The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly: Chicago White Sox

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly is a series of books featuring highlights from the history of various major league baseball teams from Triumph Books, a Chicago area publisher specializing in books about sports. This book, authored by Mark Gonzales, features the Chicago White Sox, and it was recently featured on our March 2009 list of the best books published in Chicago.

The book is somewhat of a crash course in the history of the White Sox, featuring players, managers and owners, draft highlights, and even a few scandals. The book goes through the Sox’s history, but doesn’t move chronologically, rather it has sections featuring various aspects of the team’s history. Each section includes a lot of anecdotes and information from primary sources, rather than simply citing information from newspapers. It’s a book that can teach a casual fan of the White Sox new things about their team. For example, speaking off the record about current Manage Ozzie Guillen before he was added to the team, scout Jerry Krause said, “You can’t quote me on a guy who is as good as Aparisio…he’ll be our short stop next year and for the next ten years afterward. This sucker is going to play” (36).

One particularly interesting section of the book focuses on long-time Sox trainer Herm Schnieder working with Bo Jackson, Robin Ventura, Ozzie Guillen, and Michael Jordan. The section details how Schnieder helped these athletes recover from injuries to go on to play important roles for the White Sox, and how Schnieder helped prepare Jordan to play in the MLB. It was widely publicized that Jordan attempted a Major League career resulting in a spectacular failure, but few people know how hard he worked to try to make it. For example, he had a schedule of six secret work outs a week. “Schnieder devised a plan: Jordan would call him when he was five minutes away from U.S. Cellular Field, and Schnieder would unlock the chain that would enable Jordan to pull into the park past the television docks” (95). “‘These were long days, but this was something he wanted to do,’ Schnieder said. “It was far from a cakewalk…A lot of people who would have tried it probably wouldn’t have survived, but he survived’” (97).

In the section of the book about the Sox’s front office, Gonzales tells the story behind Harry Caray’s switch from the Sox’s announcing booth to the cross town rival Cubs’ and WGN-TV, a move that rocketed the Cubs to “nationwide popularity” (63). It was a dark moment in the Sox’s history akin to the familiar 1919 “Black Sox,” an scandal that Gonzales also details in the book.

I knew of many of the stories in the book (the new U.S. Cellular field, the 2005 Championship, etc.), but Gonzales took it just enough further that, as a casual baseball fan, it continued to hold my interest without being too heavy. He quotes enough batting averages and win-loss records to explain the history, but doesn’t dwell on stats. The book really reads as one big exposition to the team: straight forward, with a little humor and a great many anecdotes. It was those anecdotes, particularly in sections like those about Manager Ozzie Guillen and previous owner Bill Veeck, that make the book uniquely interesting. Gonzales covers what seems to be all the highlights of the Sox with a tone that allows you to breeze through and enjoy it, provided you’re at least interested in baseball or, preferably, the Sox (as a Tigers fan, it was tough). The factual reporting style of the writing really matches the subject, and there’s even enough pictures—I found the historical ones of particular interest because I hadn’t seen any of them before—to supplement appropriately.

I could pull out quotes all day that a Sox fan would definitely appreciate but if you’re a fan of the Sox and you think you’d be interested, I would suggest you just pick up the book. It was a thoroughly entertaining read and I think that any fan (of any age) would not only enjoy this book, but would learn a bunch of interesting anecdotes about their team. For those of you who are fans of other baseball teams, there are The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly series books about many MLB teams (by various authors), including one on the Tigers for people like me.