This Day In Sox History...June 27

[Lip Man 1]

June 27, 1910 – The White Sox lost the final game played at their original ballpark, South Side Park III (39th Street Grounds). Cleveland knocked them off, 7-2, in front of just 4,300 fans. Fred Olmstead started the last game for the Sox but only lasted one inning giving up four runs.

In fact the Sox didn’t score at all until the last inning in the original park getting two home in the ninth.

Just four days later, the White Sox returned home and unveiled “The Baseball Palace of the World,” Comiskey Park. They lost that game as well, 2-0, to the St. Louis Browns, in front of 24,900 fans.

 

June 27, 1922 - Catcher and future Hall of Famer, Ray “Cracker” Schalk became the first White Sox player to hit for the cycle when he did it against the Tigers in Detroit at Navin Field. The Sox would win 9-5 with Ray going 4 for 4 with two runs and two RBI’s.

The hits were a home run in the third, triple in the fourth, single in the seventh and double in the ninth inning in that order.

 

June 27, 1958 - He came so close to perfection. Sox left hander Billy Pierce fired four one-hitters in his brilliant career, but he never came closer than on this night to baseball immortality.

With two out in the ninth inning, Pierce lost a perfect game as the Senators Ed Fitz Gerald, a pinch hitter, doubled down the first base line on the first pitch thrown. The hit was fair by a foot off a low outside breaking ball. The crowd at Comiskey Park stared in disbelief. The Sox won 3-0 but Pierce never came closer to pitching the ultimate masterpiece. On the night the Senators only hit six balls out of the infield. Pierce struck out nine and only went to a three-ball count on two hitters. The game took 1:46 to play and was Billy’s third straight shutout.

Another historical oddity… Fitz Gerald’s grandfather was an important businessman in Milwaukee, including the shipping industry. Years later a ship would be named after him. The name of the ship? The Edmund Fitz Gerald. (Cue the song from Gordon Lightfoot!)

 

June 27, 1967 - It was one of the most bizarre individual plays in White Sox history. The Sox were at Baltimore and in the last of the fourth inning of a scoreless game the O’s Frank Robinson slid hard into second baseman Al Weis trying to break up a potential double play on a ball hit by Brooks Robinson. Robinson’s head slammed into Weis’s knee knocking him out. The next day he woke up with double vision. Weis meanwhile had his knee torn up and his season ended because of the contact. While both players were lying on the ground Sox right fielder Ken Berry noticed that time had never been called and Frank wasn’t on the base! He ran in, picked up the baseball and tagged him with it. Second base umpire Nestor Chylak called Robinson out.

Officially it went into the books as a force out; third to second to first to right field. The Sox behind Joe Horlen would win the game 5-0.

 

June 27, 2004 - The first of the on-field steps that would eventually lead to a World Series title took place on this day as the Sox acquired starting pitcher Freddy Garcia from the Mariners for catcher Miguel Olivo and outfielder Jeremy Reed. Some fans anguished over the loss of five tool prospect Reed, but no one was complaining after Garcia helped close out the Astros the following October to clinch the first championship in 88 seasons.

Freddy would go on to win 55 games for the Sox in two different stints. In each of his three full years with the team, 2005, 2006 and 2010 he’d win at least 12 games.