1931
After five seasons on the South Side, Moe Berg was sold to Cleveland. The catcher epitomized a replacement players, with a sum total of -0.2 WAR in his Chicago years \u2014 all subpar but for 1929 (0.7 WAR, .287 batting average, and 107 games that would end up being his career high, by far).<\/p>\n
Berg would play for nine more years in the majors after his time with the White Sox, but would eventually gain much more reknown as an OSS spy prior to and during World War II.<\/p>\n
1959 1961 After Rivera looked at it, he said to the President, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to do better than that, John. This is a scribble I can hardly read!\u201d So Kennedy, in block letters, spelled out his name on the baseball.<\/p>\n Oh \u2026 the Sox won the game, 4-3, after coming back with single runs in the seventh and eighth innings. It was the first game the Washington Senators played as a new expansion team, as the previous version of the team was moved to Minnesota.<\/p>\n 1962 1968 It was the first of a franchise-record 10 straight losses to open the season. They were outscored in that stretch, 42-13, and were shut out three times. Coupled with five straight losses to close out 1967, the White Sox ended up losing 15 regular season games in a row.<\/p>\n 1979 1981
The season opener to a memorable, pennant-winning year started in Detroit, where Billy Pierce faced Jim Bunning. The White Sox<\/a> blew a 7-4 lead when the Tigers got three runs in the eighth inning, and matters weren\u2019t decided until the 14th. That\u2019s when Nellie Fox, who hit home runs as often as he struck out, blasted a two-run shot to give the Sox a 9-7 win. Fox went 5-for-7 and knocked in three runs that afternoon, despite freezing temperatures. Catcher Sherm Lollar had three hits for the Sox, who used seven pitchers in the game.<\/p>\n
White Sox<\/a> outfielder Jim Rivera was always good for the unexpected. Right before the Sox played in Washington to open the season in the first-ever game for the \u201cnew Senators,\u201d President John Kennedy threw out the first ball. Rivera came up with it and was escorted to the President\u2019s box, where both Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson signed the ball.<\/p>\n
In an Opening Day, 2-1 win over the Angels, Sherm Lollar caught an MLB record-tying six foul popups: Two apiece in the second, sixth and ninth innings. Juan Pizarro went the distance for the win, taken in walk-off fashion on a single with two outs in the bottom of the 10th \u2014 by Lollar! There was something in the air at Comiskey Park, as 11 of the 53 outs in teh game came via foul pop out.<\/p>\n
For the White Sox and the country, the old good days were a thing of the past. The social unrest on the West Side of Chicago after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King held the Opening Day crowd at Comiskey Park to fewer than 8,000. The Sox got shut out by Cleveland\u2019s Sonny Siebert, 9-0.<\/p>\n
Embarrassed after a lackluster Opening Day loss to the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>, 10-2, owner Bill Veeck offered fans free admission to the next home game.<\/p>\n
If you had written the script and pitched it to Hollywood, it would have been refused on the grounds of corniness \u2014 but reality is sometimes stranger than fiction.<\/p>\n