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.
Comiskey Park
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Comiskey Park was a ballpark in Chicago, Illinois, the home of the Chicago White Sox from 1910 through 1990. Built by owner Charles Comiskey and designed by Zachary Taylor Davis, it hosted four World Series, the field was also the site of the 1937 heavyweight title match in which Joe Louis defeated then champion James J. Braddock in eight rounds. The Chicago Cardinals of the National Football League also called Comiskey Park home when they werent playing at Normal Park or Soldier Field, the Cardinals won the 1947 NFL Championship Game over the Philadelphia Eagles at Comiskey Park. A new ballpark opened in 1991, across 35th Street and south of its predecessor, originally also called Comiskey Park, it was renamed U. S. Cellular Field in 2003 and Guaranteed Rate Field in 2016, the park was built on a former city dump that Comiskey bought in 1909 to replace the wooden South Side Park. It was originally built as White Sox Park, but within three years was renamed for White Sox founder and owner Charles Comiskey, the original name, White Sox Park, was restored in 1962, but it went back to the Comiskey Park name in 1976. Comiskey Park was very modern for its time and it was the third concrete-and-steel stadium in the major leagues to be built since 1909. As originally built, it seated almost 32,000, a record at the time, briefly, it retained the nickname The Baseball Palace of the World. The parks design was influenced by Sox pitcher Ed Walsh. Later changes were made, but the park remained more or less favorable to defensive teams, for many years this reflected on the White Sox style of play, solid defense, and short, quick hits. The park was unusual in that no player ever hit 100 home runs there, the first game in Comiskey Park was a 2–0 loss to the St. Louis Browns on July 1,1910. The last game at Comiskey was a win, 2–1, over the Seattle Mariners on September 30,1990, the White Sox won their first-ever home night game, over St. Louis on August 14,1939, 5–2. The first no-hitter at Comiskey Park was hurled by Vern Kennedy on August 31,1935, Comiskey Park was the site of four World Series. In 1917, the Chicago White Sox won games 1,2 and 5 at Comiskey Park, in 1918, Comiskey Park hosted the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. The Cubs borrowed Comiskey Park for the series because of its seating capacity. The Red Sox defeated the Cubs four games to two, games one, two and three were played at Comiskey Park. The Red Sox won games one and three, attendance was under capacity in that war year. The best crowd was game 3, with some 27,000 patrons, in 1919, the White Sox lost the infamous Black Sox World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, five games to three in a nine-game series
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.
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
5.
Pants Rowland
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Clarence Henry Pants Rowland was a Major League Baseball manager for the Chicago White Sox from 1915 through 1918 who went on to become a major figure in minor league baseball. He was born in Platteville, Wisconsin, in his varied career that spanned parts of six decades, he was a catcher, scout, major league umpire, minor and major league manager, and a boisterous baseball executive. He started in baseball at age nine, where he earned his nickname, Pants, Rowland served as a reserve catcher in the minors. Never a great player, his love of the game drove him to other occupations. Pants worked as a scout in the Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League--the so-called Three-I League—for the Dubuque Miners and he worked his way into a managerial job, which proved to be his early calling. He then became the manager of the Three-I League Peoria Distillers, in his first year, Rowland and the White Sox finished 93-61, third in the American League, the next year, he finished second. And in 1917, he led them to an 100-54 record, disagreements with Comiskey got him fired the following season, which, given the state of affairs on the White Sox that led up to the Black Sox Scandal, probably saved his reputation. Rowlands all-time record was 339-247 in 591 games, a.591 winning percentage, kid Gleason succeeded Rowland as the next manager of the White Sox. He later served as an American League umpire for seven years, in 1938, as a scout for the Chicago Cubs, he was tasked with the unenviable job of obeying owner Phil Wrigleys orders to buy a washed-up Dizzy Deans contract at any cost. Rowland signed the ragged righty for $185,000, one of the most expensive contracts in baseball history. He returned to the front office during World War II, Rowland was the president of the Los Angeles Angels in 1944, where he earned The Sporting News title of No.1 minor-league executive. It was as president of the Pacific Coast League that Rowland came to real prominence and they think postwar air travel may well lure some big league club to pick up a Los Angeles franchise. Above all, they await the day when they can support a big league of their own. Rowland was the cheerleader for the PCL battle cry of independence, air travel was still primitive, and the PCL teams had near major-league standing in the rapidly growing cities of the Western United States. He went to the 1944 winter meetings of the NABPL in Buffalo with a two-plank agenda and he proposed that minor leagues get $10,000 instead of $7,500 when one of their players is drafted by a major-league club. He also suggested that if & when the major leagues invade minor-league territory, to his surprise, Rowland won support for both of his proposals. Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball opposed the PCL proposal, Pants ties to the last season of pre-Black Sox ball tarred him with the same brush in the eyes of the man called the baseball tyrant. Rowland tried his hand at establishing the PCL as a league with Landis successor
6.
1916 Chicago White Sox season
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The 1916 Chicago White Sox finished second in the American League, just two games behind the first-place Boston Red Sox. By this time, the nucleus of the 1917–19 dynasty was in place, Chicago would win the World Series the following season. This was Shoeless Joe Jacksons first full season with the White Sox and he led the team in batting with a.341 average and finished third in the league overall. Eddie Collins and Happy Felsch also hit.300, the pitching staff was well-balanced, with seven men making at least 14 starts. Note, Pos = Position, G = Games played, AB = At bats, H = Hits, = Batting average, HR = Home runs, RBI = Runs batted in Note, G = Games played, AB = At bats, H = Hits, Avg
