The Chicago White Sox are a charter American League franchise, founded in 1901 by Charles Comiskey after the Western League’s St. Paul club was moved to the South Side. They won the 1906 World Series as the “Hitless Wonders,” beating the crosstown Cubs despite a lineup that lived on pitching, bunts, and timely hitting. The 1917 club, led by Eddie Collins, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Eddie Cicotte, captured another championship. Two years later, the 1919 World Series against Cincinnati produced the Black Sox scandal: eight players were accused of conspiring with gamblers, banned for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and the franchise spent decades trying to outrun the stain.

Comiskey Park, opened in 1910, hosted decades of South Side baseball, Bill Veeck’s promotional theater, and the exploding scoreboard. Luke Appling, Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, and Early Wynn helped the 1959 “Go-Go Sox” win the pennant, the club’s first since 1919, before they fell to the Dodgers. The 1970s brought Disco Demolition Night, a riotous 1979 promotion that forfeited a game and became a pop-culture artifact. Veeck’s second ownership stint and later Jerry Reinsdorf’s purchase in 1981 set the modern business era, including the move to a new ballpark in 1991, now Rate Field.

Frank Thomas, the Big Hurt, was the offensive centerpiece of the 1990s, winning back-to-back MVPs in 1993 and 1994. Magglio Ordóñez, Paul Konerko, and a rebuilt pitching staff eventually delivered the drought-breaker. In 2005, Ozzie Guillén’s White Sox stormed through October: they swept the defending champion Red Sox in the ALDS, beat the Angels, and swept Houston in the World Series for the franchise’s first title in 88 years. Jermaine Dye was named Series MVP, and the parade down the South Side finally answered generations of near-misses and scandal lore.

Since 2005 the White Sox have oscillated between contention and rebuilds. The 2008 division winners, the 2020–21 clubs built around Tim Anderson, José Abreu, and Lucas Giolito, and later collapses showed how quickly South Side hope can turn. Three World Series championships, a complicated relationship with the North Side Cubs, and a fan base that prizes toughness over glamour remain the franchise’s through-line: Chicago’s original American League club, still playing in the neighborhood Comiskey chose more than a century ago.