Tribune remember 1959 White Sox...

[Lip Man 1]

For those who can access, this is fabulous especially in this season of misery:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/09/19/vintage-chicago-tribune-remembering-go-go-white-sox/

[The Mighty Mite]

56 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

For those who can access, this is fabulous especially in this season of misery:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/09/19/vintage-chicago-tribune-remembering-go-go-white-sox/

I’ll never forget my boyhood heroes especially Nellie and Billy.  
Tribune has one of the pictures wrong, that’s Early Wynn not Big Klu, Early who won the Cy Young award in 1959 but him holding a bat in the picture is not all that funny as he was a very good hitter.   

3 sad things, Minnie Minoso was not with the Sox in 1959, he was traded after the 1957 to Cleveland for Early Wynn and Al Smith, we got him back in 1960 and in first game back on opening day he hit 2 homers including a walk off.

Billy Pierce did not start a game in the World Series which pissed off all his teammates and every Sox fan in the country, bad blood between manager Al Lopez might have been one of the reasons but no one knows for sure.

We lost the Series in 6 games and IMHO game 2 which I attended might have been the turning point. After winning game one, 11-0  we were trailing 3-1 in the 8th, we had a nice rally going, with no outs and Landis on 2nd and Lollar on first, Smith doubled to left center with Landis scoring easily but Lollar was out by a mile at home plate, why 3rd base coach Tony Cuccinello sent the slowest runner in the league trying to score the tying run remains a huge mystery. The rally came to a screeching halt and it carried over to the games in the LA Coliseum, we lost the next 2 but managed to squeak out a 1-0 victory in game 5. The Series returned to Comiskey for game 6 but Lopez gave Wynn the start on 2 days rest, he was gassed at the Dodgers were World Champs, Lopez messed up and should have started Pierce saving Wynn for game 7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by The Mighty Mite

[Lip Man 1]

3 hours ago, The Mighty Mite said:

I’ll never forget my boyhood heroes especially Nellie and Billy.  
Tribune has one of the pictures wrong, that’s Early Wynn not Big Klu, Early who won the Cy Young award in 1959 but him holding a bat in the picture is not all that funny as he was a very good hitter.   

3 sad things, Minnie Minoso was not with the Sox in 1959, he was traded after the 1957 to Cleveland for Early Wynn and Al Smith, we got him back in 1960 and in first game back on opening day he hit 2 homers including a walk off.

Billy Pierce did not start a game in the World Series which pissed off all his teammates and every Sox fan in the country, bad blood between manager Al Lopez might have been one of the reasons but no one knows for sure.

We lost the Series in 6 games and IMHO game 2 which I attended might have been the turning point. After winning game one, 11-0  we were trailing 3-1 in the 8th, we had a nice rally going, with no outs and Landis on 2nd and Lollar on first, Smith doubled to left center with Landis scoring easily but Lollar was out by a mile at home plate, why 3rd base coach Tony Cuccinello sent the slowest runner in the league trying to score the tying run remains a huge mystery. The rally came to a screeching halt and it carried over to the games in the LA Coliseum, we lost the next 2 but managed to squeak out a 1-0 victory in game 5. The Series returned to Comiskey for game 6 but Lopez gave Wynn the start on 2 days rest, he was gassed at the Dodgers were World Champs, Lopez messed up and should have started Pierce saving Wynn for game 7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From my interview with Billy:

ML: Your career continued to roll along culminating with the pennant year of 1959. For the city and the team it was the pinnacle of success, but for you personally, it wasn’t your best season. You missed six weeks with a hip injury and when it came time for the World Series, Manager Al Lopez passed you over for a starting assignment. Older Sox fans still insist, if you start Game #2, instead of Bob Shaw, and win, the Sox take the Series. How difficult was that for you being relegated to only four innings of relief work?

BP: "It was very tough. It was a real hard thing. I appeared in three games and pitched well but it was a disappointment. I still wanted the Sox to win, after all, they were my teammates but I was very glad when it was over. Let’s put it this way, I left town pretty quickly to try to forget about it all."

ML: Did that affect your relationship with Lopez, and what did you think of him as a manager?

BP: "Al was a real good manager. His record shows that. He was a solid percentage baseball guy. I honestly think the controversy affected Al more than me. I wasn’t the culprit; all I could do was what he told me. He had to listen to the fans who wanted me to pitch but I couldn’t do anything about it."

[The Mighty Mite]

13 minutes ago, Lip Man 1 said:

From my interview with Billy:

ML: Your career continued to roll along culminating with the pennant year of 1959. For the city and the team it was the pinnacle of success, but for you personally, it wasn’t your best season. You missed six weeks with a hip injury and when it came time for the World Series, Manager Al Lopez passed you over for a starting assignment. Older Sox fans still insist, if you start Game #2, instead of Bob Shaw, and win, the Sox take the Series. How difficult was that for you being relegated to only four innings of relief work?

BP: "It was very tough. It was a real hard thing. I appeared in three games and pitched well but it was a disappointment. I still wanted the Sox to win, after all, they were my teammates but I was very glad when it was over. Let’s put it this way, I left town pretty quickly to try to forget about it all."

ML: Did that affect your relationship with Lopez, and what did you think of him as a manager?

BP: "Al was a real good manager. His record shows that. He was a solid percentage baseball guy. I honestly think the controversy affected Al more than me. I wasn’t the culprit; all I could do was what he told me. He had to listen to the fans who wanted me to pitch but I couldn’t do anything about it."

I met Jungle Jim Rivera when I was working the pro shop at the Naples Beach Golf Club about 25 years ago and I remember him telling me how upset the team was that Billy didn’t get a start especially in game 6. Lopez was probably right in not starting Billy out in LA with the Left field foul pole only 250 feet away even though they put up a 40 foot high screen from to the foul pole to beyond left center field.   
I still think Lopez is the best Sox manager in their history but for early October of 1959, he had a horrible brain fart.

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by The Mighty Mite

[Stinky Stanky]

21 minutes ago, The Mighty Mite said:

I met Jungle Jim Rivera when I was working the pro shop at the Naples Beach Golf Club about 25 years ago and I remember him telling me how upset the team was that Billy didn’t get a start especially in game 6. Lopez was probably right in not starting Billy out in LA with the Left field foul pole only 250 feet away even though they put up a 40 foot high screen from to the foul pole to beyond left center field.   
I still think Lopez is the best Sox manager in their history but for early October of 1959, he had a horrible brain fart.

 

 

Yep, Lopez panicked.  Whether it had anything to do with Billy's 14-15 record that year I do not know and don't want to. Dammit anyway.

[Lip Man 1]

9 hours ago, The Mighty Mite said:

I’ll never forget my boyhood heroes especially Nellie and Billy.  
Tribune has one of the pictures wrong, that’s Early Wynn not Big Klu, Early who won the Cy Young award in 1959 but him holding a bat in the picture is not all that funny as he was a very good hitter.   

3 sad things, Minnie Minoso was not with the Sox in 1959, he was traded after the 1957 to Cleveland for Early Wynn and Al Smith, we got him back in 1960 and in first game back on opening day he hit 2 homers including a walk off.

Billy Pierce did not start a game in the World Series which pissed off all his teammates and every Sox fan in the country, bad blood between manager Al Lopez might have been one of the reasons but no one knows for sure.

We lost the Series in 6 games and IMHO game 2 which I attended might have been the turning point. After winning game one, 11-0  we were trailing 3-1 in the 8th, we had a nice rally going, with no outs and Landis on 2nd and Lollar on first, Smith doubled to left center with Landis scoring easily but Lollar was out by a mile at home plate, why 3rd base coach Tony Cuccinello sent the slowest runner in the league trying to score the tying run remains a huge mystery. The rally came to a screeching halt and it carried over to the games in the LA Coliseum, we lost the next 2 but managed to squeak out a 1-0 victory in game 5. The Series returned to Comiskey for game 6 but Lopez gave Wynn the start on 2 days rest, he was gassed at the Dodgers were World Champs, Lopez messed up and should have started Pierce saving Wynn for game 7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Billy was starting to slip a little bit. He never complained but I think his arm was bothering him a little bit. Just before we clinched the pennant that year, Billy had pitched against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium and had beaten them 4-3. He pitched a good game. Then he pitched again and hadn't looked good. Now our last series was in Detroit. I stayed in Chicago because the Dodgers were coming in to play the Cubs, so I put Tony Cuccinello in charge of the club. And I said, 'I want you to pitch Billy in Detroit, get him ready for the series." Because it was going to be Wynn, Shaw and Pierce for the series."

"I told Tony, 'Let him go seven innings and give me a report on how he looks.' Tony came back and said, 'Al, he wasn't throwing good at all.'

So that's one of the reasons we switched to Donovan in the third game."--Al Lopez to the Tribune's Bob Vanderberg. 

Pierce started the first game of the Detroit series, September 25, 1959. He gave up three runs on five hits in two innings. 

 

So that's