Charles Comiskey
|
Charles Comiskey baseball card, 1887 |
Charles Albert Comiskey (
August 15,
1859 -
October 26,
1931) was a
Major League Baseball player,
manager and team owner. A native of
Chicago, Illinois, he batted and threw right handed.
Comiskey Park was built under his guidance and named for him.
Charlie Comiskey was the third of the eight children of John and Annie Comiskey, and the family lived in Holy Family Parish in Chicago. Charles' father, "Honest John," was the political boss of his Chicago ward, serving as an alderman from 1859 to 1863 and again from 1867 to 1870.
"Honest John" would have liked his son to become a businessman or a plumber, but Charles liked playing baseball. Over the objections of his father, he joined a local semipro team.
His father then sent Charles to
St. Mary's College, Kansas, where, John hoped, he would not have the opportunity to play ball. Instead, he met the club- and league-organizer
Ted Sullivan, who already owned a ballclub in
Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Comiskey played in Milwaukee and with the
Dubuque club that Sullivan established.
Comiskey entered the
American Association in
1882 as a player with the
St. Louis Brown Stockings. He managed the team during parts of its first seaons and took over full-time in
1885, leading the Browns to four consecutive Association championships and a close second in
1889. He also played and managed for the
Chicago Pirates in the
Players League (
1890), the
Browns again in (
1891), and the
Cincinnati Reds in the
National League (
1892-
94).
Comiskey left Cincinnati and the majors in fall 1894 to purchase the Western League club in
Sioux City, Iowa and move it to
Saint Paul, Minnesota. He had compiled a .264
batting average with 29
home runs, 883
RBI and 419
steals. As a manager, he posted a 839-542 record.
After five seasons sharing the Twin Cities with another Western League club in
Minneapolis, Comiskey and his colleagues arranged to share Chicago with the
National League, whose club (the
Chicago Cubs today) played on the West Side. The St Paul Saints moved to the South Side as the renamed
White Stockings of the renamed
American League for the
1900 season and Comiskey returned to the majors, we say in retrospect, one year later when the entire league declared itself independent and equal.
As owner of the White Sox from 1900 until his death in
1931, Comiskey oversaw building Comiskey Park in
1910 and winning five American League championships. He became unpopular with his players and that is seen as a factor in the
Black Sox scandal, when eight players on the A.L. champions conspired to "throw" the
1919 World Series to the N.L. champions Cincinnati Reds. Comiskey was notoriously frugal, even forcing his players to pay to launder their own uniforms. Interestingly, it was the inevitably filthy uniforms that actually led to the team being known as the "Black Sox"; the nickname existed well before the gambling scandal.
Comiskey is sometimes credited with the innovation of playing the
first base position behind first base or inside the foul line, a practice which has since become common. He was inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame in
1939.
Comiskey died in
Eagle River, Wisconsin at age of 72.
*
Baseball Hall of Fame biography*
Find-A-Grave profile for Charles Comiskey*
blacksoxfan.com A collection of Charles Comiskey & other Black Sox related Baseball Cards
* Bike, William S.
Streets of the Near West Side. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 1996, p. 67-69.
