Tag / Charles Comiskey

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Ballpark Tour: Comiskey Park

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Stadium Name: Comiskey Park

Location: Chicago

Home Team: White Sox

Years in Service: 1910 – 1990

Visits: 12 (that I’m aware of)

Comiskey Park, the so-called Baseball Palace of the World, was the home of the White Sox from 1910 through the 1990 season.  Built on a former city dump at the corner of 35th Street and Shields Avenue, the stadium opened as White Sox Park on July 1, 1910, as the White Sox lost to the St. Louis Browns 2-0.  In 1913, owner Charles Comiskey renamed the stadium after himself, and Comiskey Park was born.  From 1962 until 1975, the White Sox Park name was officially re-establshed, as new ownership groups tried to separate themselves from the Comiskey name.  However, Bill Veeck, in his second tour of duty as owner of the White Sox, put the Comiskey Park name back on the stadium in 1976, where it remained until 1990.  The final game for the old ballyard occurred on September 30, 1990, a 2-1 victory over the Mariners.

Comiskey Park was the host for 4 World Series contests, including 3 in a row from 1917-1919.  The White Sox won the World Series in 1917 against the New York Giants.  The Cubs, looking for a larger seating capacity, moved their home games in the 1918 series against the Red Sox to Comiskey Park.  The 1919 World Series, of course, was the Black Sox scandal, where the White Sox threw the series against the Reds.  The White Sox returned to the World Series 40 years later in 1959, but fell to the Dodgers.  The final post-season games to be played in Comiskey Park were games 3 and 4 of the 1983 ALCS, which the White Sox lost to the Baltimore Orioles.

Comiskey Park was also the host to 3 All-Star games.  The first All-Star game ever, in 1933, was held in conjunction with Century of Progress Exposition being held on Chicago’s lakefront.  The event returned to Chicago’s south side in 1950.  The final All-Star game at Comiskey Park was in 1983, the 50th anniversary of the first game.  Comiskey Park was also the frequent home of the Negro League East-West All-Star Game from 1933 to 1960.

In addition to White Sox baseball, Comiskey Park was also the home to the Chicago American Giants of the Negro Leagues, the Chicago Cardinals of the NFL, and the Chicago Sting of the NASL.  Comiskey Park also hosted numerous boxing matches, including the 1937 heavyweight title match where Joe Louis defeated then champion James J. Braddock.  The Beatles played two concerts at Comiskey Park in August of 1965.  Other musical acts to perform there include Aerosmith, AC/DC, The Eagles, The Police, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Jacksons, who performed 3 shows during their Victory tour in October of 1984.

Looking back, I’ve been able to piece together evidence of 12 games that I attended at Comiskey Park.  I know there are more, but I have not been able to pinpoint exact games yet.  The most memorable game I can remember would be the final night game, on September 29, 1990, where, after the game, the lights were symbolically turned off for the final time.

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Book 20 (of 52) – Eight Men Out

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series – Eliot Asinof

In the summer of 1919, the Chicago White Sox were the toast of the American League, winning the pennant by 3.5 games and becoming the easy favorite to win the World Series, their second in 3 years.  However, a few things stood in the way of the crowning of a budding dynasty: a conspiracy of two-timing, low level gamblers, a tight-fisted owner who would spare no expense for reporters and friends but would cheat his team out of bonuses, and the players who were fed up with being paid like paupers despite their success.  The end result was the first World Series victory for the Reds, a black eye for baseball, and the decimation of the White Sox organization, who would not win another World Series until the following century.

Eight Men Out is author Eliot Asinof’s tale of the whole scandal, from the agreement to throw the Series, the fallout throughout the following season, the prosecution of the 8 co-conspirators, and how they lived out their life, banned from the game they loved and the not able to use the only skill that they had.  Released in 1963, Asinof’s account had always been accepted as the one true source on how the scandal went down.  Recent research has shown that this may not be the case, with Asinof himself admitting that certain characters, and their actions, had been made up in order to protect his movie rights and independent research showing that stories of Charles Comiskey’s alledged stinginess may be apocraphyl.  That said, Asinof does provide a gripping tale of how the fix was put in place and how the players ended up being the big losers, cheated of their promised payday, facing trial over the whole ordeal and banned for life from baseball.

I first read (or started to read) this book in junior high, around the time of the movie’s release.  I picked the book up within the last few years and finally got around to it, following the (non-scandalous) collapse of yet another White Sox team.  The stain of this scandal rocked the White Sox for years, leaving them out of the post-season for 40 years and putting an awful 88 years between championships when they finally broke through and won the 2005 World Series.  There are still some scars that likely can be attributed to the Black Sox scandal.  To this day, the White Sox remain the only pre-expansion team to not make the post-season in consecutive years.  The 1920 squad was within striking distance of first place and had a good shot at a return trip to the World Series had their star players not been suspended prior to the last series of the season.  90 plus years later, they are still looking for that back-to-back trip to the playoffs.