This Day In Sox History...March 9

[Lip Man 1]

March 9, 1927 - Popular Sox outfielder Johnny Mostil attempted suicide in a hotel room in Shreveport, Louisiana. Despite razor cuts to his wrist, neck and chest, Mostil survived and returned to the team in April although he’d only play in 13 games that season. Mostil suffered a number of injuries in his career, and had severe dental issues and neuritis in his jaw and shoulder; neuritis is an inflamed nerve condition, resulting in sharp and chronic pain. Given the severity of this suicide attempt — and the fact that Mostil plunged his hand into scalding water during his rehab, delaying his return to the White Sox — the star may have been simply trying to end significant suffering, suffering that the medicine of his time could not soothe.

In 10 years with the team Mostil would hit over .300 four times with a high of .328 in 1926. Two other years he’d bat over .290. After his career he’d become a longtime White Sox scout/coach and help develop future players like All-Star and Gold Glove winning outfielder Jim Landis.

 

March 9, 1972 – With talks at a standstill between the owners and the MLBPA over a new labor contract focusing on the pension plan, the White Sox became the first team to have their players vote to authorize a strike if things weren’t agreed upon and a new deal put in place.

The vote was 31-0 in favor of it. When all was said and done the final vote of the players was 663-10 to strike if a new agreement wasn’t reached.

As it turned out a new agreement wasn’t reached before the first few weeks of the season were impacted and regular season games were lost for the very first time. Those games were never made up and teams played a different number of games in the season. The White Sox that year only played 154 of them.