​At the outset of a grueling 22-game road trip that would carry them to every American League city except St. Louis, the White Sox dropped a 3-2, 11-inning loss in the nightcap of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. That defeat, by itself, wasn’t extraordinary, but what happened afterward was. The 31-37 Pale Hose proceeded to crumble, dropping a team-record 11 straight games and 18 of 22 to finish July. Ed Walsh and Jim Scott both went 0-3 during the skid, and Doc White lost both of his starts.
The White Sox would finish the season at 68-85, in sixth place, 33 1/2 games behind the AL pennant winner. It was only their second season with a sub-.500 record in their 11-year history. Yet their early decades had shown a similar pattern of rough seasons and resilient stretches, with only four campaigns worse than .500 from 1900 through 1920.
In 1912, seeking to bolster their pitching, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey acquired Eddie Cicotte from the Red Sox after a dispute between Cicotte, his manager, and owner John Taylor. Cicotte would go on to pitch well for Chicago, though his career would be forever shadowed by his involvement in the 1919 Black Sox scandal and his ban from baseball in 1920. In the eight and a half years he spent with the White Sox, Cicotte won 156 games.
By 1915, Shano Collins stole four bases, including home, becoming the fourth White Sox player ever to reach that mark, in a 5-1 win over Washington. Several teammates joined in, as nine steals were recorded in 10 attempts, highlighting Washington’s defensive misadventures against Chicago’s aggressive running game. Happy Felsch was even caught attempting to steal third base—only to score on an errant throw from the beleaguered Senators catcher John Henry. The White Sox trailed 1-0 in the second inning, but in the bottom half they tied the game and, with two outs and the bases loaded, Collins produced a triple-steal that would prove decisive. Nemo Leibold would strike out, so Collins’s hot feet—the quick getaways on the basepaths—turned into the decisive run.
That afternoon, fewer than two months had passed since Lena Blackburne had produced a four-base steal in a game for the White Sox, a feat not matched by any other White Sox batter at the time. Since then, a White Sox player would notch four stolen bases in a game on 10 occasions. Jim Scott benefited from the team’s aggressive baserunning, pitching a complete game and improving his record to 12-3 on the season.
In 1919, Chicago swept a twin bill against the Philadelphia Athletics. Red Faber won both games, 8-7 in relief during the opener and 6-2 in the nightcap, after logging 11 innings in the first game and yielding 10 hits and four runs. In the nightcap, Faber pitched a complete game, and these victories propelled the White Sox into first place in the American League, a position they would hold for the remainder of the season.
By 1921, the White Sox were 31-44, mired in seventh place and 17 games behind the Yankees in the American League standings, making their late-season rally against the powerful Yankees particularly dramatic. They trailed 8-0 in the seventh inning, then staged a three-run rally to mount a controversial and memorable comeback, which remains a notable reminder of the team’s resilience during a period of fluctuating fortunes.