{"id":608491,"date":"2026-03-05T21:53:28","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/608491\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T21:53:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:53:28","slug":"today-in-chicago-white-sox-history-march-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/608491\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in Chicago White Sox History: March 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

1907
The White Sox<\/a> departed Chicago on the Sunset Limited train, en route to Mexico City for spring training \u2014 the first-ever Spring Training held outside of the United States. The traveling party for the defending World Series<\/a> Champions consisted of 49 people, with five others (including Nick Altrock) picked up at stops along the way south.<\/p>\n

White Sox owner Charles Comiskey had promised his players an exotic spring training trip if they prevailed in winning the 1906 AL pennant, and team scout Ted Sullivan ended up selecting the Mexican capital. Comiskey also sensed that Latin America could grow into fertile ground for future baseball prospects (prescient), and hoped that this spring trip would help grow the game in Mexico and lead to player signings one day.<\/p>\n

Some Mexico City fans did come out to support the White Sox on their eight-game trip, but the city itself may not have been ready for prime time: There was no hot water for players in their hotel rooms, and with few telegraph connections, news about the eight games was hard to send back to Chicago. Additionally, Comiskey priced the games too high and ended up returning to Chicago for the 1907 season in the red.<\/p>\n

That summer, the White Sox spent the majority of the season in first place, but faltered in late August and finished in third, 5 1\u20442 games out.<\/p>\n

1959
A court ruling against White Sox co-owner Chuck Comiskey, and in favor of sister and co-owner Dorothy along with new owner Bill Veeck, ensured that ownership of the club would fall out of Comiskey hands for the first time since the team\u2019s inception in 1900.<\/p>\n

Chuck\u2019s core argument was that his late mother, Grace, intended always to keep the White Sox in the family, and thus Dorothy should have offered her 54% of the White Sox to Chuck first\/exclusively. In reality, Chuck was so confident Dorothy could not sell outside of the family that he lowballed his sister; had he just produced a fair\/market offer, he would have taken over the White Sox, as he felt was his birthright.<\/p>\n

1967
In what is believed to be a first, the White Sox<\/a> got permission to use an experimental \u201cpartial\u201d designated hitter in their home Spring Training games. This primitive DH rule allowed a player to pinch-hit twice in the same game (rather than just once), provided both teams agree to the rule before the game.<\/p>\n

It is not known whether the White Sox every employed this experimental DH in a game.<\/p>\n

1996
It was yet another Hall of Fame near-miss for Nellie Fox.<\/p>\n

Eleven years after his controversial denial for HOF admission \u2014 Fox earned 74.7% of the 1985 balloting but was two votes shy of the 75% threshold and was not rounded up for entry \u2014 a similar boondoggle occured.<\/p>\n

This time, Fox earned 75% of the votes from a Veterans Committee who agreed on five players to be added to the 1996 HOF class; however, just one \u201cmodern\u201d era player could be elected, and Jim Bunning polled better than Fox.<\/p>\n

For a second time, Fox was \u201celected\u201d to the Hall of Fame \u2014 and denied. The wrong would be righted in 1997.<\/p>\n

2020
Coming off of a 25-homer, 5.2-WAR season, Yo\u00e1n Moncada signed a five-year, $70 million contract extension. The deal followed extensions given to Eloy Jim\u00e9nez and Luis Robert Jr., who got theirs without ever having played a game in the majors. Moncada\u2019s situation better resembles that of Cuban countryman Robert, in that both were signed to enormous bonuses to leave Cuba, in Moncada\u2019s case $31.5 million.<\/p>\n

Moncada struggled to meet his 2019 greatness in 2020, contracting COVID at the start of Summer Camp and battling fatigue over the 60-game season. He bounced back for a 4.0 WAR season in 2021, but slumped to a .212 average in just 104 games in 2022 and then an injury-riddled 2023. The 2024 season was no better, and the White Sox bought Moncada out of his contract rather than pay him $25 million for 2025.<\/p>\n

Though by no means the best value contract ever signed, Moncada\u2019s 14.5 career WAR ranks 49th all-time among White Sox hitters and 80th among all players. And applying $5 million per WAR as things generally work out for the White Sox payroll, that makes the infielder fairly paid for his work on the South Side, in spite of his disappointing reputation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1907The White Sox departed Chicago on the Sunset Limited train, en route to Mexico City for spring training…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2379],"tags":[10420,10781,11417,1002,5,12224,10910,138,49,4726,31244,2561,17995,40626,7918,64565,999,4,16207,51996,79068,4727,396,38997,2562,3511],"class_list":{"0":"post-608491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-10420","9":"tag-10781","10":"tag-11417","11":"tag-1002","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-bill-veeck","14":"tag-charles-comiskey","15":"tag-chicago","16":"tag-chicago-white-sox","17":"tag-chicago-white-sox-history","18":"tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","19":"tag-chicagowhitesox","20":"tag-chuck-comiskey","21":"tag-dorothy-comiskey","22":"tag-eloy-jimenez","23":"tag-grace-comiskey","24":"tag-luis-robert-jr","25":"tag-mlb","26":"tag-nellie-fox","27":"tag-nick-altrock","28":"tag-ted-sullivan","29":"tag-today-in-white-sox-history","30":"tag-white-sox","31":"tag-white-sox-executives","32":"tag-whitesox","33":"tag-yoan-moncada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116178793540627695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608491","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=608491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}