1915
It was the biggest shutout in team history, as the White Sox pasted St. Louis, 16-0. The Pale Hose put up seven runs before the home Browns even got to bat, and scored in every inning but the third, seventh and eighth. It was just a 15-hit assault with no homers, so how did the Sox score 16? With help from five Browns errors and six stolen bases!
Buck Weaver went 3-for-6 with a double and two runs, pacing all the White Sox hitters … except starting pitcher Red Faber, who went 4-for-5 with a double and three
runs, leading the team in total bases! Faber, no clouter him, pitched in an AL-high 50 games in 1915 and racked up 118 plate appearances and 84 at-bats … yielding 11 hits. Yes, more than a third of Faber’s hits in 1915 came in this game.
Also a curiosity, the win moved the White Sox into first place, at 2-0 on the season, and Faber’s season record was 2-0 was well. How? Well, Opening Day was a 13-inning thriller that saw the second-year hurler relieve in the 12th inning (not too well, either, giving up two earned runs) to earn the win — with fellow young hurler and future star Eddie Cicotte getting the save with a clean 13th. The next day, this blowout, Faber threw a complete game despite eight innings of the contest qualifying as garbage time!
This game stood as the biggest White Sox shutout win until 1925 and a 17-0 drubbing at Washington (and later tied in 1987). The game remains the third-biggest shutout in team history and tied for the 18th biggest win ever for the White Sox.
1954
The White Sox helped reintroduce Major League Baseball to Baltimore (in front of a crowd of 46,354) for the first time since 1902, as they played the new Baltimore Orioles in the first-ever game at Memorial Stadium (the franchise had moved from St. Louis that offseason). Virgil Trucks got the start for the White Sox, but the O’s won, 3-1, starting a run of numerous unfortunate, strange and bizarre happenings at Memorial Stadium over the next 37 seasons.
1972
The first labor impasse to cause regularly-scheduled games to be cancelled had caused Opening Day of the 1972 season to be pushed back. Thus in the first game of the new season was in Kansas City, where the Sox lost to the Royals, 2-1, in 11 innings despite Dick Allen’s first White Sox home run. Allen blasted a shot in the ninth inning off Dick Drago to give the team a brief, 1-0 lead. Kansas City tied the game with two outs in the ninth inning on a Bob Oliver home run off of Wilbur Wood, then go on to win the game.
The Sox dropped three consecutive one-run games to the Royals to start the season, two in extra innings, but ended up with 87 wins in 154 games and battle the eventual World Series champion Oakland A’s until the end of September.
1983
Former Cubs pitcher Milt Wilcox had his perfect game ruined with two outs in the ninth inning when White Sox pinch-hitter Jerry Hairston ripped a clean single up the middle. It was the only hit of the night for the Sox, who lost to Detroit, 6-0. Hairston’s hit marked just the third time in major league history that a perfect game was broken up with just one out left. Billy Pierce was one of the other two pitchers to have that happen to him, when he lost his to the Senators on June 27, 1958.
1985
In a game at Boston, pinch-hitter Jerry Hairston collected his 51st safety in that role, setting a White Sox all-time record. Jerry would lead the league in pinch-hits from 1983-85 and retired with 87 total in his career. He also hit the last home run to set off Bill Veeck’s original exploding scoreboard in October 1981 — a grand slam off of future Sox pitching coach Don Cooper!
1987
Future White Sox bullpen coach Juan Nieves tosses the first no-hitter in Milwaukee Brewers history, defeating the Baltimore Orioles, 7-0. Nieves was a pitching coach in the White Sox minors from 1999-2007, then worked under Don Cooper as the bullpen coach on the South Side from 2008-12. He also appeared as Francisco Delgado in the 1999 Kevin Costner baseball film For the Love of the Game.
2006
It was an all-time great defensive play.
In the ninth inning of a game at U.S. Cellular Field against Toronto, Sox second baseman Tadahito Iguchi had to charge in on a slowly-hit ball by Bengie Molina. Iguchi’s momentum carried him forward, forcing him to leave his feet and start to fall to the ground. Before he hit the field, though, he got a throw off, despite being parallel to the ground. His throw was strong enough to get Molina at first.
The Sox won the game, 4-2.
2024
In his very first MLB start, Nick Nastrini retired the first 11 batters he faced, the most consecutive outs since 1960. In the process, Nastrini broke Bruce Tanner’s mark from back on June 12, 1985.
However, the punchless White Sox still lost the game, shut out, 2-0, by the Royals — tying a dubious record. It marked the sixth time in 16 games they were held without a run to start a season. The last time that happened in the modern era was in 1907 to the Brooklyn Superbas.
The White Sox were held to four singles in the game, and if not for a stolen base by Braden Shewmake in the fifth inning, no Chicago batter would have reached second base.
