Here are some stories I have dug up from different books I possess. These stories are about the White Sox and people who are or were associated with the team. These stories, like the others I have posted before, will be re-posted exactly as they appear. Some stories do not have titles, so the titles I give them will be just for aesthetics and flow.
Game Bores Manager --- Leaves Bench For Hot Dog
When Luke Appling was managing the Kansas City Athletics on an interim basis late in the 1967 season, he became so bored with the game that he went up behind the grandstand and ordered a hot dog and beer from a refreshment stand. He didn't come back down into the dugout until he had finished his repast. As a result, Appling, an easy-going Southerner, was not invited to manage the Athletics for the 1968 season.
Joe Jackson Got A Little Batty
JOE JACKSON, at the height of his career, had eighteen bats and he treated them as if they were people. Each bat had a pet name, such as "Old Ginril" and "Big Jim" and "Caroliny." And each bat had certain attributes as well as certain shortcomings. Jackson once spoke of "Big Jim" in this wise: "He's comin' along good for a young feller, but I ain't got too much faith in him. Trouble is he ain't been up agin big-league pitchin' very long."
At the end of the 1913 season someone came upon Jackson busy packing his bats in several carrying cases. Joe said he was taking them to South Carolina with him for the winter. "Anybody," he added, "with any sense knows that bats are like ball players. They hate cold weather."
The Price Is Wrong
THERE'S an economic factor in the tendency of certain fans to throw pop bottles at umpires. This was proven back in 1906 by Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox. Comiskey put his mind to work on the problem after Umpire Billy Evans had been the target for a shower of bottles from the bleachers near first base.
Comiskey decided that a fan who paid only twenty-five cents for his seat was a potential bottle thrower, while a fan who paid fifty cents had greater dignity and would rarely, if ever, let go with a bottle. Accordingly Comiskey upped the price of seats opposite the base lines to fifty cents. That left only the bleachers in deep center field in the cheaper class. "Out there," said Comiskey, "they can throw their arms off and bother no one."
Comiskey decided that a fan who paid only twenty-five cents for his seat was a potential bottle thrower, while a fan who paid fifty cents had greater dignity and would rarely, if ever, let go with a bottle. Accordingly Comiskey upped the price of seats opposite the base lines to fifty cents. That left only the bleachers in deep center field in the cheaper class. "Out there," said Comiskey, "they can throw their arms off and bother no one."
Fore!
OLD-TIME BALLPLAYERS took pride in the extracurricular business of hitting fungos, and many of them developed great skill as sharpshooters. None was better at placing a fungo fly ball than Pat Flaherty of the Chicago White Sox.
Prior to the start of a game one afternoon at the White Sox park, Pat was whacking out fungos to Ducky Holmes in left field. He'd hit the ball to one side and then the other, keeping Holmes galloping, and finally the fielder grew weary and signaled that he'd had enough. Holmes then walked over to the outfield fence, found a shady spot, and sat down to rest. Flaherty picked up his bat again.
"Look at Ducky out there by the fence," he said to another player. "Watch this one." He tossed up a ball and gave it a wallop. It rose high in the air, arching its way straight toward Ducky Holmes. Suddenly Flaherty realized that Ducky hadn't been watching and that the ball was probably going to hit him, so he let out a yell of warning. Holmes heard the shout and looked up---just in time to have the ball hit him squarely in the mouth. He was real angry for a while.
The Living Dead
HUNDREDS of Chicago fans were shocked speechless one day in 1916 when they picked up their newspapers and saw a headline which said that Red Faber had been shot and killed. Faber was a pitching ace of the White Sox. Charles Comiskey, the club owner, was also proprietor of a hunting preserve, in Wisconsin. A bad-tempered moose lived on this preserve, and Comiskey called the animal Red Faber. It was the moose, then, that had wandered afield and attacked a farm boy, whose brother then shot the animal.
These stories were taken from the following books: Low And Inside by Ira & Allen Smith (1949), and Baseball Bafflers by Fastball Makov (2001).
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