{"id":643418,"date":"2026-03-25T22:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T22:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/643418\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T22:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T22:41:15","slug":"today-in-white-sox-history-march-23-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/643418\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in White Sox History: March 23"},"content":{"rendered":"

1951
White Sox<\/a> legend Eddie Collins died at age 63, in Boston.<\/p>\n

Unquestionably the best second baseman in White Sox history (67.0 WAR), Collins also managed the team for two full seasons in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal. Despite a gutted roster, Collins consistently maintained a record better than .500.<\/p>\n

He won a World Series<\/a> as a member of the 1917 White Sox, the best South Side team ever. In 1919, he was one of the unabashedly \u201cclean\u201d players in the lineup \u2014 but nonetheless had a lousy performance in the Series loss.<\/p>\n

Many years after his player-manager stint with the White Sox, Collins moved into the Boston Red Sox<\/a> front office, putting in a very pockmarked performance there. Still, he remains on the short list of greatest second basemen ever.<\/p>\n

1980
The only reliever to throw in the 2005 ALCS for the White Sox, Neal Cotts, was born in downstate Belleville.<\/p>\n

Cotts \u2014 a starter at the time \u2014 came over from Oakland as a player to be named later in the otherwise awful Keith Foulke-Billy Koch deal in 2002. He was an All-Star in the Double-A Southern League in 2003, and was called up to make four starts for the Sox that fall. Converted to relief by 2004, he was a key contributor to the 2005 White Sox in their run to 99 wins and a World Series win.<\/p>\n

That year, Cotts went 4-0 with a 1.94 ERA\/229 ERA+, giving up just 38 hits against 58 strikeouts in 60 1\u20443 innings. His two-thirds of an inning in the ALCS makes him an interesting playoff footnote. In the World Series Cotts was much more than that, pitching in all four games of the sweep, earning the Game 2 win, and pitching 1 1\u20443 innings total.<\/p>\n

Cotts was dealt crosstown to the Cubs<\/a> after the 2006 season and pitched through the 2015 season.<\/p>\n

2021
Injuries can happen at any time, but needless injuries, in spring training to boot, can take the heart right out of a club and fan base, and completely change the fortunes of a season.<\/p>\n

On this day the White Sox<\/a> announced that Eloy Jim\u00e9nez, one of the best young sluggers in baseball, would be lost for most of the season because of a ruptured left pectoral tendon. He suffered the injury when getting hung up on the top of the fence trying to catch a ball hit by the A\u2019s Sean Murphy the day before \u2014 a ball that wasn\u2019t catchable. White Sox broadcaster Steve Stone was particularly critical of Jim\u00e9nez even attempting to try to catch a meaningless home run in a spring training game, and putting himself at risk.<\/p>\n

Since getting called up in 2019, Jim\u00e9nez had been injured multiple times while trying to play left field. His injury was more common in football, and most likely happened on impact when his left arm hit the top of the fence.<\/p>\n

After an intensive rehab lasting four months, Eloy returned to the team on July 26, but injury issues continued to dog him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1951White Sox legend Eddie Collins died at age 63, in Boston. Unquestionably the best second baseman in White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,138,49,4726,31244,2561,4,4727,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-643418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-white-sox","11":"tag-chicago-white-sox-history","12":"tag-chicago-white-sox-roster","13":"tag-chicagowhitesox","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-today-in-white-sox-history","16":"tag-white-sox","17":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116292228676110266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643418","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=643418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}