Chicago White Sox

“ We'll have a fat surplus in hand when we're half through the post-season series with the Norvel White Sox—if they happen to tie up with us, as they ought to do seeing that they're winding up the season with the Canaries and we're idle. ”

“ There was another fan who, on that memorable Sunday afternoon when the Sox clinched their claim for the world's pennant, suffered. He is one of the best Base Ball cranks in Chicago, a rooter for the Sox and an ardent supporter of Comiskey. He has the good fortune (although he didn't think so that day) to have a good and pious wife, who is one of the leaders in a little church up in Edgewater. ”

“ The luck which had been coming their way began breaking against them with remarkable persistency. Plays that had won game after game went wrong and youth was not resourceful enough to offset the breaks. The White Sox began to fall away fast in percentage, but managed to cling to the lead until June 10. Boston passed them right there and the Chicagoans kept on going.
By mid-season Manager Callahan was fighting to keep his men in the first division and their slump did not end until they landed in fifth place for a couple of days in August. ”

“ White Sox had listened carefully to every word his mother had said. To him it was a very wonderful story. The more he thought about it, the more he wished to be like White Feet in mind as well as in body. After pondering for a while in silence, he said:
“I can see all the pictures now, mother—the careless caribou herd, the sneaking wolves, and the little band of fawns on the hill. Always the weakest of the herd were sacrificed in order that the stronger ones might escape and live a little [Pg 63] while longer. Always danger, unrest, and fear! ”

“ I see that first corral on the narrow spit, the first little sled and harness, the first little caribou serving man for the love of him. Each needed something the other had to give. The fawns needed protection. The human beings needed beasts of burden that would be a source of food, instead of those for whom food had to be provided.”
“‘Our herders watch us at night only during the season when the ground is bare and we are inclined to scatter.’”
White Sox had learned his lesson. ”

“ The recrut pitchers that is along with our club have not got nothing and the scout that reckommended them must of been full of hops or something. It is not no common thing for a club to pick up a man that has got the stuff to make him a star up here and the White Sox was pretty lucky to land me but I don't understand why they throw their money away on new pitchers when none of them is no good and besides who would want a better pitching staff than we got right now without no raw recruts and bushers.
I worked in Oakland the day before yesterday but he only let me go the 1st 4 innings. ”

“ He sat down until the hymn was finished, and then, walking forward, remarked:
"'Ladies and Gentlemen: I have glorious news for you. The White Sox are champions of the world—I stopped to learn the score, feeling that we could study better if we knew.'
"And the class broke into cheers." ”

“ Every time a man came to the bat, he’d try to lose the ball over the back fence. They wouldn’t bunt, they wouldn’t sacrifice, they wouldn’t do anything that might hurt that precious record of theirs. It was every man for himself and no man for the team, and they didn’t have a manager at the head of them that was wise enough or strong enough to make them do as they were told.
“Now, on the other hand, look at the White Sox. Dandy fielders, but for batting—why, if they fell in the river they wouldn’t strike the water. ”

“ Up, up he went, to the very top of the next low ridge. When he saw that all was safe, he began to feed on the splendid moss under the blanket of snow.
Presently he looked up and said, “White Feet died a natural death, didn’t he, mother?”
“Yes, so we are told,” Mother Reindeer answered. “But he reached a ripe old age before he died.”
White Sox ate awhile in silence; then he spoke again. “I think I understand it all now, mother. [Pg 73] White Feet was allowed to live because his services to man were of more value than his flesh and skin. He was a great leader and a wise teacher. ”

“ He will never injure another reindeer in that way. We must forgive him and try to forget it.”
“Mother, I can’t forget it,” cried White Sox. “These wild cousins of ours can look forward to a long life of freedom and safety. They are not the slaves of herders and dogs. I want to stay with them.”
“You are very young, my son. You have much to learn,” said his mother.
“But I know what will happen to me if I stay with the big herd,” he said. “I’ll have to draw [Pg 11] heavy sled loads in winter and carry tiresome packs in summer, if I am not killed by the butcher’s knife when I am two years old. ”

“ I am going with the White Sox and giants as far as San Francisco or may be Van Coover where they take the boat at but I am not going a round the world with them but only just out to the coast to help them out because they is a couple of men going to join them out there and untill them men join them they will be short of men and they got a hole lot of exibishun games to play before they get out there so I am going to help them out. ”

“ Mother Reindeer would have told this story to White Sox long ago, but she had wanted him to meet his wild cousins first. White Sox was different from the other fawns, and—well, you’ll understand after you have heard the story.
They had traveled about ten miles when a northwest breeze sprang up. The air soon became full of flying snow. Mother Reindeer changed her course so that they almost faced the wind. It was a terrible wind. White Sox had never faced a blizzard before. ”

“ We was to play 2 games here and was to play 1 of them in Tacoma and the other here but it rained and so we did not play neither 1 and the people was pretty mad a bout it because I was announced to pitch and they figured probily this would be there only chance to see me in axion and they made a awful holler but Comiskey says No they would not be no game because the field neither here or in Tacoma was in no shape for a game and he would not take no chance of me pitching and may be slipping in the mud and straneing myself and then where would the White Sox be at next season. ”

“ Of course, we don’t know yet just which team we’ll have to face, but we may know before night. If the Bostons win to-day that will settle it. Even if they lose, provided the Athletics lose, too, the Red Sox will be the champions. Of course, there’s nothing sure in baseball, but all the chances are in favor of the Bostons. ”

“ If necessary I will pitch every other day for Jennings and if I do we will win the pennant sure because Detroit has got a club that can get 2 or 3 runs every day and all as I need to win most of my games is 1 run. I can't hardly wait till Jennings works me against the White Sox and what I will do to them will be a plenty. It don't take no pitching to beat them anyway and when they get up against a pitcher like I they might as well leave their bats in the bag for all the good their bats will do them. ”

“ So I am not going to the Federal League Al and I will not go with the White Sox because I have got a raw deal. Comiskey will be sorry for what he done when his team starts the season and is up against it for good pitchers and then he will probily be willing to give me anything I ask for but that don't do me no good now Al. I am way in debt and no chance to get no money from nobody. I wish I had of stayed with Terre Haute Al and never saw this league. ”

“ The worst of it was that their opinion was justified, for the White Sox—the down-towners jeeringly called them the Silk Sox—beat almost every team they went up against! Last year the Juniors had played two contests with them and had been beaten decisively each time. And so Captain Arthur Humbleton and all the other boys of the Juniors and all their adherents—including mothers and brothers and sisters and an occasional father—were especially keen on a victory. ”

“ You know Al the White Sox plays a city serious every fall with the Cubs and the players makes quite a lot of money. The winners gets about eight hundred dollars a peace and the losers about five hundred. ”

“ Their bodies are more slender than those of the reindeer in our herd. Their legs and necks are longer. They hold their heads higher. There are no spotted or white ones among them.”
“Very true,” said Mother Reindeer. She liked to have White Sox find out things for himself. “The spotted and white ones are found only in the herds that live with man and serve him. Come, we will go to our wild cousins now. They are frightened. ”

“ Friend Al: I got another big supprise for you and this is it I am going to pitch for the White Sox after all. If Comiskey was not a old man I guess I would of lost my temper and beat him up but I am glad now that I kept my temper and did not loose it because I forced him to make a lot of consessions and now it looks like as though I would have a big year both pitching and money. ”

“ In baseball there is no trouble. The difficulty comes in some of the activities, particularly wrestling, because of the nature of the activity. It is a closer contact. We make no distinction, however, and when a Negro boy gets up to face a white boy and the white boy doesn't face him, the bout is forfeited to the Negro. I think more meet than fail to.
At Fiske Playground, where there are few Negroes, as they do not live near, the investigator witnessed a baseball game with a team from Colman Playground composed entirely of Negro boys except the pitcher. ”

“ Billy stopped and went and sat on the side porch, with his feet in the mignonette and the hoki-moki bat hugged to his triumphant breast, and dreamed dreams worthy of Cæsar or Napoleon.
The Broadport Juniors wanted to win to-day’s game, wanted to win it more than they wanted to win any other contest in a long and comprehensive schedule. The White Sox team was comprised of boys who lived on the Hill. The Hill was the town’s patrician quarter. Just about everyone who lived up there had an automobile and a chauffeur to drive it and wore their good clothes all the time. ”

“ Speaking about baseball Al I suppose you seen where the White Sox have cinched the penant and they will be splitting the world serious money while I am drawing $30.00 per mo. from the Govmt. but 50 yrs. from now the kids will all stop me on the st. and make me tell them what hotel we stayed at in Berlin and when Cicotte and Faber and Russell begins to talk about what they done to the Giants everybody will have themself paged and walk out.
Well Al a lot of things come off since the last time I wrote to you. We left Chi Wed. ”

“ Apparatus was used by both groups without friction, Negro and white children mingled freely in their games and in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball and athletic teams. Occasional playground fights had taken place, but usually without any element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal misunderstandings and disagreements between a white and a black just the same as between two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I wouldn't lay it to race prejudice. They work together and play together and seem to harmonize in most instances." ”

“ In baseball many big league mgrs. before a game they talk it over in the club house with their men and disgust the weakness of the other club and how is the best way to beat them and etc. For inst. when I was pitching for the White Sox and suppose we was going to face a pitcher that maybe he was weak on fielding bunts so before the game Mgr. Rowland would say to us "Remember boys this baby so and so gets the rabbis if you lay down bunts on him." ”

“ We know that young blood and new methods may help the Chicago team to that eminence it won in the old days. This sentiment is entertained by so many patrons of the game that it may be fair to concede them something.
One thing is certain. No man living will more cordially wish success to the old White Stocking club than will the man who has shared its joys and its woes, and who voluntarily, even now, yields place to a younger man.—Chicago Inter-Ocean. ”

“ He says there would be no work for us the first day but that we must all take a long walk over the hills. He also says we must not take the training trip as a joke. Then the colored trainer give us our suits and I went to my room and tried mine on. I ain't a bad looking guy in the White Sox uniform Al. I will have my picture taken and send you boys some.
My roommate is Allen a lefthander from the Coast League. He don't look nothing like a pitcher but you can't never tell about them dam left handers. ”

“ Chicago is usually figured as a conventionally insipid beauty, in flowing garments which would obstruct her progress and could never be kept white. This is a mistake. Most masculine of cities, most American of America’s great centres, its shield should portray a strong youth in the flush of adolescence, conscious power in his proud curled lip, fire in his eye, springing to the foreground in the first ray of dawn, in his right hand the sceptre of genius and his left grasping the key of destiny. ”

“ At Armour Square neighborhood sentiment permits a few Negroes to use the park, but trouble starts if new groups come. At Ogden Park a Negro playground director was assaulted by white boys and hit with brass knuckles in 1914, but now, according to a prominent Negro familiar with the situation at the center, there is order and fair treatment both within the park and on the way to it, and the Negroes prefer to travel out there than to go to Washington Park, which is closer at hand, but where they may be attacked if they try to use a boat or may be obliged to wait indefinitely for a tennis court. ”