A horrendous collapse to an abysmal A’s team
You don’t see this every day: In a 14-9 win over Boston, three White Sox players scored on a routine single off the bat of Buck Weaver.
The White Sox suffered a terrible fall-from-ahead loss, 12-10, against the Athletics at Comiskey Park. The home club stormed to an 8-0 lead after just three innings, through a combination of small-ball scoring, bad Philadelphia defense, and a Mike Kreevich two-run homer.
Eddie Smith pitched six-plus innings and gave a lot of the White Sox lead back, but still departed the game in line for an 8-5 win. However, reliever Clint Brown had other ideas; although Brown entered the game with a 6-2 record, 10 saves and a 2.39 ERA, the Athletics just mauled him over his seven outs. Brown not only failed to get to game’s end with a save, but was knocked out of the game in the ninth inning after yielding 10 hits, seven runs (six earned) and blowing the White Sox lead.
After being held scoreless through four, Philadelphia scored in every inning from the fifth on, taking a 12-8 lead into the bottom of the ninth. The White Sox attempted to save face, loading the bases with two outs and actually plating two on a Joe Kuhel single. But as the winning run at the plate, Kreevich tapped out to third base, ending what still stands as the third worst loss (of lead) in White Sox history.
Incidentally, this game was just a blip for Brown; by the end of the season, he’d set a major league record with his 61st appearance of the season. He ended with 2.8 WAR and finished 11th in AL MVP voting.
The White Sox had just played a doubleheader the day before, with the second game going 17 innings in a 5-4 loss to the Red Sox at Comiskey Park.
So what did they do for an encore?
The two teams came back and played a 19-inning game, only this time the White Sox won it, 5-4, scoring three runs in the 19th to pull it out after Boston scored a pair in the top half of the frame. Pinch-hitter Ed “Bud” Stewart’s two-run single tied the game, then Don Lenhardt’s sacrifice fly scored Nellie Fox to win it.
The game remains tied for the fifth-longest in White Sox history, and made for 45 innings played in a span of roughly 36 hours!
Also, amazingly, the two teams had set the record for longest night game in American League history on July 12 — and then broke that record on the very next night!
The White Sox had a total of nine representatives for the American League in the All-Star Game. It was played in Cleveland, and the AL won a slugfest, 11-9, thanks to Nellie Fox, who drove in the winning runs on a single in the eighth inning off Brooklyn’s Carl Erskine. The nine All-Stars remain the franchise record.
In addition to Fox the Sox had Minnie Miñoso, Chico Carrasquel, Sandy Consuegra, Bob Keegan, Sherm Lollar, Virgil Trucks, George Kell and Ferris Fain on the team. Kell and Fain weren’t active, due to injuries.
In addition to Fox’s performance, Miñoso had two hits and Trucks got the save, pitching the ninth inning.
That year, the White Sox would go 94-60-1 and finish in third place.
The White Sox battery of Sherm Lollar and Frank Baumann became only the third such duo to hit back-to-back home runs in a game. They connected off the Yankees’ Bill Stafford in the fifth inning of a 6-2 loss at Comiskey Park.
In an effort to stay in the pennant race, White Sox GM Ed Short acquired Chicago native Bill “Moose” Skowron from the Senators for Joe Cunningham and Frank Kreutzer. Moose would play well for the Sox in the next few seasons and be an All-Star in 1965. In 73 games in 1964, Skowron hit .293.
White Sox ace Jack McDowell was the winning pitcher as the American League beat the National League, 9-3, in the All-Star Game at Camden Yards in Baltimore. McDowell pitched a scoreless fifth inning. He’d go on to become the league’s Cy Young winner later that year, with 22 wins and more than 256 innings pitched.
Frank Thomas joined McDowell on the AL team and made his All-Star Game debut by pinch-hitting for Albert Belle in the eighth inning and singling to center field.
The rebuilding of the White Sox continued, as they shipped lefthander José Quintana to the crosstown Cubs in return for four prospects, including top hitting prospect Eloy Jiménez and top pitching prospect Dylan Cease. Quintana was a solid, stable pitcher for the Sox, one of the most reliable in baseball, who made the All-Star team in 2016. He never had a lot of luck, however, as he garnered more than 60 no-decisions in his five-plus seasons on the team.
While Jiménez has had an up-and-down start to his career on the South Side in large part due to injuries, Cease blossomed into one of the game’s top strikeout artists before being traded to San Diego before the start of the 2024 season.
At the All-Star Game in Denver won by the AL, 5-2, Liam Hendriks came in to pitch the ninth inning and collect the save. It marked the second time a Sox pitcher saved the All-Star Game, and the first time since Virgil Trucks exactly 67 years earlier, at the 1954 game in Cleveland. Hendriks didn’t allow a run, and was wired for sound by Fox Sports. His “commentary” proved to be very entertaining! He was joined on the team by pitchers Lance Lynn and Carlos Rodón, and shortstop Tim Anderson.
Lynn pitched a scoreless second inning, and Anderson played the final few innings but did not get an at-bat.
