1936
Twelve years before breaking a major-league record (see below), Luke Appling started a 27-game hit streak with a 2-for-5 game in a 9-6 win over at St. Louis in a doubleheader opener. Appling went 1-for-3 in a nightcap win over the Browns, and wouldn’t stop hitting for the rest of August.
Appling’s streak was snapped on September 3, in a 3-2 win at Boston. He went 0-for-2 with two walks in the game, and was on deck hoping for one more shot at extending the streak when Mule Haas flew out to center
field to end the White Sox ninth.
During the streak, Appling hit .350, with 35 hits in 27 games and 18 walks against four Ks. Amazingly, the hit streak lowered Appling’s season average from .376 to .370. Appling would finish 1936 with a batting title, having hit a career-best .388. Appling would go hitless in just five games in September, as he pushed his batting average back up by 18 points.
Appling’s hit streak was the White Sox record for 61 years, until Albert Belle tied it in 1997. Seven years after that, Carlos Lee eclipsed Appling and Belle by one game to set the all-time record on the South Side.
1949
Luke Appling played his 2,154th game at shortstop, passing Rabbit Maranville for most in MLB history. He would play another 42 games there in the 1949 season and 20 in 1950 (at age 43) before retiring. Appling played all but one of his seasons (1948) as a primary shortstop, and 94% of his career games there.
Today, Appling sits at eighth all-time in games played at shortstop, his all-time record broken 20 years later by another White Sox shortstop, Luis Aparicio, on Sept. 25, 1970, his last game played that season. Interestingly, that marked not only the last game Aparicio played that season, it was the last game Aparicio ever played for the White Sox.
1955
From Sept. 11, 1953 through Sept. 4, 1960, Nellie Fox played 1,073 straight games — except for this one, an 8-1 loss in Baltimore. Manager Marty Marion felt his team, losers of three straight games but still tied for first in the AL, needed some rest — and in this game, Fox got it. So, Nellie would have had a streak of 1,073 heading into 1960; and with the momentum of a streak like that driving him, chances are Fox would have muscled through the virus that kept him out of that 1960 game and kept it alive. Worse (for both men), sitting the feisty, frustrated Fox on the bench next to him drove Marion crazy, and the manager vowed never to make that mistake again.
Jim Margalus wrote in greater detail on Nellie’s snapped streak for South Side Sox in 2012.
1959
It was the third and final marathon game of the 1959 season.
The White Sox battled the Orioles in Baltimore, and played for 18 innings before midnight curfew stopped the night game tied at 1-1. (Yes, it had only taken four hours to play 18 innings!)
There were two incredible performances on the pitcher’s mound. For Baltimore, Hoyt Wilhelm relieved Billy O’Dell to start the ninth inning and held the White Sox hitless for 8 2⁄3 innings, until Billy Goodman slapped a single with two outs in the 17th. Meanwhile White Sox starter Billy Pierce went 16 innings, allowing just one run and recording a 100 game score, before giving way to Turk Lown in the 17th.
Billy faced 61 hitters, struck out seven and gave up 11 hits, 10 of them singles. The 100 game score is the eighth-highest in White Sox history.
The 18 innings still stand tied for the 10th-longest game in team annals.
1983
Before the game, the White Sox were 56-50, up 4 ½ games in a weak AL West. From this day on, however, the club went 43-13 to end the season at 99-63 and a record-breaking 20 games up in the division. The assault on the American League began with a 6-4 win in Baltimore, keyed by Carlton Fisk’s 4-for-5 effort, with a double and a triple. Floyd Bannister pitched seven innings for ninth win, Britt Burns earned a hold out of the bullpen (where he was demoted after losing his command) and Salomé Barojas pocketed his 10th save.
2010
Becoming the first member of the 2o1o draft class to reach the majors (yes, just TWO MONTHS after being drafted No. 13 overall) Chris Sale made his debut in a 2-1, 10-inning loss at Baltimore. It was a inconspicuous start, with a four-pitch walk to Brian Roberts and then an 0-2, jam-shot single from Nick Markakis. Just seven pitches and no outs — but the beginning of an illustrious career.
The 6´5´´, 170-pound lefty spent just 11 games in the minors, burning through High-A Winston-Salem (placed there to work with Dash pitching coach Bobby Thigpen) and Triple-A Charlotte to the tune of a 2.61 ERA, 1.16 WHIP and 16.5 K/9. (In Charlotte alone, Sale sported an astronomical 21.3 K/9.)
