Today in White Sox History: January 25
Leury begins his Legend
1985
The first Australian ever to play for the White Sox, Shane Lindsay, was born in Melbourne.
Lindsay only had a four-game, 10-day major league career. He was called up as the season spiraled down the drain in 2011, with a solid debut in Detroit on September 4 (one scoreless inning, with a walk and a strikeout). His mother had made an arduous journey from Australia to see his debut — and succeeded, getting to Comerica Park in time after 20-odd hours of flights.
Lindsay’s encore, on September 6, was not so sweet, as he pitched the sixth inning of an 18-2 mauling, giving up seven earned on eight hits. That one outing swelled his ERA from 0.00 to 31.50.
Two much more “normal” outings that year nearly trimmed that ERA by a third, but he would never see the majors again. Not for lack of trying, though: Lindsay pitched in the White Sox, Cubs and Dodgers organizations in 2012 and got roughed up over our winter in 2012-13 pitching with a 10.05 ERA for the Melbourne Aces down in Australia.
Three years later, Lindsay made a comeback with Melbourne, pitching from 2015-17 over two seasons, to a 2.70 ERA over 10 games.
2015
White Sox farmhand Leury García helped the Gigantes de Cibao win their first-ever Dominican League title. In the Game 8 clincher, Cibao won, 12-5, with García scoring three times.
Leury has yet to make his mark in the majors, debuting in 2013 for Texas and getting into 74 games the next year with the White Sox, but at this point he was coming off of a year spent mostly at Triple-A, hitting .298/.340/.395 with the Charlotte Knights.
The next year would provide García more Dominican League World Series heroics, as well as more time spent mostly in the minors, before the superutilityman paused his Winter League play and started making more significant and full-time contributions in the majors.