1956 American League Pennant

Lore & Background

The White Sox originated in the Western League, founded as the Sioux City Cornhuskers in 1894, moving to Saint Paul, Minnesota, as the Saint Paul Saints, and ultimately relocating to Chicago in 1900. The Chicago White Stockings were one of the American League's eight charter franchises when the AL asserted major league status in 1901. The team, which shortened its name to the White Sox in 1904, originally played their home games at South Side Park before moving to Comiskey Park in 1910, before demolishing and rebuilding Comiskey Park in 1990, which is now known as Rate Field. The White Sox won their first World Series, the 1906 World Series against the Cubs, with a defense-oriented team dubbed "the Hitless Wonders", and later won the 1917 World Series against the New York Giants. Their next appearance, the 1919 World Series, was marred by the Black Sox Scandal in which eight members of the White Sox were found to have conspired with gamblers to fix games and lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. In response, the new Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned the players from the league for life. The White Sox have made three World Series appearances since the scandal: 1919, 1959, and 2005. The first came in 1959, where they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, before they finally won their third championship in 2005 against the Houston Astros. The 88 seasons it took the White Sox to win the World Series stands as the longest MLB championship drought in the American League, and the second longest in both leagues, to the Cubs' 108 seasons.

In Their Own Story

The last afternoon of September, 1956. A bar on 35th Street near Comiskey Park is packed, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the murmur of a hundred men watching the same small television. The Yankees are up in Boston. The White Sox have already played. Nobody speaks. A waitress sets down a tray of empty glasses and just stands there, listening. The umpire raises his arm. The Yankees are out. The room detonates. Strangers hug. A man in a rumpled suit weeps openly and doesn't care. Someone shouts, "We're going to the World Series!" and the words feel like a prayer. Outside, the October wind off the lake is already turning cold, but nobody moves toward the door. They are not going anywhere. They are going to Brooklyn. They are going to win the whole thing. They will not, but that night, in that bar, with the radio crackling and the glasses sweating, they are going to win the whole thing.

Reader's Guide

From 1901 to 2025, the White Sox have an overall win-loss record of 9,654–9,714–103 (.498). The team's history includes periods of success and struggle, with notable eras including the "Go-Go White Sox" of the 1950s and 1960s, and the 2005 championship season.

Did You Know?

• The White Sox won the 1906 World Series against the Cubs, earning the nickname "the Hitless Wonders".
• The 1919 World Series was fixed by eight White Sox players in the Black Sox Scandal.
• The White Sox did not win another World Series after 1917 until 2005, a drought of 88 seasons.
• The team's home park was originally called Comiskey Park, then U.S. Cellular Field, then Guaranteed Rate Field, and is now Rate Field.