McCuddy’s Tavern: a place of memories. . .

I could spend this entire post writing of seasons that came and went (usually with a whimper!), but I’ll hold off on all of that for a future post. What the Ken Burns documentary brought back to me this week was the aura of the ballparks and those places and various nooks and crannies that lent themselves to making the parks and the surrounding neighborhoods unique.

While watching Ken Burns’s section about Babe Ruth, I immediately thought of that special place across from Comiskey Park, on the south side of 35th Street, known as McCuddy’s Tavern, a place that had been there since the park’s inception in 1910. McCuddy’s was closed in 1988 to make way for the new stadium, but everyone was under the assumption that a “new” McCuddy’s would open right along with the new park.

Never happened! And that has always been a shame. Any longtime Sox fan will remember the legendary status McCuddy’s held down through the years. The old tavern was truly a wonderful place before and after Sox games. Usually, shoulder-to-shoulder, we’d gather in there and drink cold beer, eat those terrific hot dogs, and look at the big bat on the wall that was a gift from Babe Ruth.

Legend has it that Ruth would often run across during games and grab a hot dog (or three) and quaff a cold beer. Whether or not that is true, I never heard for sure. But it

was always fun to speculate about it while having a pre-game beer and hot dog.

McCuddy’s was a piece of Sox history, and not to have it around as a Sox gathering spot is a sin. I miss those days and the friends I met in there. I wonder if any of them still attend Sox games and remember–as I do–those summer afternoons and evenings in the friendly environs of McCuddy’s.

See you at the ballpark…

Let’s get it started again…

Hello again, friends! Having failed to post here for a very long time (February 2015), I have decided to shake off the dust and scrape away the cobwebs that have accumulated on All Things White Sox and blog about my favorite baseball team.

There are many reasons for my having seemingly abandoned this site for so long, one of which would be the very dismal and pointless 2015 baseball season for the White Sox, which was supposed to be a vast improvement over the very dismal and pointless 2014 baseball season!  That didn’t work out so well, and, thankfully, fall and winter arrived and I had the Blackhawks adventures to winning the Stanley Cup to enjoy and carry me through.

Primarily, though, my lack of attention here is a result of devoting my blogging efforts to Down Many Roads. But I’ve missed writing about baseball, and hope that there will be some readers (Sox fans or not) who will jump aboard—again, or for the first time—and share some thoughts and memories about the experiences of being a White Sox fan.

Minnie Minoso (Wikipedia)

Minnie Minoso and Billy Pierce left us last year, and Eddie Einhorn recently. To say that there are many, many memories to share here about each would be a vast understatement. Stay tuned.

Eddie Einhorn (wsbt.com)

Billy Pierce  (Wikipedia)

My goal right now is to post once a week, and I look forward to hearing about others’ experiences as well.

My feeling is that it’s long overdue to get this started again, so let’s do just that!

Until next time…

 

Thoughts of spring training in the midst of winter’s chill…

Spring training – A Cactus League game between the Cubs and the White Sox at HoHoKam Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Spending the last few days running the trusty Honda snow thrower, and cleaning up with the snow shovel, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m ready for those wonderful four words: Pitchers and catchers report.

Yep, and that will happen very soon—February 19, to be exact. And a few days later, the rest of the position players will be in full workout mode in the sun of Arizona.

As a youngster, I would forget about my White Sox during the winter months. Not because I didn’t care about them, but because I was too caught up in Indiana high school basketball and following my favorite Fort Wayne Komets of the International Hockey League.

Then, as February got going during those years, I began to see small stories on the sports pages and perhaps a brief mention every now and then on the evening TV sports that Major League spring training camps would be opening pretty soon. I would begin to think about those wonderful spring days ahead, and winter wouldn’t seem so long!

Spring training in those days always seemed so very far away. Sarasota, where the White Sox trained and played their spring games at Payne Park, was way down in Florida, as were most other teams’ camps, but I had no idea about what the fields or facilities looked like. It wasn’t Comiskey Park on Chicago’s South Side, that’s all I knew.

Having never been to Florida, or anywhere else in the South for that matter, I was quite unfamiliar with the lay of the land, other than it must be vastly different from my home in Huntington, Indiana. Places like Pompano, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Tampa, Bradenton, and Vero Beach sounded like sunny villages far, far away. And, I guess, to a young boy of 11, they probably were!

In my mind, I tried to picture and imagine what these remote, out-of-the-way Florida outposts looked like. Were there palm trees in the outfield? Were there orange groves all around? What did the players do when they weren’t working out or practicing? Oh, so many youthful questions!

Of course, today it’s pretty obvious that the players and coaches and managers report to training camp ready to get another season started. The players, for the most part, are well conditioned and in playing shape right away. Not so in the days of my youth when I’d hear and read stories about players checking in overweight and in need of a few weeks of running and a strict regimen of exercise and a diet more conducive for getting in shape. It must have been pretty interesting to see those players arrive at spring training camp and hit the field for the first time to begin the arduous process of grinding into condition under the hot, Florida sun.

Just thinking about some of my youthful imaginings of White Sox spring training all these years later, has me chomping at the bit for the next couple of weeks to fly by and have all players happily in camp and diligently taking the first steps to becoming a pretty good team in 2015.

The White Sox haven’t been in Sarasota for several years, but I’m pretty sure the Arizona sunshine has done just as well during the weeks of spring training as they did all those years ago. And just as it was about this time way back when, I’m getting excited for the return of the White Sox! What winter chill?

See you at the ballpark!

Spring Training, Vero Beach, Florida, 1994, by Rick Dikeman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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I’m back and ready…

U.S. Cellular Field on Chicago’s South Side. Home of the Chicago White Sox (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

OK, it’s been much too long since I’ve attended to—or even thought about—this particular blog. With other writing tasks enough to fill up most mornings (when I write), I have been very neglectful of picking up where I left off on All Things White Sox.

These past few months, however, I have climbed out of the doldrums of trying to find good things to share and write about concerning my favorite baseball team, getting an extremely well-timed kick in the rear from the Chicago White Sox themselves!

With their recent acquisitions of Jeff Samardzija, Melky Cabrera, and David Robertson, there is definitely a spark of life in a team that had become mostly irrelevant last year, a year we will not dwell on as this blog gets going again. Suffice it to say, the three above-mentioned players are not just run-of-the-mill bodies pulled from a discard pile. Without a doubt, the bullpen woes we witnessed time and again are already fading from view, and Cabrera’s offensive skills and outfield play will be welcomed with open arms.

Perhaps the promise that showed in the young starting pitching staff, with the addition of Samardzjia, will now reach its wonderful potential, knowing that their quality starts won’t be washed away through the efforts of an inept relief corps. We can only hope. And if those hopes are reached, who knows what other kind of fun-to-watch baseball is going to take place at U.S. Cellular (Comiskey Park, always!)

It will be important for Robin Ventura to be that good manager that many think he can be if the Sox are to make this one of those good summers. Abreu, Eaton, Ramirez, and others need to step it up, provide the day-to-day leadership, and win games they should win, and steal some they shouldn’t!

At any rate, I’m back here and plan to post my thoughts weekly about Sox-related topics from the current team to those from the past. Coming soon: My thoughts about train travel and what it must have been like when the Major League teams got from place to place via the rails.

See you at the ballpark…

English: Outside of Old Comiskey Park Chicago 1986 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Beer Mugs & Seat Cushions: Those Great Give-Aways!

One of my favorite memories. Post a couple of years ago.

All Things White Sox...

English: Game action at Comiskey Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nail biting my way through another bottom of the ninth inning the other night, as the Sox managed to hold off Kansas City (Kansas City again!) for a much-needed victory, I flashed back many years ago to a game where the fans witnessed a blown save, (I believe Skip Pitlock was the culprit on the mound for the Sox). And in one massive effort that looked as though it had been pre-planned, the large Comiskey Park crowd on Seat Cushion Night showered the entire field with those White Sox seat cushions. Of course, not wanting to part with my own, I remain firmly seated, refusing to send mine sailing off into the night skies.

For many years, that seat cushion hung in my garage and always was a reminder of those many give-aways that owner Bill Veeck made…

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