Go Go All the Way in '59: A look at the White Sox's 1st pennant in 40 years

By Phil Ellenbecker
  Forty years after the ignominy of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal; after years of suffering in the wilderness of the American League, 24 of 30 seasons in the second division after the Black Sox were exposed in 1920; after a 1950 resurgence that saw the White Sox continually falling short of the New York Yankees and/or Cleveland Indians, five straight third-place finishes followed by two seconds; after all that — the Chicago White Sox rose to the mountaintop with an AL pennant in 1959. Moses spent 40 years in the desert, the White Sox spent 40 years out of first place.
  The 4-2 loss in the '59 World Series couldn't diminish too much from what the '59 team accomplished and the thrills they provided — they were nicknamed the "Go Go Sox" for their hustling play —for their long-afflicted fans.
  This series will attempt to cover some of the key moments in the wild ride of the '59 ChiSox to the flag.  Along the way, I've at times went beyond a straight-forward account to throw in some what I thought to be interesting side notes and trivia, mainly just self-indulgence since it's my blog, after all.
  Most of the details in these accounts came from retrosheet.org and baseballreference.com, which I consider to be the greatest contributions ever to the internet. Also a great crutch was the Society for American Baseball Research's Biography Project (http://sabr.org/bioproject).