I was only the 9th player in history to start off my career with two straight 100 RBI seasons, but I finished second to Jose Canseco for 1986 AL Rookie of the Year.
Comiskey Park (35th Street & Shields Avenue, Chicago,
Illinois) was the ballpark in which the Chicago White Sox played from 1910
to 1990. It was built by Charles Comiskey and was the site of four World
Series (one of which was played by the Chicago Cubs due to lack of seating
at Wrigley Field) and over 6,000 major league games.
White
Sox (MLB '10-'90)
Cardinals (NFL '22-25; 29-59)
Seating
capacity
32,000
(1910)
52,000 (1927)
Dimensions
1910:
Left Field - 363 ft
Deep Left Center - 382 ft
Center Field - 420 ft
Deep Right Center - 382 ft
Right Field - 363 ft
Backstop - 98 ft
1986:
Left Field - 347 ft
Deep Left Center - 382 ft
Center Field - 409 ft
Deep Right Center - 382 ft
Right Field - 347 ft
Backstop - 86 ft
Fout territory: Large
One of the last of the truly historic parks (along with Tiger
Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Fenway
Park, and Wrigley Field), White Sox
Park opened in July of 1910. It was renamed Comiskey Park in 1912 at the
request of the owner, Charles Comiskey. However, it reverted to the name
"White Sox Park" from 1962-1975.
The park was built on a former city dump that Comiskey bought in 1909
to replace the wooden South Side Park. Comiskey Park was very modern for
its time, being constructed of concrete and steel and seating 29,000, a
record at the time. Briefly, it retained the nickname "The Baseball
Palace of the World." The park's design was strongly influenced by
Sox pitcher Ed Walsh, and was known for its pitcher-friendly proportions
(362 feet to the foul poles, 420 feet down the middle). Later changes were
made, but the park remained more or less favorable to defensive teams. For
many years this reflected on the White Sox style of play: solid defense,
and short, quick hits. The 1959 American League Most Valuable Player,
Nellie Fox, who led the White Sox to the 1959 American League
championship, was known for his frequent hit production.
Fly
to the Old Comiskey Park!
If you have Google
Earth installed, click here
to be "flown" to the site of old Comiskey Park. (If you do
not have it installed, get
it from Google. It allows you to view virtually anywhere on
Earth in 3D using satellite imagery.)
The first game in Comiskey Park was a 2-0 loss to the St. Louis Browns on
July 1, 1910. The last game at Comiskey was a win, 2-1, over Seattle on
September 30, 1990. The White Sox lost their first-ever night game to St.
Louis in 1939, 5-2.
Comiskey Park was the site of the first-ever Major League All-Star
Game, in 1933. It was also the site of the 50th Anniversary All-Star Game
in 1983. Fittingly perhaps, the American League's lopsided win began the
return of the Americans' strength in the All-Star Game, which had been
dominated by the Nationals for the better part of the previous three
decades.
From the Super70s until its demolition in 1991, Comiskey was the oldest
park still in use in Major League Baseball. Many of its known
characteristics, such as the pinwheels on the scoreboard (see photo), were
installed by Bill Veeck (owner of the White Sox from 1959 to 1961, and
again from 1975 to 1981). For thirty years from 1960 to 1990, Sox fans
were also entertained by Andy the Clown, famous for his famous Jerry
Colonna-like elongated cry, "Come ooooooooooon, go! White!
Sox!".
Starting in the 1970s, Sox fans were further entertained by organist
Nancy Faust who picked up on, and reinforced, the spontaneous chants of
fans who were singing tunes like, "We will, we will, SOX YOU!"
and the now-ubiquitous farewell to departing pitchers and ejected
managers, "Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey-hey, GOOD-BYE!" And
before he became an institution on the north side, Sox broadcaster Harry
Carayhad became a south side icon. At some point he started
"conducting" Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the
seventh-inning stretch, egged on by Veeck, who (according to Harry
himself) said that the fans would sing along when they realized that none
of them sang any worse than Harry did!
Comiskey Park was officially renamed White Sox Park from 1962 to
1975 after the last Comiskey stockholder had sold their remaining shares.
The new owners installed Astroturf in 1969 (they called it "Sox
Sod"), but only in the infield. It was thus the only major league
field to be both natural grass and turf. That bizarre experiment
came to an end when Bill Veeck (as
in wreck) reacquired the team in 1976 and restored order (and the name
Comiskey Park).
Veeck also took out the center field fence, reverting to the original
440-plus distance to the wall... a tough target, but reachable by sluggers
like Dick Allen and Richie Zisk and other members of a team that was
tagged "The South Side Hit Men". They were long removed from
their days as "The Hitless Wonders". During that time the
ballpark also featured a lounge where one could buy mixed drinks. This
prompted some writers to dub Comiskey "Chicago's Largest Outdoor
Saloon".
Old
Comiskey!
Old Comiskey Park
with Veeck's exploding scoreboard as seen
in 1990.
Photo
by Rick Dikeman.
For a number of years, off and on, the Chicago Cardinals football team
called Comiskey Park home when they weren't playing at Normal Park or
Soldier Field. The stadium also presented boxing matches, including World
Heavyweight Championship bouts featuring Joe Louis, Floyd Patterson and
Sonny Liston. One of its more ignominious events was Disco
Demolition Night, a fiasco that threatened instead to demolish the
ballpark itself.
FIRSTS
at COMISKEY PARK
Game
07/01/1910
Browns 2, White Sox 0
Umpires
Tommy Connolly, Bill Dineen
Managers
Hugh Duffy, White Sox
Jack O'Connor, Browns
Starting Pitchers
Ed Walsh, White Sox
Barney Pelty, Browns
Ceremonial Pitch
None
Attendance
24,900
Batting
Batter
George Stone (double)
Hit
George Stone (double)
Run
Frank Treusdale
RBI
George Stone
Single
Frank Truesdale
Double
George Stone
Triple
Patsy Dougherty
Home Run
Lee Tannehill (07/31/1910)
Grand Slam
Lee Tannehill (07/31/1910)
IPHR
Clyde Milan (05/11/1911)
Stolen Base
Shano Collins
Sacrifice Hit
Roy Hartzell
Sacrifice Fly
Art Griggs (07/05/1910)
Cycle
Baby Doll Jacobson (04/17/1924)
Pitching
Win
Barney Pelty
Loss
Ed Walsh
Shutout
Barney Pelty
Save
N/A
Hit by Pitch
Farmer Ray hit Lena Blackburne
(07/03/1910)
Wild Pitch
Joe Lake (07/05/1910)
Balk
Ed Walsh (08/04/1910)
No-Hitter
Ed Walsh (08/27/1911)
Primary
research by Jim Herdman & David Vincent
Courtesy of Retrosheet.
From a modern perspective, it seems that the White Sox are always
second fiddle to the Cubs, and likewise the Cardinals were second fiddle
to the Bears before they moved on to greener pastures. It is surprising,
then, to discover that the White Sox were the more popular team in town
for pockets of their history.
In the early years of Comiskey Park, the White Sox regularly outdrew
the Cubs. The throwing of the 1919 World Series seemed to take the starch
out of the franchise for decades. But the Sox were a contender during the
early 1950s and into the mid 1960s, and once again outdrew the perpetually
inept Cubs. During the last 8 years of its existence, Comiskey's annual
turnstile counts reached the 3 million mark 3 times, including the final
season when the team contended for much of the year before fading behind
the powerful Oakland Athletics.
Bill Veeck once remarked that "There is no more beautiful sight in
the world than a ballpark full of people!" On its best days, Comiskey
was stuffed to the gills, with 55,000 people or more lining the aisles and
even standing for nine (or eighteen) innings on the sloping ramps that
criss-crossed behind the scoreboard. The nearly-fully enclosed stands had
a way of capturing and reverberating the noise without any artificial
enhancement. As someone once remarked, "Wrigley Field yayed
and Comiskey Park roared."
Comiskey was demolished in 1991, a process that started from behind the
right field corner, and took all summer. It was downright painful for
old-time fans to watch. The last portion to come down, fittingly, was the
center field bleachers and the "exploding" scoreboard. The
demise of the old park made way for its successor – across 35th Street
– of the same name (later renamed U.S. Cellular Field). Some Sox fans
believed that the move was unnecessary, but owner Jerry Reinsdorf was at
the time threatening to move the club to Tampa Bay (the stadium now called
Tropicana Field was constructed for this purpose), and the local and state
governments went along by giving them funds for the new stadium.
'Old' Comiskey's home plate is a bronze plaque on the sidewalk next to
U.S. Cellular Field, and the field is a parking lot.
Our sites have always been by you and about you. If
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--Patrick Mondout
CHARLES!
Chicago White Sox president Charles Comiskey in 1907, standing behind wooden wall supported by wooden beams at South Side Park, predecessor to Comiskey Park.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
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