1912
In a brilliant move, the White Sox purchased first baseman Jack Fournier from Boston. Fournier would go on to play six seasons in Chicago, with a 5.9 WAR peak in 1915 (a season in which he led the AL with a .491 slugging percentage).<\/p>\n
After the re-acquisition of Chick Gandil for the 1917 season, Fournier was the odd man out, sold to the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. However, the move would prove short-sighted, as Fournier worked his way back into the majors and racked up 28.8 WAR for St. Louis and Brooklyn in the 1920s.<\/p>\n
1927 Chicago had claimed Burgess off of waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> for their 1964 stretch run, and immediately made an impact, tying a game on September 15 with a pinch-hit homer against the Tigers \u2014 his first plate appearance with the White Sox.<\/p>\n Burgess remained on the South Side through the 1967 season, contributing a robust 1.4 WAR in just 252 plate appearances.<\/p>\n 1949 Tasked with replacing the irreplaceable Roberto Clemente in Pittsburgh\u2019s right field, Zisk managed a productive Pirates career, logging an .842 OPS and 137 OPS+ in addition to 15.7 WAR over essentially four full seasons.<\/p>\n He came to the White Sox in a Dec. 10, 1976 trade that netted the Pirates relievers Rich Gossage and Terry Forster. All three players would be entering free agency in 1978, so this was just a temporary-fill move on both sides, with the trio on a salary drive.<\/p>\n Zisk was the Polish Prince of the South Side Hit Men in 1977, with a team second-best 30 homers and a career-best 101 RBIs, finishing with an .869 OPS and 134 OPS+. He scored his first All-Star nod that summer, and finished 14th in MVP voting. Zisk\u2019s 2.7 WAR was actually disappointing compared to his Pittsburgh production \u2014 but would stand as the best mark of his remaining career.<\/p>\n White Sox owner Bill Veeck made attempts to sign both of his free agent sluggers (Zisk and Oscar Gamble) after the 1977 season but never really was close to bringing Zisk back to the South Side: Richie inked a 10-year, $2,925,000 deal with Texas in early November.<\/p>\n While staying in Chicago might not have been the answer, leaving for the Rangers didn\u2019t do Zisk\u2019s career any favors. While putting up better-than-average OPS numbers for all but the final season of his career, Zisk compiled just 6.7 WAR over his final six years in baseball. He was traded after just three seasons to the Seattle Mariners<\/a>, where he finished his playing days. The M\u2019s ended up paying the final $1.1 million of Zisk\u2019s lengthy deal with the slugger at home, retired; in the end, the two clubs paid Zisk almost $500,000 per WAR \u2014 not horrible, but more than the market rate for the era.<\/p>\n Zisk had better seasons, more team success, and made higher salaries outside of Chicago, but there is no doubt his most colorful season came with the South Side Hit Men in 1977.<\/p>\n 1996 It didn\u2019t work out very well. After working his way into play out of the bullpen, only one of Magrane\u2019s eight starts were better than average (50-plus game score), and when demoted down to Double-A Nashville the southpaw held a 6.88 ERA and 6.38 FIP. After 21 games (20 in relief) pitching to a 5.47 ERA, the eight-year veteran hung it up for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1912 In a brilliant move, the White Sox purchased first baseman Jack Fournier from Boston. Fournier would go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[15847,5563,9082,10779,11417,5,12224,138,49,4726,31244,2561,10768,73644,73645,4,60612,46763,14671,73646,73647,45637,4727,396,38997,2562],"class_list":["post-558188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-white-sox","tag-15847","tag-5563","tag-9082","tag-10779","tag-11417","tag-baseball","tag-bill-veeck","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-chicago-white-sox-history","tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","tag-chicagowhitesox","tag-chick-gandil","tag-jack-fournier","tag-joe-magrane","tag-mlb","tag-oscar-gamble","tag-rich-gossage","tag-richie-zisk","tag-smoky-burgess","tag-south-side-hit-men","tag-terry-forster","tag-today-in-white-sox-history","tag-white-sox","tag-white-sox-executives","tag-whitesox"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116024967923817007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558188","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=558188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Legendary pinch-hitter and role player for the competitive mid-1960s White Sox<\/a> clubs, Smoky Burgess, was born in Caroleen, N.C. Considered the best pinch-hitter of all time (in spite of most of his records now being broken), the White Sox was the final stop on Burgess\u2019 five-team, 16-season career.<\/p>\n
One-year White Sox<\/a> clubber Richie Zisk was born on this day, in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Free agent pitcher Joe Magrane signed with the White Sox. It had been five years since elbow surgery and 18 months since his longtime St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> released him. In fighting his way back into rotation shape, Magrane had stops with the Angels, Cubs<\/a> and Expos. But his first \u201cI\u2019m back\u201d season came at age 31, on the South Side.<\/p>\n