Best 50 — 1917 Chicago White Sox (#47)
A great ballclub emerges two years before the Black Sox scandal
This newsletter is slowly traveling through the Best 50. That’s my list of history’s 50 greatest ballclubs, as ranked by my new book, Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams. Today’s story focuses on No. 47, the 1917 Chicago White Sox.
Here’s a quick boilerplate explanation that I’m appending to every story in this series:
I compiled the Best 50 by analyzing 2,544 major-league teams from 1903 to 2024. Those clubs have been ranked by their team scores (TS), which are plotted on a 100-point scale. (A given club’s all-time percentile is the percentage of the other 2,543 teams that it outperformed.)
See my book for an explanation of my TS calculations. The book also offers separate breakdowns of the best and worst clubs for every decade and franchise, comprehensive profiles of the Best 50 (including position-by-position lineups and much more information than you’ll find in this newsletter), and similar summaries of the 10 worst teams of all time.
Now on to today’s profile.
Facts and figures
Team: 1917 Chicago White Sox
Team score: 85.163 points
All-time rank: 47 of 2,544
All-time percentile: 98.19%
Season record: 100-54 (.649)
Season position: First place in American League
Final status: World champion
Season summary
A pair of savvy acquisitions resurrected the Chicago White Sox, who hadn’t won an American League pennant since 1906. Superstar Eddie Collins was purchased from the Philadelphia Athletics for $50,000 in December 1914. Joe Jackson, a phenomenal hitter, arrived eight months later in a trade with the Cleveland Indians.
The offensive spark provided by Collins and Jackson propelled the White Sox to second place in the American League in 1916, only two games behind the pennant-winning Boston Red Sox. Chicago breezed to the AL championship in 1917 with a nine-game cushion.
The triumph was clouded by rumors that the Sox had engaged in subterfuge to pad their lead. A group of Chicago players, led by first baseman Chick Gandil, reportedly paid Detroit’s pitchers to ease off in a pair of doubleheaders on Labor Day weekend, and indeed, the Sox won all four games, romping to 34 runs in the process. American League officials and White Sox executives chose to ignore the gossip.
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Postseason summary
John McGraw’s New York Giants had qualified for three World Series earlier in the decade, only to lose all three. The unhappy streak nagged at McGraw as he geared up for 1917’s series, though pundits doubted the Giants would lose again. “I can’t see how they’ll be defeated,” wrote Sporting News correspondent Joe Vila. “McGraw will have every man on the team fit to battle for his life.”
The White Sox confounded the experts by taking the first two games. The Giants rallied with back-to-back shutouts to tie the series, then ran out of steam. The Sox rapped 14 hits in an 8-5 Game Five victory and capitalized on three unearned runs in Game Six. Chicago’s 4-2 win clinched the title.
The jubilant 39-year-old manager of the White Sox, Pants Rowland, approached an apoplectic McGraw for a post-series handshake. “Get away from me, you busher,” McGraw snarled.
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Lineup summary
The White Sox were pleasantly surprised — even shocked — by Eddie Cicotte’s sudden emergence as the ace of their pitching staff. The 33-year-old knuckleballer had fashioned a pedestrian 119-100 record in 10 previous seasons, yet he exploded to 28 wins and an ERA of 1.53 in 1917, leading the American League in both categories. Starters Lefty Williams, Red Faber, and Reb Russell combined for another 48 victories.
The club’s two best hitters posted decent stats, though each had reason to be disappointed. Left fielder Joe Jackson batted .301, the worst full-season average over his 13-year career. Second baseman Eddie Collins hit .289, his first BA below .300 since 1908. The two stars had virtually nothing in common other than their baseball skills. Jackson was functionally illiterate. “It don’t take school stuff to help a fella play ball,” he said. Collins was an Ivy League graduate.
All eight players who fixed the 1919 World Series — the infamous Black Sox — were members of Chicago’s 1917 roster, including five regulars in the infield and outfield. One of the future miscreants, center fielder Happy Felsch, led the ’17 Sox with a .308 average and 99 runs batted in.
Three of the Clean Sox — those who played it straight in 1919 — would eventually be enshrined in the Hall of Fame: Collins, Faber, and Ray Schalk. The latter batted only .226 in 1917, but he was agile and durable, perhaps the best defensive catcher of his era.