{"id":549326,"date":"2026-02-01T18:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549326\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T18:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T18:14:15","slug":"today-in-chicago-white-sox-history-february-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/549326\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Chicago White Sox History: February 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

1914
In a story told in great detail in 2014<\/a> on site, the White Sox<\/a> and New York Giants<\/a> played an exhibition game in Cairo, Egypt. This stop on the 56-game World Tour ended in a 3-3 deadlock after 10 innings.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t blame the players for failing to find a victor, given the arduous travel they undertook to play: After a nine-day boat trip, the traveling party spent 23 hours on train to get to Cairo, took one more short train to the suburbs, departed the hotel by car to visit the Great Pyramids, then suited up for a 2:30 p.m. game!<\/p>\n

A crowd of 2,000 spectators paid $2.08 for a ticket at the Heliopolis Sporting Club to see the first game in Egypt in 25 years, and they did get a treat \u2014 a hard-fought game, with the White Sox players riding the Giants from the sidelines. Legendary athlete Jim Thorpe drove in all three runs for the Giants, on a solo homer.<\/p>\n

In the end, the game was not called due to player fatigue, but darkness.<\/p>\n

1942
After pitching for a decade in the minor leagues in six different organizations, the White Sox signed pitcher Gordon Maltzberger. The reliever would spend one more year in the minors but then made the most of his chance in The Show: In 1943 he appeared in 37 games, finishing 33, and led the majors with 14 saves. His 2.5 WAR remains tied for the fourth-most in club history for a rookie pitching exclusively as a reliever.<\/p>\n

In fact, Maltzberger was fairly phenomenal for the duration of his career. Pitching until age 34 with the White Sox (and missing 1945 due to military service), the reliever ran up 6.9 WAR; that might not seem like much, but over just 293 1\u20443 innings, that\u2019s 3.5 WAR per 162 games, pretty much All-Star level work. Maltzberger\u2019s .606 winning percentage and 2.70 ERA over his career might be based on fairly small sample sizes, but look damn good on the back of a baseball card.<\/p>\n

1973
In a minor swap of bats, the White Sox sent Jim Lyttle to the Royals for outfielder Joe Keough . Keough was a five-year veteran but would see action in just five July games, two as a defensive replacement, two pinch-running, and one pinch-hitting for a total of \u2026 one at-bat for the South Siders. After the season, the White Sox sold Keough to the Twins, but he would never appear in another MLB game.<\/p>\n

Lyttle was coming off of a horrid 1972 season (.232\/.241\/.341, one walk, 28 Ks in 44 games for -0.6 WAR) and would never play a single game in Kansas City. He started the season in the minors and was sold to Montreal in July. The White Sox signed him back after the 1974 season, but as in 1973 he would spend the season in the minors before being sold to the Expos in July.<\/p>\n

2002
The White Sox signed center fielder Kenny Lofton to a one-year, $1.25 million contract.<\/p>\n

Truly one of the most underappreciated players in baseball history, at the time of his signing at age 34 Lofton had already accumulated 52.9 WAR in his career \u2014 legitimate Hall of Fame worthiness. But with this White Sox signing, the 11-year veteran (nine with Cleveland) embarked on a nomadic final career stage of nine teams in six years, and never more than one straight season for any one club.<\/p>\n

For the White Sox in 2002, Lofton played a strong 93 games (.259\/.348\/.418 and 2.1 WAR) before getting traded to San Francisco to aid the Giants\u2019 playoff push on July 28.<\/p>\n

Lofton finished his career in 2007, with 68.4 WAR, 118th in MLB history. He received 3.2% support on his first and only Hall of Fame ballot in 2013 \u2014 yet another example of BBWAA writers proving their unworthiness to determine Hall of Fame elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1914In a story told in great detail in 2014 on site, the White Sox and New York Giants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[10777,23617,4738,8109,5,138,49,4726,31244,2561,53856,53857,4291,4,4727,396,72439,2562],"class_list":["post-549326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-white-sox","tag-10777","tag-23617","tag-4738","tag-8109","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-history","tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","tag-chicagowhitesox","tag-jim-lyttle","tag-joe-keough","tag-kenny-lofton","tag-mlb","tag-today-in-white-sox-history","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-giants-world-tour-100th-anniversary","tag-whitesox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115996738396006764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549326","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=549326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}