subject: The Chicago White Sox Tickets : The White Sox Were A Strong Team During Their First Two Decades [print this page] The Chicago White Sox are a Major League Baseball team based in Chicago, Illinois. The White Sox play in the American League's Central Division. Since 1991, the White Sox have played in U.S. Cellular Field, which was originally called New Comiskey Park and nicknamed The Cell by local fans. The White Sox are one of two major league clubs based in Chicago, the other being the Chicago Cubs of the National League. The White Sox last won the World Series in 2005 when they played the Houston Astros and swept them in four games.
One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Chicago team was established as a major league baseball club in 1900. The club was originally called the Chicago White Stockings, after the nickname abandoned by the Cubs, and the name was soon shortened to Chicago White Sox, believed to have been because the paper would shorten it to Sox in the headlines. At this time, the team played their home games at South Side Park. In 1910, the team moved into historic Comiskey Park, which they would inhabit for more than eight decades.
The White Sox were a strong team during their first two decades, winning the 1906 World Series with a defense-oriented team dubbed "the Hitless Wonders", and the 1917 World Series led by Eddie Cicotte, Eddie Collins, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. The 1919 World Series, however, was marred by the Black Sox Scandal, in which several prominent members of the White Sox (including Cicotte and Jackson) were accused of conspiring with gamblers to purposefully lose games. Baseball's new commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis took decisive action, banning the tainted players from Major League Baseball for life.
Decades of mediocrity followed for the White Sox until the 1950s, when perennially competitive teams were blocked from the playoffs by the dynastic New York Yankees, with the exception of the 1959 pennant winners led by Early Wynn, Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, and manager Al Lopez. Another pennant winner did not come until their championship season of 2005, when the White Sox won their first World Series championship in 88 years, breaking their epochal drought only a year after the Boston Red Sox had broken their slightly shorter but more celebrated "curse."
The Chicago White Sox are most prominently nicknamed "the South Siders", based on their particular district within Chicago. Other nicknames include "the Pale Hose", "the ChiSox", a combination of "Chicago" and "Sox" (as opposed to the BoSox), mostly just used by the national media, "the Go-Go Sox", a reference to 1959 AL champions, who got that nickname; "the Good Guys", a reference to the team's one-time motto "Good guys wear black", coined by Ken "Hawk" Harrelson; and "the Black Sox," referring specifically to the scandal-tainted 1919 team. Most fans and Chicago media refer to the team as simply "the Sox". The Spanish language media sometimes refer to the team as Medias Blancas for "White Socks."
The White Sox enjoy healthy divisional rivalries. The Detroit Tigers are led by former White Sox player Magglio Ordonez, and the cities of Chicago and Detroit share rivalries in other sports as well (see Bulls Pistons rivalry). The Minnesota Twins are high profile rivals as well, with fans of both teams showing up to US Cellular Field in healthy numbers. Chicago's biggest and longest division rivals though, are the Cleveland Indians who always enjoy a large away contingent at U.S. Cellular Field.
The rivalry first started upon the creation of the AL Central in 1994. On July 15, 1994 an umpire confiscated Albert Belle's bat, presuming that it was corked. They put it in the umpire's room at Comiskey Park. However, Indians pitcher Jason Grimsley climbed through the ceiling from the visitor's clubhouse and stole the bat. The theft was discovered and Belle was suspended; Grimsley later owed up to the theft. Belle further inflamed matters by spurning the Indians and signing a large free agent contract with the White Sox in 1997.
A historical regional rival was the St. Louis Browns. Through the 1953 season, the two teams were located pretty close to each other (including the 1901 season when the Browns were the Milwaukee Brewers), and could have been seen as the American League equivalent of the Cardinals Cubs rivalry, being that Chicago and St. Louis have for years been connected by the same highway (U.S. Route 66 and now Interstate 55).
The current Milwaukee Brewers franchise was also a primary White Sox rival, due the to proximity of the two cities, and with the teams competing in the same division for the 1970 and 1971 seasons, and then again from 1994-1997. The rivalry died down however, when the Brewers moved to the National League in 1998.
