{"id":556849,"date":"2026-02-05T23:30:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T23:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/556849\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T23:30:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T23:30:17","slug":"today-in-chicago-white-sox-history-february-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/556849\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Chicago White Sox History: February 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

1903
The Crosstown rivalry began, as the White Sox<\/a> and Cubs<\/a> announced plans to play their first games ever against one another.<\/p>\n

The series blossomed into the postseason City Series, which thrived almost yearly for four decades. However, as reported on this day, the City Series was intended to include preseason as well as postseason games.<\/p>\n

However, that aspect of the plan never seemed too well thought-out, given that the the-Orphans left for spring training in Los Angeles on March 7 and the White Sox headed south to Alabama on March 17. Plus, with the major leagues (the AL had been recognized as the NL\u2019s equal for two seasons at this point) still evolving together, the regular seasons started almost a week apart: the National League on April 16, the American League April 22.<\/p>\n

Thus, there was a tight window in which to play any games before the season, essentially just April 12-15. By March, Cubs honcho James Hart would express confidence that his White Sox counterpart, Charles Comiskey, would scuttle some pre-arranged exhibitions in St. Joseph, Mo. in order to play a presumed home-and-home pair during that time.<\/p>\n

However, it doesn\u2019t look as if any crosstown games ended up being played before the regular season. The White Sox, intent on spending just a couple of weeks south for Spring Training before winding their way up north to Chicago by barnstorming some contests in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, ended up plagued by rain in Alabama and forced indoors for training; apparently, the club was able to play only two Spring Training exhibitions.<\/p>\n

Some game results from Spring Training 1903:<\/p>\n

March 31 10-7 White Sox win over a team of steelworkers in BirminghamApril 4 rainout in PeoriaApril 11 a 3-2 loss to Minneapolis in Leavenworth, Kan., with the White Sox so listless there were cries from the crowd that the game was being thrownApril 12 an early \u201csplit-squad\u201d pair of games, with the White Sox winning at Davenport, 12-0, and at the Kansas City Blues, 16-4.April 19 With the regular season starting on April 22 in St. Louis, the White Sox held a final intrasquad game at South Side Grounds, pitting the Regulars vs. the Leftovers<\/p>\n

Clearly, the White Sox never intended to see any of the City Series games played in April, and Hart\u2019s claim otherwise could well have been some early gamesmanship.<\/p>\n

However, the City Series agreement \u2014 formalized with a contract made public on March 7 \u2014 is one of several events to occur in 1903 that indicated a cooling of the war between the American and National Leagues \u2014 a cooling that in fact will result in the first World Series<\/a> being played that October.<\/p>\n

Come fall, the first to eight wins would be declared the \u201cchampions of Chicago.\u201d It ended up WAY more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

1954
In a classic, double-Johnnys deal, the White Sox sent second baseman Neil Berry and right fielder Sam Mele to the Baltimore Orioles<\/a> for center fielder Johnny Groth and shortstop Johnny Lipon.<\/p>\n

Mele, the headliner of the deal at age 32, was a passable starter in right for the burgeoning Go-Go White Sox, offering a tick better than average offense and defense that lacked but didn\u2019t hurt the club. He would end up managing the Twins for seven seasons in the 1960s. Berry played in just five games for the White Sox in his only South Side season, 1953, and would play just five for the O\u2019s before getting traded to the Yankees<\/a> and never seeing the majors again.<\/p>\n

Native Chicagoan Groth had a short and undistinguished stay back on the South Side, playing the 1954 season and getting flipped to the Senators in June 1955. Lipon didn\u2019t even last that long, never playing for the White Sox and getting traded to the Reds on April 18.<\/p>\n

1968
Future Hall-of-Famer Roberto Alomar was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

Without even including his two stints on the South Side, Roberto is undeniably connected to the White Sox. At the time of his birth, father Sandy (\u201cSr.\u201d) was the starting second baseman for the White Sox. Brother Sandy (\u201cJr.\u201d) was acquired on four separate occasions by the White Sox in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

Roberto himself was traded to the White Sox twice, in 2003 and 2004. Unfortunately, these acquisitions came at the end of his career, and in fact the only franchise Alomar holds an overall negative WAR for is Chicago (0.1 in 67 games in 2003, -0.8 in 18 games in 2004).<\/p>\n

Thus the Alomar brothers were teammates on the White Sox in two separate instances \u2014 one of five times in history that brothers played on the same White Sox team.<\/p>\n

1972
The White Sox purchased righthander Pete Hamm from the Twins. Hamm had seen a small amount of action over the past two seasons in Minnesota, little of it good (23 games, -1.2 WAR). He was particularly bad in 1971 (6.75 ERA, -1.0 WAR), making it understandable why Minny would cut him lose for any amount of cash. (Hamm\u2019s only career complete game, and best outing of 1971, came on Sept. 2, 1971 \u2014 against the White Sox, so the South Siders might have thought they saw something!)<\/p>\n

Hamm was released by the White Sox, and Cincinnati signed him and sent him to Double-A. The righty ended his career on a sort of high note, as he went 17-8 with a 2.30 ERA while pitching the 1972 season with the Trois-Rivieres Aigles in Quebec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1903The Crosstown rivalry began, as the White Sox and Cubs announced plans to play their first games ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[11418,5136,19778,5,10910,138,49,4726,31244,2561,73316,4,73317,29473,16837,41265,4727,396,38997,2562],"class_list":["post-556849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-white-sox","tag-11418","tag-5136","tag-19778","tag-baseball","tag-charles-comiskey","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-history","tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","tag-chicagowhitesox","tag-johnny-groth","tag-mlb","tag-neil-berry","tag-roberto-alomar","tag-sam-mele","tag-sandy-alomar-jr","tag-today-in-white-sox-history","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-executives","tag-whitesox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116020630387359059","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556849","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=556849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}