By Woodrow Carroll
Every Major League Baseball team goes through a stretch that ends being viewed by many observers as the worst in franchise history. Coming into this season, many long-time Chicago White Sox backers will say the 1970 Club stands as the franchise low point.
In 1970 the White Sox ended up with a 56-106 (.346) record only 42 games out in the American League West race. If you are looking for other significant measurements as to the depths the 1970 team had sunk, please read on.
The 1970 White Sox were consistent if nothing else. Playing a 162-game schedule, the White Sox opened in April with a 7-12 record.. An ominous sign that proved very prophetic was the 12-0 loss to the Minnesota Twins in the season opener.
The 1970 Sox ended with a losing record for each of the seven months in 1970. Game 162 in for the Sox was October 1. Playing in Los Angeles against the Angels, the Pale Hose dropped a fitting 5-4 13-inning game.
The blame was there to spread around in 1970. Don Gutteridge started the season as White Sox manager and was out after a 49-87 record. Bill Adair stepped in and after a 4-6 record made an exit. The final 16 games had Chuck Tanner as the manager. In time, Tanner was good enough to win the World Series in 1979 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 16 games guiding the 1970 White Sox, Tanner was 3-13 to close out the team’s schedule.
Not only did the 1970 edition of the Chicago White Sox fail to take a winning record in any month, the Club found no team it could hold a won-loss edge. The best the Sox could do was end up 6-6 against both the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians.
Knowledgeable baseball fans were soon aware of what was in store on Chicago’s South Side in 1970. They proved it by staying away from Comiskey Park en mass. A franchise capable of drawing more than a million fans in better times, topped out at 495,355. The American League was comprised of 12 teams at the time and the White Sox were the worst fan draw for good reason.
The 1970 White Sox were a collective failure. The managers were not the only ones to lose jobs. Early in September, Ed Short was fired as Sox general manager.
The leading hitter for the 1970 Sox, in batting average, was Luis Aparicio who hit .313. Sadly, at age 36, Aparicio was not viewed as part of the team’s bright future, and his positive contribution was largely dismissed. One of the strangest stats to ponder might be the fact that the only time Aparicio hit better than .300 in a Major League Baseball career that stretched 1956 through 1973, was in 1970.
With a team 50 games under .500, having a pitcher with a winning record was asking too much. Tommy John was 12-17 and his victory total was the best for a struggling pitching staff.
•Scary!! After a 6-3 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers Sunday, June 2 this season, the 2024 version of the White Sox were 15-45 (.250) in won-loss record. The season is more than one-third of the way finished and the White Sox record was decidedly inferior to the 1970 Club. The team this season is poised to set all manner of records for negativity. The Sox were 30th, or last, in batting and 29th, next to last) in earned run for pitching.