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Charles Comiskey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (October 2007) |
| Charles Comiskey | ||
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| First baseman/Manager/Owner | ||
| Born: August 15, 1859 | ||
| Died: October 26, 1931 (aged 72) | ||
| Batted: Right | Threw: Right | |
| MLB debut | ||
| May 2, 1882 for the St. Louis Browns |
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| Final game | ||
| September 12, 1894 for the Cincinnati Reds |
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| Career statistics | ||
| Batting average | .264 | |
| Hits | 1,530 | |
| Runs | 994 | |
| Teams | ||
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As Player
As Manager As Owner |
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| Career highlights and awards | ||
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| Member of the National | ||
 Baseball Hall of Fame |
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| Elected | 1939 | |
| Election Method | Veteran's Committee | |
Charles Albert Comiskey (August 15, 1859 - October 26, 1931) was a Major League Baseball player, manager and team owner. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Comiskey batted and threw right handed. Comiskey Park was built under his guidance and named for him.
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Charlie Comiskey was the third of the eight children of John and Annie Comiskey. 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 semi-pro 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 team 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 seasons 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 White Stockings of the renamed American League for the 1900 season. The American then declared itself a major league starting in 1901.
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 lost popularity with his players, whose views of him became hateful, 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 stingy(his defenders called him "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. His grandson, Charles Comiskey Jr. also owned the Chicago White Sox for a time.
- Bike, William S. Streets of the Near West Side. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 1996, p. 67-69.
- Axelson, Gustaf W. (1919), "Commy": the life story of Charles A. Comiskey, the "Grand old Roman" of baseball and for nineteen years president and owner of the American league baseball team "The White Sox,", Chicago: Reilly & Lee Co, <http://www.archive.org/details/commylifestoryof00axel>.
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference
- Baseball-reference.com – Major league career managerial statistics
- baseballhalloffame.org – Hall of Fame biography page
- Charlie Comiskey at Cardtarget.com
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| Schmelz • Loftus • Comiskey • Ewing • Allen • McPhee • Bancroft • Kelley • Hanlon • Ganzel • Griffith • O'Day • Tinker • Herzog • Wingo • Mathewson • Groh • Moran • Hendricks • Howley • Bush • O'Farrell • Shotton • Dressen • Wallace • McKechnie • Gowdy • Neun • Walters • Sewell • Hornsby • Tebbetts • Dykes • Smith • Hutchinson • Sisler • Heffner • Bristol • Anderson • McNamara • Nixon • Rapp • Rose • Helms • Piniella • Pérez • Johnson • Knight • McKeon • Boone • Miley • Narron • Mackanin • Baker |
Categories: Cleanup from October 2007 | All pages needing cleanup | Major league players from Illinois | 1859 births | 1931 deaths | 19th century baseball players | Baseball Hall of Fame | Baseball executives | Baseball managers | Baseball player-managers | Chicago White Sox | Chicago Pirates players | People from Chicago | Cincinnati Reds players | Irish-American sportspeople | Major league first basemen | St. Louis Browns (AA) players | St. Louis Browns (AA) managers | Cincinnati Reds managers