White Sox Baseball Team
Baseball is one of the most popular sports in the United
States. People of all ages enjoy either spending their
evenings watching baseball matches on TV or playing baseball
themselves. The game comprises bat, ball and nine players in
each team. Since eighteenth century baseball was played in
England. Later it was brought across the ocean by the
immigrants (British and Irish).
At the end of the nineteenth century the interest to
baseball was so high that it was proclaimed to be the
national sports game. The professional league in America is
called Major League Baseball (MLB) and consists of two
parts: National League (NL) and American League (AL). Every
professional team grows itself new players by arranging
minor league teams, which compete with other teams of same
level.
One of the best MLB team is based in Chicago, Illinois. The
team is called White Sox and it plays in AL. The players of
the team wear the uniform of black, silver and white colors.
The team has changed to many colors of uniform over the
years. It was them that first put last names of players on
jerseys. The White Sox’s latest big approach was winning the
World Series in 2005. The club was established in 1901 and
was called White Stockings, but later it was decided to make
the name shorter and call it White Sox from then on. The
fans call the them just “the Sox”, but there’s a plenty of
nicknames present, for example, “the South Siders”, “the
Pale House”, “the ChiSox” (Chicago + Sox), “the Go-Go Sox”,
“the Good Guys”, “the Black Sox”. Sometimes Spanish mass
media still refers to them as “White Stockings”.
As any other baseball team White Socks has its own mascots.
From 1981 till 1988 the Sox enjoyed a couple Ribbie and
Roobarb by name. But in the early nineties of the twentieth
century the team got a cartoon hero as a mascot (“Waldo the
White Sox Wolf”), which advertised the silver and black
Sox-logoed goods to children at that time. Now the team has
a new mascot called SouthPaw.
The Active Roster of the team now includes:
- Pitchers: Mark Buehrle(56), D. J. Carrasco(53), John Danks(50),
Octavio Dotel(26), Gavin Floyd(34), Freddy García(43), Lucas
Harrell(64), Daniel Hudson(54), Bobby Jenks(45), Scott
Linebrink(71), Jon Link(61), Jeffrey Marquez(48), Jhonny
Núñez(65), Jake Peavy(44), Tony Peña(57), Clevelan Santeliz(63),
Matt Thornton(37), Carlos Torres(60), Randy Williams(67)
- Catchers: Cole Armstrong(38), Ramón Castro(27), Tyler
Flowers(39), A. J. Pierzynski(12)
- Infielders: Gordon Beckham(15), Josh Fields(7), Chris
Getz(17), Paul Konerko(14), Mark Kotsay(30), Brent
Lillibridge(18), Jayson Nix(5), Alexei Ramírez(10), Dayán
Viciedo(24)
- Outfielders: Alejandro De Aza(--), Jermaine Dye(23), Scott
Podsednik(22), Carlos Quentin(20), Alex Ríos(51)
Every Sox’ game is commented and appears in the media.
Darrin “DJ” Johnson and Ed Farmer are especially known for
calling every White Sox game. Also, Chris Rodney is famous
for his pre-game and post-game shows with players in the
studio, giving predictions or comments on their actions. In
2009 Shout! Factory is going to release a DVD which covers
the entire history of the team and includes interviews with
ex- and present players. It will be called “Chicago White
Sox Memories”.
Through years since 1901 the Sox were showing Americans
great and aggressive games (it’s well known, that apart from
many other sports which have time limits, baseball does not
have any and the players of a leading team can not take an
advantage of just killing time till the and of match and
this fact gives the game a very aggressive style of
playing). Nowadays Chicago White Sox have thousands of fans
all over the world who watch every game of their favorite
team and enjoy having, perhaps, the Sox-style baseball
uniform or other Sox-related goods. The team itself has
passed through thousands of games and despite the fact that
players were changed frequently, the level of the team did
never drop down. The retired numbers of the Sox are: 2
(Fox), 3 (Baines), 4 (Appling), 9 (Monso), 11 (Aparicio), 16
(Lyons), 19 (Pierce), 72 (Fisk) and 42 (Robinson).
The team with dozen of nicknames, long and colorful history,
one of the most branded baseball team logos and thousand of
fans, Chicago White Sox are Americas most watched team of
the National League of the MLB.