{"id":535653,"date":"2026-01-24T04:55:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/535653\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T04:55:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T04:55:28","slug":"today-in-chicago-white-sox-history-january-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/535653\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Chicago White Sox History: January 23"},"content":{"rendered":"

1928
Alfonso \u201cChico\u201d Carrasquel was born in Caracas, Venezuela.<\/p>\n

A 21.3 WAR player over his decade in the majors, Chico made an immediate impact with the White Sox<\/a>, finishing 12th in AL MVP voting as a rookie and in just his second season becoming the first Latin player ever to appear in an All-Star Game (1951). Despite being a singles hitter (.342 career slugging), Chico\u2019s value on the defensive side was enormous. His 14.6 career defensive WAR places him 124th all-time in the majors, and 13.0 defensive WAR on the White Sox puts him eighth in franchise history.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most importantly, Chico started a line of Venezuelans into the major leagues \u2014 and, specifically, of Venezuelan shortstops to the South Side. Luis Aparicio, who was 16 when Carrasquel made his debut, was such an enormous talent in Chico\u2019s footsteps that he sped a Carrasquel trade to Cleveland. Then, 15 years after Aparicio fielded his final grounder at Comiskey Park, Ozzie Guill\u00e9n became the third great Venezuelan shortstop to wear White Sox colors.<\/p>\n

Carrasquel was not on the down side of his career when traded in the mid-1950s; in fact, he was coming off of the two best seasons of his career in 1954 (5.5 WAR) and 1955 (3.5) when dealt.<\/p>\n

Carrasquel also presided over the beginning of the golden age of White Sox teams, as from 1951-67 the team ran off 17 straight winning seasons. Unfortunately, he was unable to see his home club win it all, passing away early in the magical World Series<\/a> year, at home in Caracas, on May 26, 2005.<\/p>\n

1985
Jeff Samardzija, who 29 years later would be the target of one of the worst trades in White Sox history, was born in Merrillville, Ind. The righthander was drafted by the Cubs<\/a> and played his first seven seasons of his career on the North Side. During the 2014 season he was dealt to Oakland for a package of prospects, including Addison Russell (also born on this day). After the season, the A\u2019s hoodwinked GM Rick Hahn by swapping Samardzija with pitcher Michael Ynoa for … take a deep breath … shortstop Marcus Semien, starting pitcher Chris Bassitt, catcher Josh Phegley and minor-leaguer Rangel Ravelo.<\/p>\n

Samardzija earned 0.3 WAR in a mostly-horrible season on the South Side in which he led the majors in hits (228) and earned runs (118) allowed, while Semien and Bassitt already have combined for 62 WAR in their careers.<\/p>\n

1989
The White Sox dealt righthanders Ed Wojna and Joel Davis to Cleveland for third baseman Eddie Williams. Williams had a decent 1989 season on the South Side, hitting .274\/.341\/.358 with 0.8 WAR, before moving on to San Diego in 1990 and six more MLB seasons overall. Davis had spent parts of the previous four seasons with the White Sox, never getting much of a foothold (49 games, 41 starts, 4.91 ERA\/4.48 FIP, 0.6 WAR). He would never pitch in another major league game.<\/p>\n

Wojna was the closest thing to a headliner here, as he\u2019d spent all of 1988 starting for the Triple-A Vancouver Canadians to great success: 10-6 with a 3.27 ERA, five complete games and three shutouts. But he pitched in just nine games for Cleveland in 1989 and never saw the majors again.<\/p>\n

With Ken Williams still on the roster (he would be traded to Detroit in late March), the third base competition heading into Spring Training promised to be Ken Williams vs. Eddie Williams.<\/p>\n

2012
After two mediocre seasons with the White Sox, Omar Vizquel signed with Toronto, playing the final season of his 24-year career with the Blue Jays.<\/p>\n

While mediocre is a rough assessment for a shortstop playing into his early 40s, Vizquel was well past his prime, providing negative defensive WAR and -0.2 WAR overall during his 2010-11 tenure on the South Side. Perhaps most outrageously, Vizquel was inserted four times in the lineup as designated hitter by \u201chybrid DH\u201d-loving White Sox manager Ozzie Guill\u00e9n. Vizquel also played all three of his career games at first base with the White Sox.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most notable in Vizquel\u2019s tenure was the fact that he asked for, and received, permission to wear No. 11 with the White Sox from Luis Aparicio, for whom the number was retired in 1984.<\/p>\n

In retirement, Vizquel managed in the White Sox system but derailed his management career \u2014 hopefully on a permanent basis \u2014 with multiple spousal abuse and sexual harassment incidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1928Alfonso \u201cChico\u201d Carrasquel was born in Caracas, Venezuela. A 21.3 WAR player over his decade in the majors,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[14673,8107,5565,47717,5,138,49,4726,31244,2561,16206,70909,59776,70910,21683,16208,386,4,18624,5029,11846,4727,396,38997,2562],"class_list":["post-535653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-white-sox","tag-14673","tag-8107","tag-5565","tag-47717","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-history","tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","tag-chicagowhitesox","tag-chico-carrasquel","tag-eddie-williams","tag-jeff-samardzija","tag-joel-davis","tag-ken-williams","tag-luis-aparicio","tag-marcus-semien","tag-mlb","tag-omar-vizquel","tag-ozzie-guillen","tag-rick-hahn","tag-today-in-white-sox-history","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-executives","tag-whitesox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115948298322533215","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}