baseball franchises, including the White Sox from 1959 to 1961 and 1976 to 1980. He introduced the famous exploding scoreboard at Comiskey Park and employed all sorts of stunts to stir up interest in his ballclubs. He was inducted (posthumously) into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.

 "The most beautiful thing in the world," Veeck Jr. said, "is a ballpark filled with people." No doubt his dad would have agreed.

 

 

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Old Comiskey Park

The original Comiskey Park hosted its last game 30 years ago, on September 30, 1990. A full house of 42,849 saw the legendary Minnie Minoso deliver the White Sox' lineup card to the umpires before the game and then saw the Sox defeat the Seattle Mariners 2-1. Center fielder Lance Johnson and rookie first baseman Frank Thomas provided most of the offense, while Jack McDowell won his 14th game of the season and Bobby Thigpen saved his 57th (exceeding the previous single-season record by 11).

    

COMISKEY PARK IN 1990

Comiskey Park was truly a wonder when it opened in 1910. It was one of the first concrete-and-steel stadiums, which were replacing the wooden bandboxes (a.k.a. firetraps) that had prevailed since the 1880s. It was designed by Zachary Taylor Davis, who also designed Weeghman Park (later known as Wrigley Field) a few years later. White Sox ace Ed Walsh had a hand in mapping the park's pitcher-friendly dimensions of 420 feet to center field, 382 feet in the alleys, and 363 feet down the lines. Its original capacity of 32,000 made Comiskey by far the largest ballpark ever built to that time. Accordingly, it was called "the Baseball Palace of the World."

 

Comiskey Park hosted World Series games in 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1959. In 1917, the White Sox defeated the New York Giants in all three home games en route to the world championship. In 1919, the so-called "Black Sox" lost three of four home games to the Cincinnati Reds, who won the Series under a cloud of suspicion that it had been fixed. In 1959, the Sox drubbed the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-0 in Game 1 but lost the other two home games and the Series.

     In the 1918 Series, the Cubs played their home games at Comiskey Park to take advantage of its larger seating capacity. The Cubs won just one of three home games and lost the series to Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox four games to two.

 

Comiskey Park hosted three major-league All-Star Games, including the first one in 1933. That game drew an overflow crowd of 47,595, and Ruth (by then a long-time Yankee) hit the first home run in All-Star competition as the American Leaguers won 4-2. In 1950, the National Leaguers won in extra innings, and the great Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams suffered a broken elbow that sidelined him for the rest of the season. In 1983, California Angels outfielder Fred Lynn hit the first grand slam in an All-Star Game as the American Leaguers won 13-3. 

     Comiskey Park was also the most frequent site of the Negro Leagues' annual East-West All-Star Game between 1933 and 1960. 

 

In addition to being the stomping grounds of the White Sox for 81 seasons, Comiskey Park was home to a variety of other Chicago teams over the years:

-- Cardinals (National Football League), 1922-1925, 1929-1930, 1940-1958

-- American Giants (Negro American League), 1941-1952

-- Mustangs (North American Soccer League), 1967-1968

-- Sting (North American Soccer League), 1980-1985

 

In 1937, Joe Louis became the world heavyweight champion by defeating Jim Braddock at Comiskey Park (he reigned as champion until 1949). The Beatles played two sold-out concerts there in 1965, and the Jacksons played three in 1984. In 1979, the White Sox had to forfeit the second game of a doubleheader when disk jockey Steve Dahl's Disco Demolition Night got out of hand.

 

And let's not forget that White Sox owner Bill Veeck installed the first exploding scoreboard in baseball (or any sport) at Comiskey Park in 1960. That alone would have qualified the old ballyard as a unique and unforgettable place.

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.  

 

 

        

 

        

Go-Go Sox

On the morning of Sunday, July 26, 1959, the White Sox were in first place in the American League, half a game ahead of Cleveland. That day, the Sox split a doubleheader with Baltimore, and Cleveland took two from Washington to reclaim first place by a half game. There were no games Monday, so the Indians spent the off day atop the standings.   

A throng of 43,829 packed Comiskey Park on Tuesday night for the opener of a three-game series with the hated Yankees. Al Smith’s two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth gave the Sox a seemingly safe 4-1 edge heading into the ninth. But New York battled back, scoring twice and putting the tying run on base before veteran lefty Billy Pierce fanned Bobby Richardson to end the threat and the game. It was a gutsy effort by Pierce, who allowed 10 hits but walked none and struck out eight. He received a lengthy ovation after the final out. The Sox were back in first place.

Rain terminated the next day’s game with the Sox and New York tied 4-4. The day after that, Chicago’s popgun offense produced three decidedly unimpressive runs. The first came on a single, stolen base, safe bunt, and infield out; the second on a misjudged fly ball which fell for a double, followed by a single; and the third on a two-base error, an infield out, another error, and an infield single. It was enough, as Early Wynn limited the Yankees to six hits and one unearned run for a 3-1 decision.

It was Yankee manager Casey Stengel’s 69th birthday, and not a very happy one for the “Old Perfessor.” White Sox fans mockingly sang “Happy Birthday to You” as Stengel and his charges trudged slowly to the clubhouse entrance. The Yankees left town with a malodorous record of 48-51; they were 10½ games behind the Sox, who led the Indians by one game.

The Yankees were done. By August, there was no question that the pennant would be won by either Chicago or Cleveland—two teams that could hardly have been more different. Cleveland’s attack featured sluggers Rocky Colavito, Tito Francona, Woodie Held, and Minnie Minoso (the former Sox star and fan favorite who’d been traded for Wynn and Al Smith prior to the 1958 season). Cleveland would lead the league in home runs and finish last in stolen bases, Chicago would finish last in home runs and first in stolen bases. If the Indians were a steamroller, the White Sox were a motor scooter. “A typical White Sox rally,” owner Bill Veeck, Jr., wrote, “consisted of two bloopers, an error, a passed ball, a couple of bases on balls, and, as a final crusher, a hit batsman.”  

Throughout August, fans looked forward to the White Sox’ four-game showdown with the Indians on the last weekend of the month. Neither team let up in the weeks preceding the fateful series; the Indians went 17-9, while the Sox went 18-9.

The Sox brought a one-and-a-half-game lead into Cleveland’s colossal Municipal Stadium on the muggy evening of August 28. They were greeted by a hostile crowd of 70,398 and a virtual quagmire in the infield. Several days before, Cleveland groundskeeper Emil Bossard had begun watering the basepaths more than usual; when he was through, he had made them as soft and spongy as possible. The slow track made no difference to the plodding Indians, of course, but it was supposed to hinder the Go-Go Sox. “Chicago won’t steal any bases against us this weekend,” Bossard chortled.

Bossard’s handiwork had little effect on Friday night’s game, in which Sherm Lollar, a tower of strength all season, cracked a three-run homer in the seventh inning to snap a 3-3 tie and provide the unheralded righthander Bob Shaw his 14th victory against just four defeats. Jim Landis collected three hits, Nellie Fox and Ted Kluszewski two each.

Dick Donovan was called to emergency duty when projected starter Ken McBride came down with tonsillitis on Saturday. Donovan responded by tossing a five-hit shutout as the Sox won 2-0. Employing a variety of slow curves, sliders, and change-ups, he kept the Indians off balance all day.

      Sox skipper Al Lopez remained cautious. “We’re still going to keep playing like hell,” he said. “Nothing has been easy for us this year. We’ve won the hard way and we’ll have to keep doing it that way.” On Sunday, 66,586 Cleveland fans turned out (pushing the total for the series to almost 190,000) to see if the Indians could arrest the White Sox’ momentum. Most had long since departed by the end of the doubleheader, in which the Sox captured both games to complete a stunning sweep of the series. In the first game, Chicago trailed 2-0 in the sixth when Wynn’s home run triggered a five-run rally that paved the way to a 6-3 win. In the second game, Smith and Billy Goodman combined for five hits and five runs batted in. The game was effectively over when Turk Lown entered the fray in the sixth. He shut out the Indians for the final four innings, and the Sox triumphed 9-4.

The Indians had come into the series riding an eight-game winning streak. After leading for exactly one half inning of the 36 played, they left as a thoroughly beaten ballclub. For the White Sox, the series had been almost too good to be believed. Their record now stood at 80-49. Their advantage in the standings was five and a half games. When the Sox touched down at Midway Airport that night, they were met by a welcoming committee of thousands.

The raucous reception of August 30 was a dress rehearsal for the celebration that now seemed inevitable—and was. It was both ironic and fitting that the coup de grace was delivered in Cleveland. On September 22, Smith and Jim Rivera smashed back-to-back homers in the sixth inning, putting the Sox ahead 4-1. Wynn was touched for a run in the bottom of the sixth. Bob Shaw relieved him and carried the 4-2 margin into the ninth, when the Indians loaded the bases with one out.

Gerry Staley came on to replace Shaw. The tying and winning runs were aboard, and Vic Power was at bat for the Indians. Staley’s first offering was a sinker, low and a tad outside. Power swung and pounded a grounder up the middle. Shortstop Luis Aparicio flashed to his left, speared the ball in his glove, started to flip it to Fox covering second but changed his mind, then glided across the bag himself and fired to Kluszewski to complete the double play.

Staley’s one pitch had saved the game and wrapped up the pennant. “This was the perfect example of the way we’ve played all year,” said Veeck, “and a typical way to end it.” The clincher was Wynn’s 21st victory of the season; he wound up with a log of 22-10 and received the Cy Young Award as the finest pitcher in the major leagues (in those days, there was one award covering both leagues). The Sox’ five-game margin over the Indians was neatly accounted for by Wynn’s 6-1 mark against his former teammates.

Harry Caray, Part 1



HARRY CARAY IN HIS WHITE SOX DAYS

     
     “The first thing I fell deeply, passionately, madly and irrevocably in love with,” Harry Caray wrote, “was the game of baseball. I loved to play it and to watch it, I loved to read about it, and perhaps most of all, I loved to talk about it, argue about it, analyze it.” Over the course of his remarkable career as a broadcaster, Caray shared his love with millions, who in turn made it their own.
     Better than half of Caray’s 53 years at the microphone were spent in Chicago, where he worked 11 seasons with the White Sox and 16 with the Cubs. In Chicago he became larger than life, the Mayor of Rush Street and the celebrated singer of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”—but it was in St. Louis that he established himself as a Hall-of-Fame broadcaster. For much of his tenure with the Cardinals, St. Louis was the southernmost and westernmost city in the major leagues, and Caray’s voice crackling over the radio was the closest that fans throughout most of the country ever got to a big-league ballpark. When conditions were right, station KMOX’s 50,000-watt signal carried the broadcasts into virtually all of the contiguous 48 states.
     “On a clear night from a thousand miles away, here came Harry Caray over KMOX,” recalled Bob Costas, who used to tune in on the car radio from his family’s driveway on Long Island. “Not smooth and melodic, like Red Barber, Mel Allen, or Vin Scully, but loud and bombastic.”
     Caray was a St. Louis institution for a quarter century. “There were just two names in St. Louis,” he once said. “Stan Musial and me.”
    
     After the 1969 season, his 25th with the Cardinals, Caray was abruptly fired. “I expected a gold watch,” he later joked, “but what I got was a pink slip.” It was a devastating blow, but not a complete surprise in light of allegations that he had become amorously involved with the attractive young wife of an Anheuser-Busch executive. Caray never denied it. “I’d rather have people believing the rumor and have my middle-aged ego inflated,” he said, “than deny it and keep my job.”
     In 1970, Caray hooked on with Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s, but his blue-collar, beer-guzzling image and over-the-top broadcasting style were at odds with the laid-back culture of the Bay Area. After one forgettable season, Caray landed with the White Sox.
     The Sox were coming off a disastrous season in which they had lost a franchise-record 106 games and drawn only 495,535 fans. The club’s games were carried on WTAQ in LaGrange, a 5,000-watt station whose signal faded to 500 watts after dark, making it impossible for most homes in the Chicago area to receive the night games at all. It was quite a comedown for Caray, whose voice had boomed almost from coast to coast in his St. Louis days. It was also an adjustment for Chicago fans (and players), who had never known an announcer like him, accustomed as they were to the laconic Bob Elson and the always-optimistic Jack Brickhouse. Caray would root, root, root for the home team, but he never sugarcoated its shortcomings. “Look,” he said, “I don’t blast players, I just report what they do.”
     “Most announcers are shills for their teams,” said Caray. “I speak for the fan.” Like any fan, Caray came to the ballpark every day hoping, even expecting, to see something wonderful happen. When it didn’t, he was genuinely disappointed. When it did, though, he could hardly contain himself. For example, he made every home run sound like the first he had ever seen. “There’s a drive. Way back. It might be. It could be. It is! A home run! Holy cow! Listen to the crowd!”
     During his early years with the White Sox, the chief sponsors of Caray’s broadcasts were Falstaff Beer and the Chicken Unlimited chain. Caray sampled prodigious quantities of both products, and by the end of a game the booth would be littered with empty beer bottles and picked-over boxes of chicken. Often he would fling pieces of chicken from the booth into the waiting hands of fans below.
     White Sox fans loved his antics. Buoyed by Caray’s presence and the ballclub’s steady improvement under new manager Chuck Tanner, attendance at Comiskey Park climbed to 833,891 in 1971 and 1,186,018 in 1972 (that year, led by American League MVP Dick Allen, the Sox remained in contention all summer and finished a solid second to the A’s, who went on to win their first of three straight world championships). By 1973, Caray was on TV as well as radio, and the Sox drew 1,316,527 fans. Caray’s contract called for a relatively modest base salary of $50,000, with bonuses of $10,000 for every 100,000 spectators beyond 600,000; thus in 1973 his bonus was greater than his salary.
     By 1975, the White Sox were slipping badly, and Caray’s brutally honest appraisals of the situation were grating on players and management. Caray’s favorite target was third baseman Bill Melton, a former slugging star who’d never quite recovered from a back injury. “I didn’t mind him getting on me,” said Melton. “But we had a young ballclub—Bucky Dent, Terry Forster, a bunch of young players. He was getting on the whole team, the whole organization. It was building up. I had to confront him.” In July, he did; the two men had a well-publicized shouting match in a Milwaukee hotel lobby. At the end of the season, Melton’s request for a trade was granted, and owner John Allyn indicated that Caray would not be invited back, either.

     Caray’s salvation (and that of the White Sox) was delivered by the chain-smoking, peg-legged entrepreneur Bill Veeck, Jr., who headed a group that bought the franchise from Allyn to prevent its moving to Seattle. Caray went for an interview to get his job back. “Here I am,” said Veeck, “talking to the man who ran me out of St. Louis.” It was true that Caray’s popularity with the Cardinals had hastened the demise of Veeck’s St. Louis Browns in the early 1950s. Nonetheless, Veeck retained him.
     Caray flourished under Veeck’s anything-goes administration, which reached its apex in 1977—the year of the “South Side Hit Men.” The Sox rebounded from a last-place finish the year before by leading their division into August, winning 90 games, and drawing a club-record 1,657,315 fans. “Harry fits in with our group,” said Veeck. “He fits in with our style, which is casual, even raucous. Can you envision Dodger fans standing up in the middle of a game to cheer Vin Scully the way they cheer Harry here?” He might also have asked, can you envision Vin Scully broadcasting, shirtless, from a wind-whipped perch in the center-field bleachers, amidst hundreds of boisterous, imbibing young people?
     It was Veeck who created an enduring Chicago ritual for the seventh-inning stretch. Caray had been in the habit of singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to himself. Veeck heard him one night. The next night, he had Caray’s microphone connected, surreptitiously, to the public-address system. “Here I am,” Caray remembered, “not dreaming that anyone notices, singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame.’ All of a sudden, I hear my voice booming back at me, along with the sound of thousands of other voices. When the game was over, I went up to Veeck and asked him what this was all about. He said, ‘Harry, all my life I’ve wanted to do that. I was just looking for the right guy. I knew you were the right guy because I knew any fan sitting in the ballpark, no matter how badly he sings, would realize that he could sing better than you and would freely join in.’”
     It was also Veeck who, in a fit of inspiration (or lunacy), teamed Caray with the volatile Jimmy Piersall in the broadcast booth. During his playing days, Piersall had suffered a nervous breakdown that was later chronicled in the movie Fear Strikes Out. He and Caray were a memorable tandem. The two would sometimes become so engrossed in arguing about a certain aspect of the game that they would briefly forget about the action on the field. One time, an exasperated Caray exclaimed, “Aw, Jimmy, you’re crazy!” Without missing a beat, Piersall retorted, “And I’ve got the papers to prove it.”
     When physical and financial woes forced Veeck to sell the White Sox in 1981, Caray’s days on the South Side were numbered. He did not suit the image that new owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn sought to project. “What it really came down to,” Caray said, “was they were jealous of me because my picture was in the paper more than theirs.” He lasted for one year. After Einhorn announced that henceforth most Sox games would be available not on free TV, but on a new subscription service, SportsVision, Caray up and quit. Worse yet for the Sox, he joined the Cubs. In explaining his decision, Caray said, “It came down to, do you want to go into 8,000,000 homes free or 50,000 homes on pay TV?”

Part 1 of 2.

Sox in Shorts

BUCKY DENT

     Renegade baseball owner Bill Veeck, Jr., purchased the White Sox from John Allyn in December 1975, heading off the very real possibility that the franchise would move to Seattle. Veeck had earlier been the head man of the Cleveland Indians' world champions of 1948 and the White Sox' pennant winners of 1959, as well as the atrocious St. Louis Browns in the early 1950s.
     In his earlier tenure with the Sox, Veeck had introduced the exploding scoreboard that soon became iconic on the South Side, and has remained so for half a century. When Veeck ran the Browns, a vote among the fans determined pitching changes in one game, and three-foot-seven Eddie Gaedel appeared as a pinch hitter in another game, drawing a walk in his only big-league plate appearance.
     When the Sox took the field in 1976, they did so in unusual navy blue-and-white uniforms (designed by Veeck's wife Mary Frances) that harkened back to the 1890s. They featured prominent collars, untucked shirts, softball-style pants, and socks with no stirrups. Not content to stop there, Veeck also unveiled a variation that featured short pants which supposedly would keep the players cooler on hot days.
     As might have been anticipated, the shorts exposed the White Sox players to all sorts of ridicule from opponents and fans. To say the players hated them would be an understatement. The shorts were embarrassing and also unsafe, players argued, in the event that they had to slide into a base or dive for a ball.
     The Sox donned the shorts in several spring-training games, but in the end they wore them only once in a regular-season game. On August 8, 1976, the Sox beat Kansas City 5-2 in the first game of a doubleheader wearing the shorts, then came out for the second game in their regular pants. The shorts never appeared again.

South Side Hit Men

BILL VEECK IN 1977

     “Don’t worry about doing a budget,” owner Bill Veeck told general manager Roland Hemond upon reacquiring the White Sox in 1976. “We don’t have any money.” The two soon unveiled their “rent-a-player” strategy for 1977. Using players who were in their last year before free agency—such as sluggers Richie Zisk and Oscar Gamble—or who were bargain-priced because of previous injuries, Veeck and Hemond transformed their hapless team into one of the most exciting in franchise history.
     Led by easy-going manager Bob Lemon, the White Sox became known as the South Side Hit Men and emerged as surprising contenders in the American League West Division. Their boisterous fans introduced two rituals that quickly caught on: dugout curtain calls after home runs and the serenading of departing enemy pitchers with “Nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, hey hey, goodbye!”
     The high point of that memorable season came on Sunday, July 31. A lively crowd of 50,412 turned out for a sun-drenched doubleheader with the defending division-champion Kansas City Royals. In the first game, Kansas City’s Marty Pattin led 1-0 and held the Sox hitless until Chet Lemon homered in the bottom of the sixth. A homer by Amos Otis the next inning gave the Royals a 2-1 lead, which they held until the bottom of the ninth. With one out, Alan Bannister reached on a two-base error. Jorge Orta’s single to right scored Bannister and sent the game into extra innings.
     White Sox starter Steve Stone retired the first two Royal hitters in the top of the 10th before issuing back-to-back walks to George Brett and Joe Lahoud. Stone headed for the showers, and successive singles by Cookie Rojas and Al Cowens scored Brett, then Lahoud. Further damage was narrowly averted when first baseman Jim Spencer speared a line drive off the bat of John Mayberry for the third out.
     With the Sox now trailing 4-2, Spencer led off the bottom of the 10th with a single to left. Royals manager Whitey Herzog summoned righthander Doug Bird to face Chet Lemon, whose homer had tied the game earlier. This time, Lemon fell behind in the count 0-and-2, then socked a long home run into the center-field bleachers, again tying the score and sending the crowd into a frenzy. This occasioned another of the curtain calls that opponents found so annoying. “It’s bush [league] what they do,” Hal McRae declared. “It’s a disgrace to baseball.” After the commotion had died down, Eric Soderholm coaxed a walk, reached second on a sacrifice bunt by Brian Downing, and scored on a base hit by Ralph Garr.
     The stirring 5-4 win was the ninth in the White Sox’ past 10 games. It put them 25 games over .500, at 62-37, and 6½ games in front of the second-place Royals. “If we’re all dreaming,” said Stone, “I hope we don’t wake up.”
     The second game was also quite eventful. The teams exchanged several knockdown pitches, and as umpire Art Frantz informed them that no further shenanigans would be tolerated on the field, a fight broke out in the stands near the press box. The one-legged, 63-year-old Veeck waded into the fray to act as peacemaker and came away with a bloody lip. “It’s a hot day,” he said cheerfully, “but all I’ve had is iced tea.” Most of the fans, of course, had quenched their thirst with something stronger.
     A good time was had by all, but the White Sox lost the second game 8-4. “We took three out of four [for the series],” said Zisk. “I’ll take it.” As July gave way to August, the White Sox and the equally unlikely Cubs were both in first place. Unfortunately, neither was able to go the distance. The Cubs dropped out of first place a week into August and faded fast thereafter to finish 20 games out. The Sox held on a while longer, occupying first place until August 19, but eventually finished 12 games behind the Royals. Still, the South Side Hit Men won 90 games and set a new franchise attendance record.
     Veeck’s second stint with the White Sox featured softball-style uniforms with untucked shirts and no stirrups, a shower in the center-field bleachers, and the infamous Disco Demolition Night in 1979 which forced the Sox to forfeit a game. It was fun while it lasted, but Veeck’s shoestring operation was on borrowed time. Veeck sold the Sox in 1981 and never set foot in Comiskey Park again. He became a regular in the center-field bleachers at Wrigley Field, perched between the ivy he himself had planted and the scoreboard he had built while working for the Cubs in the thirties.

Reprinted from Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports
(c) 2009, 2010 by Christopher Tabbert