1.
American League
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The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League, is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a league based in the Great Lakes states. It is sometimes called the Junior Circuit because it claimed Major League status for the 1901 season,25 years after the formation of the National League. At the end of season, the American League champion plays in the World Series against the National League champion. Through 2016, American League teams have won 64 of the 112 World Series played since 1903, the 2016 American League champions are the Cleveland Indians. The New York Yankees have won 40 American League titles, the most in the history, followed by the Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland Athletics. Originally a minor league known as the Western League, the American League later developed into a major league after the American Association disbanded, in its early history, the Western League struggled until 1894, when Ban Johnson became the president of the league. Johnson led the Western League into major league status and soon became the president of the newly renamed American League, babe Ruth, noted as one of the most prolific hitters in Major League Baseball history, spent the majority of his career in the American League. The American League has one notable difference versus the National League, in 1902, the Milwaukee Brewers moved to St. Louis and were renamed the St. Louis Browns. In 1902, The Cleveland Bluebirds were also renamed the Cleveland Broncos, in 1903, the Broncos were renamed the Cleveland Naps. In 1915, the Naps were renamed the Cleveland Indians, in 1903, the Baltimore Orioles moved to New York and were renamed the New York Highlanders. In 1913, the Highlanders were renamed the New York Yankees, in 1904, the Chicago White Stockings were renamed the Chicago White Sox. In 1908, the Boston Americans were renamed the Boston Red Sox, in 1954, the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and were renamed as the Baltimore Orioles. In 1955, the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City and were renamed as the Kansas City Athletics, in 1961, the league expanded and added two teams as the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators, expanding the league to 10 teams. The original Senators team moved to Minneapolis/St, Paul in 1961 and were renamed as the Minnesota Twins. The Angels team name changed to the California Angels in 1966, then to the Anaheim Angels in 1997, the Kansas City Royals and the Seattle Pilots were added to the American League, expanding the league to 12 teams. In 1970, the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee and were renamed the Milwaukee Brewers, in 1972, the Washington Senators relocated to the Dallas/Fort Worth area and were renamed the Texas Rangers. In 1977, the league expanded to fourteen teams, when the Seattle Mariners, in 1998, the Tampa Bay Rays was added to the American League and at the same time, the Milwaukee Brewers were switched to the National League, leaving the American League with 14 teams
2.
South Side Park
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South Side Park was the name used for three different baseball parks that formerly stood in Chicago, Illinois, at different times, and whose sites were all just a few blocks away from each other. The first South Side Park was the home of the short-lived Chicago Unions entry in the Union Association of 1884, newspapers gave its location as the corner of 39th Street and South Wabash Avenue, not specifying which corner. The venue was also called Union Base Ball Park and 39th Street Grounds in local newspapers, a late-winter report on improvements to the 39th Street Grounds indicates the site had already been used as an amateur ball field. The Unions played 35 games at this park between May 2 and August 1, the papers indicated they were then headed on a three-week road trip. After that road trip, they re-emerged as the Pittsburgh entry, in 1890, it was usually called Brotherhood Park in the local newspapers, as with several of the Players League venues. The parks location was given as 35th and Wentworth, which was the location of the main entrance. The field generally occupied the same footprint as the future Comiskey Park along with Armour Square Park, the article said the grandstand would be built along 35th Street. The League club acquired the lease on the grounds after Comiskeys team and they played a partial schedule at this field in 1891, continuing to play other games at West Side Park during 1891. They then played their home season on the South Side in 1892. They sought a new location, which turned out to be West Side Park, after drawing well on their first few Sundays, the club abandoned the South Side park and moved to the West Side on a full-time basis. The south end of the property was site of Comiskey Park from 1910 through 1990, Armour Square Park was established in 1905 and still has ball fields on it. The 39th Street Grounds served as the field of the Chicago Wanderers cricket team during the 1893 Worlds Fair. After Charles Comiskey built a grandstand on the site in 1900. It served as home to the White Sox first in 1900 as a league team. Meanwhile, South Side Park became the home of the newly formed Negro League baseball team called the Chicago American Giants in 1911 and it was renamed Schorlings Park for team owner Rube Fosters white business partner, John C. Schorling, a south side saloon keeper who leased the grounds, the American Giants played their games there through the 1940 season. Then on Christmas Day of 1940, Schorlings Park was destroyed by fire, the American Giants would play their remaining 10 seasons at Comiskey Park. Today, the Chicago Housing Authoritys Wentworth Gardens housing project occupies the site, the South Side Park/Schorlings Park/Wentworth Gardens site is located across Pershing Road from a junkyard site which was named a Superfund site in the late 1990s
3.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
4.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
5.
Charles Comiskey
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Charles Albert Charlie Comiskey, also nicknamed Commy or The Old Roman, was an American Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner. He was a key person in the formation of the American League, Comiskey Park, the White Sox storied baseball stadium, was built under his guidance and named for him. Comiskey was inducted as an executive into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, Comiskey was born on August 15,1859, in Chicago, the son of Illinois politician John Comiskey. He attended public and parochial schools in Chicago, St. Ignatius College Prep and he played baseball at St. Comiskey started his playing career as a pitcher, and moved to first base after developing arm trouble. He is credited with being the first to play hitters off of first base and he entered the American Association in 1882 with the St. Louis Brown Stockings. He managed the team during parts of its first seasons and took over full-time in 1885, leading the Browns to four consecutive American Association championships and a close second in 1889. He also played and managed for the Chicago Pirates in the Players League, the Browns again, Comiskey left Cincinnati and the majors in fall 1894 to purchase the Western League club in Sioux City, Iowa and move it to Saint Paul, Minnesota. He had compiled a.264 batting average with 29 home runs,883 RBI and 419 stolen bases, as a manager, he posted an 839-542 record. The St. Paul Saints moved to the South Side as the White Stockings of the renamed American League for the 1900 season, the American League then declared itself a major league starting in 1901. As owner of the White Sox from 1900 until his death in 1931, Comiskey oversaw building Comiskey Park in 1910 and winning five American League pennants, Comiskey was notoriously stingy, even forcing his players to pay to launder their own uniforms. Traci Peterson notes that, in an era when professional athletes lacked free agency and she writes, Charles Risberg and Claude Williams made less than $3,000 a year. Joe Jackson and George Weaver made only $6,000 a year, eddie Cicotte had been promised a $10,000 bonus if he could win 30 games in a season. When Cicotte closed in on the 30-game goal, Comiskey had him benched to keep him from reaching the mark, Comiskeys stated reason for having manager Kid Gleason bench Cicotte was that with the Sox headed for the World Series he had to protect his star pitchers arm. In one incident, he promised his players a bonus for winning the 1919 pennant — the bonus turned out to be a case of flat champagne, however, he initially defended the accused players and, in an unusual display of largesse, provided them with expensive legal representation. Indeed, the White Sox promptly tumbled into seventh place and would not be a factor in a pennant race again until 1936, five years after Comiskeys death. Comiskey is sometimes credited with the innovation of playing the first base position behind first base or inside the foul line, later he had played a large role in the dissolution of the National Commission, baseballs former body of authority, following a quarrel with Ban Johnson. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, Comiskey died in Eagle River, Wisconsin in 1931. Comiskeys son J. Louis inherited the team but died a few years later, the trustees of his estate were going to sell the team, but J. Louis widow Grace was able to gain control of the team and avoid a sale
6.
Clark Griffith
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Clark Calvin Griffith, nicknamed The Old Fox, was an American Major League Baseball pitcher, manager and team owner. He began his MLB playing career with the St. Louis Browns, Boston Reds and he then served as player-manager for the Chicago White Stockings and New York Highlanders. He retired as a player after the 1907 season, remaining manager of the Highlanders in 1908 and he managed the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Senators, making some appearances as a player with both teams. He owned the Senators from 1920 until his death in 1955, Griffith was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. Griffith was born in Clear Creek, Missouri, to Isaiah and Sarah Anne Griffith and his parents were of Welsh ancestry. They had lived in Illinois prior to Clark Griffiths birth, the family took a covered wagon west toward the Oklahoma Territory. Along the way, the family encountered hungry and disenchanted people returning from the Oklahoma Territory, Griffith grew up with five siblings, four of them older. When Griffith was a child, his father was killed in a hunting accident when fellow hunters mistook him for a deer. Sarah Griffith struggled to raise her children as a widow, but Clark Griffith later said that his neighbors in Missouri had been helpful to his mother, planting crops for her. Fearing a malaria epidemic that was sweeping through the area, the Griffith family moved to Bloomington, a childhood incident taught him about the money side to baseball, Griffith recalled. When he was 13, he and a few young boys had raised $1.25 to buy a baseball. They sent one of the boys 12 miles on horseback to make the purchase, the ball burst on the second time that it was struck. Griffith later found out that the boy who purchased the ball only spent a quarter, at the age of seventeen, Griffith had made ten dollars pitching in a local baseball game in Hoopeston, Illinois. Griffith entered the American Association in 1891, pitching 226 1⁄3 innings and winning 14 games for the St. Louis Browns and he began the following season with the Chicago Colts. In 1893, the box was moved back, it had been 55 feet from home plate and was moved to the modern distance of 60 feet. Following that change, offensive numbers increased across baseball and many pitchers had to adjust their approaches, cap Anson was the player-manager of the Colts during Griffiths tenure and he utilized a rotation of only three starting pitchers. Just before Griffiths arrival on the team, pitcher Bill Hutchinson had thrown more than 600 innings in a season for Anson. Griffith tried a new pitch to increase his longevity, by modifying the grip of a curveball, he threw a pitch similar to the screwball that Christy Mathewson had developed
7.
Chicago White Sox
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The Chicago White Sox is an American professional baseball team based in Chicago, Illinois. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball as a club of the American League Central division. The White Sox play their games at Guaranteed Rate Field. They are one of two league clubs in Chicago, the other is the Chicago Cubs, who are a member of the National League Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf. One of the American Leagues eight charter franchises, the Chicago team was established as a major baseball club in 1900. The club was called the Chicago White Stockings, but this was soon shortened to Chicago White Sox. The team played games at South Side Park before, in 1910. The White Sox won the 1906 World Series with a team dubbed the Hitless Wonders, and the 1917 World Series led by Eddie Cicotte, Eddie Collins. The 1919 World Series was marred by the Black Sox Scandal, in response, Major League Baseballs new Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the players from Major League Baseball for life. In 1959, led by Early Wynn, Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio and manager Al Lopez and they won the AL pennant in 2005, and went on to win the World Series. The White Sox originated as the Sioux City Cornhuskers of the Western League, in 1894, Charles Comiskey bought the Cornhuskers and moved them to St. Paul, Minnesota, where they became the St. Paul Saints. In 1901, the Western League broke the National Agreement and became the new major league American League, the very first season in the American League ended with a White Stockings championship. However, that would be the end of the season as the World Series did not begin until 1903, the franchise, now known as the Chicago White Sox, made its first World Series appearance in 1906, beating the crosstown Cubs in six games. The White Sox would win a pennant and second World Series in 1917, beating the New York Giants in six games with help from stars Eddie Cicotte. The Sox were heavily favored in the 1919 World Series, huge bets on the Reds fueled speculation that the series had been fixed. This set the franchise back, as they did not win another pennant for 40 years. The White Sox did not finish in the half of the American League again until after club founder Charles Comiskey died and passed ownership of the club to his son
