Robin Ventura
Six-time Gold Glove third baseman and former White Sox manager.
Robin Mark Ventura (born July 14, 1967) is an American former professional baseball third baseman and manager. Ventura played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Chicago White Sox, New York Mets, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. He was also the manager for the White Sox for five seasons. The White Sox selected Ventura with the tenth overall pick in the 1988 amateur draft from Oklahoma State University (OSU). He is a six-time Rawlings Gold Glove winner, two-time MLB All-Star selection and a National College Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.
- Position
- First Base / Third Base
- Years in Pinstripes
- 1993–2003
- Batting Hand
- Left
- Jersey Number
- 18
- Managerial Tenure (Sox)
- 2017–2020
- Signature Trait
- Power hitting, larger-than-life personality
Lore & Background
While playing college baseball for the Cowboys at OSU, Ventura was a three-time All-American who achieved a Division I-record 58-game hitting streak. In 1988, he won the Dick Howser Trophy and Golden Spikes Award and played for the gold medal-winning Olympic baseball team. In his MLB career, he hit 18 grand slams, ranking fifth all-time. In Game 5 of the 1999 National League Championship Series, Ventura hit the 'Grand Slam Single' that won the game but did not actually become a home run because he was unable to complete the circuit around the base paths. Later in his playing career, cartilage and arthritis issues in his ankle hampered his abilities in the field. After the 2011 season, the White Sox hired Ventura to be their manager. He managed the team from 2012 until 2016.
In Their Own Story
October 1997. Comiskey Park. The air smells like stale beer and October cold. The scoreboard flickers. Ventura steps in, adjusts his batting gloves, and the crowd—that ragged, howling, beer-soaked crowd—goes quiet in a way it only goes quiet for him. The pitcher winds. The ball leaves the hand. Ventura's bat meets it with a sound like a car door slamming shut, and the ball is gone, arcing high over the left-field seats, over the chain-link, into the dark beyond 35th Street. The park detonates. Strangers hug. A kid in a too-big pinstripe jersey is lifted onto a stranger's shoulders. Ventura doesn't run the bases with ceremony. He jogs, taps the bag, and walks back to the dugout with his hands still on the bat, as if to say: yeah, I did that. I do that every night. The South Side will never forget.
Reader's Guide
Ventura played for the Chicago White Sox from his MLB debut in 1989 through the 1998 season. He was primarily a third baseman. He managed the White Sox from 2012 to 2016. His jersey number with the White Sox is not specified in the source.
Did You Know?
- Ventura was a three-time All-American at Oklahoma State University and set an NCAA Division I record with a 58-game hitting streak.
- He hit 18 grand slams in his MLB career, ranking fifth all-time.
- In the 1999 NLCS, Ventura hit a walk-off bases-loaded hit that was officially scored a single because he was mobbed before rounding the bases, known as the 'Grand Slam Single'.
- Ventura won six Rawlings Gold Glove Awards during his playing career.
More in Legendary Players & Managers
Elsewhere in the Chicago White Sox universe
Spotted an error? Know more?
This is a living reference — every entry is fact-audited, and reader corrections feed straight into our audit queue. Suggest an edit · See this site's audit record