{"id":657890,"date":"2026-04-02T02:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T02:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/657890\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T02:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T02:05:14","slug":"today-in-white-sox-history-april-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/657890\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in White Sox History: April 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

1901
Following teammate Clark Griffith, who signed with the White Sox<\/a> to become player-manager, Chicago Colts (Cubs<\/a>) pitcher Nixey Callahan jumped leagues to the White Sox<\/a>. Callahan, like many of his cohorts who fled the National League for the American, saw his salary bump up, in his case to $3,300 ($117,000 today).<\/p>\n

Callahan was amazing in his first year with the White Sox, pitching in 27 games to a 4.7 WAR \u2014 and also hit well enough to add another 1.3 WAR. That 6.0 WAR total was good for seventh overall in the AL in 1901 and second on the White Sox, behind Griffith.<\/p>\n

Callahan would pitch just two more seasons after that, and finish his career out as a left fielder, compiling 13.5 WAR overall with the White Sox. He also player-managed and managed the White Sox, on two separate occasions \u2014 eight years apart.<\/p>\n

1972
It was a day of good news overshadowed by the bad: Dick Allen ended his 41-day holdout, just as the White Sox and all MLB players left camp due to a labor dispute.<\/p>\n

Allen, just from the Dodgers over the winter, desired to renegotiate his contract before committing to the White Sox; after meeting with manager Chuck Tanner, Allen signed for a club-record $135,000. The players as a collective wished for better pension benefits, claiming each MLB team would only need to pony up an additional $11,000 to satisfy a 17% increase in benefits, and walked out of camp; eventually the season began, but not without losing a week off of the schedule.<\/p>\n

1975
It was an indication of how bad off the White Sox were financially: Ed Herrmann, one of the top catchers in baseball and an All-Star, is traded to the Yankees<\/a> for four minor league players. The reason? According to Herrmann, it was because he wanted a $2,000 raise! In six full years with the team Herrmann averaged 11 home runs, and there were few (if any) better at blocking home plate \u2014 thus earning him the nickname of \u201cFort\u201d Herrmann.<\/p>\n

2007
Matt Thornton, perhaps the consummate \u201cCoop\u2019ll fix \u2019em\u201d pitcher under pitching coach Don Cooper, was rewarded with a three-year, $3.25 million contract extension. The deal, peanuts by today\u2019s standards and even at the time, essentially bought out Thornton\u2019s arbitration years and provided guaranteed salary in case he faced a worst-case, career-ending scenario.<\/p>\n

The deal acknowledged Thornton\u2019s extraordinary turnaround from a pitcher Seattle had wanted to dump to a 1.7 WAR relief arm (2006), with promise of many high-leverage outings to come. The tall lefty didn\u2019t quite pay massive dividends in 2007 (0.7 WAR) but in 2008-09 blossomed into one of the few great short relievers in the game. All told, over the three years of the deal Thornton provided 5.9 WAR to the White Sox, which works out to a pittance of about $550,000 per WAR \u2014 an extraordinary bargain for the South Siders.<\/p>\n

Thornton would rack up 10.8 WAR in his White Sox career (3.28 ERA\/3.08 FIP\/1.196 WHIP), tying him for third (with Roberto Hern\u00e1ndez) among pure relievers in White Sox history.<\/p>\n

2009
Just 10 days after being dealt to San Francisco for future considerations, shortstop Sergio Santos came back to the White Sox for those same future considerations.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the story behind two teams volleying a player back and forth? The speculation is that the White Sox had a plan for Santos \u2014 converting him to a pitcher. The club dealt him to the Giants to give him one last shot as a position player, and when that didn\u2019t work out, the agreement was to return him back to the White Sox.<\/p>\n

We know how the story ends, with Santos doing his first pitching ever in the White Sox system in 2009 \u2014 moving from Low-A Kannapolis to Triple-A Charlotte by season\u2019s end. This happened by stroke of luck, or the eye test, because his numbers (8.16 ERA, 1.988 WHIP across four levels) did not merit matriculation.<\/p>\n

However, Santos was perfecting a killer slider, and when he threw to a 3.48 ERA and 1.549 WHIP during spring training in 2010, he made the cut to break north with the big club. In two full seasons in the White Sox bullpen, Santos turned in a 3.29 ERA, 2.97 WHIP, 1.996 WHIP and 31 saves.<\/p>\n

2011
The White Sox<\/a> started the season with a torrent of runs in blistering Cleveland, 15-10. It was the second-highest Opening Day scoring output in franchise history. The Sox led, 14-0, after the first five innings.<\/p>\n

Carlos Quentin drove in five runs, newcomer Adam Dunn knocked in four, and Jim Margalus had the South Side Sox recap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2022
In an sort of salary dump self-inflicted by GM Rick Hahn\u2019s decision to pick up failed reliever Craig Kimbrel\u2019s hefty, $16 million option, the White Sox picked up outfielder AJ Pollock (no bargain himself, at $13 million) from the Dodgers<\/a>. It was the main part of a series of moves made on the day<\/a>, summarized by Chrystal O\u2019Keefe for South Side Sox.<\/p>\n

Kimbrel stabilized the downward slide of his career to a degree in Los Angeles, pitching to a 3.75 ERA and 22 saves (0.2 WAR). Meanwhile Pollock remained surprisingly healthy in Chicago, but in 138 games could produce just a .681 OPS\/92 OPS+ and 0.4 WAR.<\/p>\n

Pollock hated playing for the White Sox so much, and wanted so desperately to return to the West Coast where he\u2019d played his entire career, he was willing to pay a million dollars to escape (he declined $13 million from the White Sox for 2023 and took a $5 million buyout from the White Sox, then signed in Seattle for $7 million).<\/p>\n

The date of the 2022 trade ironically had come exactly six years after Pollock broke his elbow sliding into home at the end of spring training with the Arizona Diamondbacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also on this day, future White Sox Opening Day starter Garrett Crochet appeared headed for Tommy John surgery<\/a>, as Brett Ballantini wrote for SSS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1901Following teammate Clark Griffith, who signed with the White Sox to become player-manager, Chicago Colts (Cubs) pitcher Nixey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,138,49,4726,2561,4,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-657890","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-chicagowhitesox","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-white-sox","15":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116332666917335038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657890","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=657890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}