It is said that the sins of our fathers can be revisited upon us. The Chicago White Sox may be the proof of that adage. While much baseball lore has centered on those curses dealing with the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox, rarely is the futility of the Chicago White Sox mentioned. Only the Cubs can exceed the White Sox for ineffectiveness when it comes to winning the last game of the season.
While the Cubs curse is based on denying some poor ticket-holder the right to bring in his pet goat and the Red Sox sin was to trade Bath Ruth, the White Sox committed the worse sin of all - they threw a World Series and got caught. The 1919 White Sox team, as a means of getting even with their skinflint owner Charles Comiskey, schemed to fix the World Series.
Heavily favorite going into the Series, eight members of the White Sox conspired with gamblers to ensure their own defeat. Interesting enough, all eight ball-players would be acquitted of charges by a jury of their peers, but baseball's new commissioner, Judge Landis, banned all of these players for life. Baseball's own brand of justice imposed the ultimate punishment and in the process derailed several Hall of Fame careers, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the top hitters of his era. To this day, Shoeless Joe is still denied access to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Baseball survived this scandal as the emergence of Babe Ruth's slugging prowess gave fans new reasons to flock to the ballpark. As the roaring twenties raged on, Babe Ruth became a larger-than-life figure and baseball found its saviour.
As for the White Sox, they would never win another World Series and only once since 1919 have the White Sox been to a World Series. The 1959 go-go Sox lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games and since then, they hadn’t even come close. Even the Red Sox came perilously close to ending their curse in 1967 and 1986, before the 2004 edition finally put an end to the Bambino curse. And the Cubs have been in more World Series since 1919 than the White Sox.
Article comments
1 - skott wade
well, not totally right.
there was a great book and movie called Eight Men Out about the black sox.
the Red Sox also were in the Series in 1975 which went to a 7th game as well. see Carlton Fisk before he was a white sox hit the greatest home run ever in game 6.
the white sox "curse" is a joke. more like Karma than curse.
2 - Matthew T. Sussman
It's amazing that the White Sox are forgotten as a team that hasn't won a postseason series -- let alone a World Series -- since '17. They're one win away from breaking that streak.
3 - tom Donelson
I am aware of Eight Men Out but it does not deal with any curse, just the 1919 world series.
Thanks for reminding me of the 1975, how could I have forgotten that? My point is that the White Sox rarely gets mention, yet their record of futility certainly matches the Cubs and the Red Sox before last year.
4 - javier nuno
Curse? Such a thing does not exist! Incompetance and lack of talent & will are the real factors for poor performance by players in a team. But losers (such as the Chicago cubs and their fans), blame the supernatural which cannot be measured or observed in failed attempts to relieve player performance from accountability.
The reason why you don't hear about a curse is because the White Sox and their fans know better than to blame an event that happened eons ago. Win or lose, it will not be because 8 players decided about 100 years ago to throw a world series.
5 - Charles Laskonis
I just happened to stumble across this blog today and the author might want to eat his words after the Sox 2005 World Series Championship. That say about enough now doesn't it?
6 - john patterson
i agree that they should have been banned for life. But my thing is that people have to realize that the amounts of money they were offered(8,000 a piece) to throw the world series away.I mean 8,000 dollars today is like 5 million today. Alot of people dont realize that.