{"id":577443,"date":"2026-02-17T12:59:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T12:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/577443\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T12:59:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T12:59:13","slug":"today-in-chicago-white-sox-history-february-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/577443\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Chicago White Sox History: February 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

1934
Urban \u201cRed\u201d Faber retired after 20 seasons with the White Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Somewhat overlooked in White Sox annals given he pitched in the immediate aftermath of the legendary Ed Walsh, Faber stakes a claim as the greatest hurler in White Sox history, with 67.7 WAR. That makes him their third-best player ever, behind Luke Appling and Frank Thomas.<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t feel guilty if you undervalue Faber, as it took him 17 tries to make the Hall of Fame despite ranking 11th all-time in pitching WAR at the time of his retirement (and still ranks 38th all-time, 90 seasons later). Faber never received more than 30.9% BBWAA voting support over 16 (!) different votes \u2014 and 10 times failed to poll at as much as 5%.<\/p>\n

Faber\u2019s 254 wins (254-212) fell just six short of Ted Lyons\u2019 all-time White Sox mark.<\/p>\n

Faber also authored the second-best two-season span in White Sox pitching history, with 21.0 WAR (11.4 in 1921, still tied for third in team history, and 9.6 in 1922, tied for eighth). Exactly 50 seasons later, Wilbur Wood topped Faber\u2019s feat, with a 22.5 WAR two-season span in 1971-72.<\/p>\n

For more on Faber, read KP\u2019s terrific piece from 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1959
Bill Veeck exercised his option to purchase the White Sox from majority owner Dorothy Comiskey. However, due to her brother Chuck\u2019s lawsuit claiming ownership of the club, the official date of sale would end up being March 5, with club transfer not occurring until March 10.<\/p>\n

1964
Luke Appling was elected to the Hall of Fame, by curious means.<\/p>\n

Sixty years ago, the BBWAA held \u201crunoff\u201d elections in years when no candidate crossed the 75% threshold on the first ballot. Appling tallied just 70.6% in regular voting, and while that led all players on the ballot, it was still nine votes short of election.<\/p>\n

Given a second chance, the writers snapped out of their decade-long sleepwalk over Appling\u2019s legitimacy and landslid him in, with 90.4% support.<\/p>\n

It was Appling\u2019s eighth attempt to be voted into the Hall, and until 1964 he hadn\u2019t received more than 30% support! In his first year of eligibility (1953), Appling got … TWO VOTES from the BBWAA.<\/p>\n

While of course the statistic did not exist at the time, Appling\u2019s 77.5 career WAR ranked 18th all-time among position players and fourth among shortstops at the time (even today, Appling ranks 45th in position player WAR and 77th overall). And to this day, no shortstop has hit for a higher batting average than Appling\u2019s .388 in 1936 \u2014 something you\u2019d think would have had major impact in a counting-stats era.<\/p>\n

But one aspect of the delay was sweet, at least for White Sox fans, as four-year Appling teammate Red Faber (elected via Veterans Committee) joined the Class of 1964 as well.<\/p>\n

2006
In one of many before and after, White Sox manager Ozzie Guill\u00e9n issued an apology for an off-cuff remark. This time, it was to Yankees<\/a> third baseman \u00c1lex Rodr\u00edguez, over his indecision on what country to represent in the World Baseball Classic<\/a>. A-Rod, who was born in the United States with Dominican heritage, first opted to play for the Dominican Republic. Then he decided not to play in the WBC at all. Finally, Rodr\u00edguez settled on suiting up for Team USA.<\/p>\n

Guill\u00e9n had been quoted by Sports Illustrated as critical of Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s \u201cwaffling\u2019 over his decision, making him a \u201chypocrite.\u201d<\/p>\n

The defending champion White Sox would dominate the first half of the 2006 season, but faltered and did not qualify for the playoffs despite finishing with 90 wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1934Urban \u201cRed\u201d Faber retired after 20 seasons with the White Sox. Somewhat overlooked in White Sox annals given…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[75718,4737,13412,5,138,49,4726,31244,2561,13407,10412,21448,4,5029,8096,8100,4727,396,2562,4729],"class_list":{"0":"post-577443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-75718","9":"tag-4737","10":"tag-13412","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-chicago","13":"tag-chicago-white-sox","14":"tag-chicago-white-sox-history","15":"tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","16":"tag-chicagowhitesox","17":"tag-ed-walsh","18":"tag-frank-thomas","19":"tag-luke-appling","20":"tag-mlb","21":"tag-ozzie-guillen","22":"tag-red-faber","23":"tag-ted-lyons","24":"tag-today-in-white-sox-history","25":"tag-white-sox","26":"tag-whitesox","27":"tag-wilbur-wood"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116086097012505560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577443","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=577443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}