A large photograph of former President Barack Obama with former Chicago White Sox general manager Ken Williams and several players and employees still graces the walls of the team’s spring training facility at Camelback Ranch.
It seems like a lifetime ago to many Sox fans, but 20 years ago, their heroes ruled the baseball world and Obama, with a No. 1 Sox jersey, was the leader of the free world.
It might have been the greatest season in the 125-year history of the Sox, a franchise associated with the game’s darkest scandal and one that often plays in the shadows of the crosstown Cubs. It’s a season in sharp contrast to last year’s 121-loss campaign, the worst in modern-day history.
It’s not easy being a Sox fan, as original owner Charles Comiskey offered in his ghost-written autobiography, “Commy,” when revealing the risks of putting a team here when the American League began in 1901.
“It had been predicted that the South Side would prove a morgue for any league team,” he wrote. “As South Siders had never given any evidence of taking kindly to the national pastime.”
The Sox won the World Series in their sixth season in 1906, beating the hated Cubs in a six-game series and earning praise as the “Hitless Wonders” for their paltry .230 average. Four years later, they moved into a new ballpark at the corner of 35th Street and Shields Avenue, described as the “Baseball Palace of the World” that would later be named after Comiskey.
If it seemed like the Sox would be a team to reckon with for decades, that was only natural. Instead, they would only win two more World Series — 1917 and 2005 — leaving their hard-bitten fans disappointed more often than not.
But those hard times made the good years that much sweeter. A season could be memorable without a pennant.
Dick Allen “saved” the franchise in 1972, turning his reputation around in an MVP season that included his memorable “Chili Dog home run” against the hated New York Yankees. The Sox won 87 games and finished in second place, 5 ½ games out of first that season.
But who cared? A man with a plan was at work and a proud fan group could hold their heads high again.
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White Sox fans return from watching the Sox beat the Cubs in the final game of the world series in 1906. (Florence A. Freihage)
1977’s South Side Hit Men won the hearts of fans despite a glaring lack of pitching and defense, the pillars of winning baseball. They simply outslugged everyone, setting off the exploding scoreboard, taking curtain calls and sending the crowd into a frenzy with the silly, but catchy, lullaby, “Na, Na, Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye,” after an opposing pitcher was removed. They wound up 90-72 and in third place, 12 games out of first.
But who cared? As long as Harry Caray was hanging out of the TV booth, Nancy Faust was on the organ and players such as Richie Zisk and Oscar Gamble were aiming for the roof, everyone was happy.
It happened again 13 years later in 1990, the final year of the old ballpark, when a young, scrappy team led by Carlton Fisk and Jack McDowell won 94 games and challenged the mighty Oakland A’s all summer long. That team finished second, nine games back.
But who cared? The Sox sent the ballpark off with a party that went on and on. Tears were shed after the final out, as players walked around the outfield, saluting fans with sunlight gleaming through the arches.
Time moved on, and the White Sox got a new ballpark across the street, a shiny ballmall with an upper deck so steep vendors were designated as honorary sherpas. Under many names, including its latest iteration — Rate Field — it would never be as beloved as old Comiskey Park.
Even now, current boss Jerry Reinsdorf is trying to get a newer, shinier park in the South Loop with the help of other people’s money. Many fear Reinsdorf — or his heirs — will ultimately sell to a billionaire with no Chicago ties who will move the team to another town, ending a longtime South Side tradition and leaving fans without a local team to root for besides the Cubs. Not that that would ever happen.
The teams change and the old ballpark is history, but Sox fans haven’t changed.
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Gus Doukas, 20, Gene Bak, Leo Tonkl, 21, and Bill Loewe, 20, all of Chicago, entertain themselves as they wait to purchase tickets at Comiskey Park on Oct. 1, 1959, for Game 1 of the World Series between the White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Tom Kinahan/Chicago Tribune)
They are the same people whose parents and grandparents came to Comiskey to watch Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio turn a double play. Or see Frank Thomas smack a double into the gap or Mark Buerhle confound hitters while working quickly, the way God meant baseball to be played. You didn’t have to be a superstar to earn the respect of Sox fans. You just had to work hard and be accountable.
Former Tribune writer Bill Granger wrote that the Sox, unlike the Cubs, were always the “workingman’s team” and Comiskey Park was the one place where people gathered to “put aside the cudgels of hatred, put aside the bleakness of everyday life, put aside everything petty to move in their separate ways to seats to watch serious baseball. Everyday life — sometimes low and mean and as back-breaking as digging a ditch — took a time out on those lingering summer Sunday afternoons and on those bright Wednesday nights of hope and cheer.”
Sox history is dotted with colorful nicknames such as “No Neck,” “Pudge” and “Yermínator.” It includes short stories such as the shirtless father and son who attacked an opposing coach, mysterious bullets that hit fans in the left field bleachers, Nolan Ryan’s noogie to Robin Ventura, Tony Phillips punching a Milwaukee Brewers fan, and the greatest moment in Cubs-Sox history: the brawl that began when Cubs catcher Michael Barrett clocked catcher A.J. Pierzynski after a collision at home.
Characters were plenty — from Minnie Miñoso to Ozzie Guillén — and legacies were built and stayed strong. Groundskeeper Roger “Sodfather” Bossard followed in his father’s footsteps. His worst nightmare happened when the field was torn up in a Disco Demolition promotion gone awry, but he still has a black-and-white photo of the carnage in his office.
There were controversies, of course, from the White Flag trade in 1997 to the LaRoche family drama, where Adam LaRoche retired because the team stopped letting his young son, Drake, have a locker in the clubhouse.
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Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf celebrates the team’s 1-0 victory over the Houston Astros in Game 4 of the World Series on Oct. 26, 2005, in Houston. (Charles Cherney/Chicago Tribune)
Caray and Jimmy Piersall became a legendary duo without a filter, earning the wrath of manager Tony La Russa and the love of Sox Nation. Caray left for the Cubs booth when Reinsdorf called him “scum” while celebrating the Sox’s 1983 division title and later apologized for the language, though not the thought. Former owner Bill Veeck, the greatest salesman in baseball history, boycotted the ballpark in his final years after co-owner Eddie Einhorn slighted Veeck by saying he and Reinsdorf would turn the team into a “high-class organization.”
Sox fans now chant “Sell the Team” to the owner who once replaced Andy the Clown with mascots Ribbie and Roobarb, who let broadcaster Jason Benetti leave the team he loved for a job in Detroit, and who foisted boorish and fan-unfriendly Terry Bevington on them with a team that was capable of winning with even a mediocre manager.
From messages on the “Soxogram,” to the various caps and uniforms, to bleachers showers and fireworks, watching games was never run of the mill. Even during the 121-loss disaster of 2024, the Sox made themselves heard.
This might not be the season Sox fans have dreamed about, but if they can somehow find the spirit of those teams from 1972, 1977, 1990 and other memorable seasons, no one will care.
Winning isn’t everything, as Sox fans have learned the hard way.
But you can still have fun at the old ballpark.
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