Today in White Sox History: March 8
Happy birthday to a bullpen catcher with a friendly smile
1942
Future White Sox MVP Dick Allen was born in Wampum, Pa.
Allen set a franchise mark with 37 home runs in his 1972 MVP year, along with 113 RBIs. His 8.6 WAR in 1972 ranks second all-time among White Sox hitters (Eddie Collins, 9.4, 1915) and 14th all-time among all White Sox players.
Perhaps most importantly of all, Allen was credited by numerous sources as saving the White Sox in Chicago, his play driving attendance when a move to Milwaukee or other cities loomed as a consistent threat.
Allen died in 2020, still short of Hall of Fame election. In the most recent Veterans Committee vote in 2021, Allen was just one vote shy of immortality.
1948
WGN announced that it would televise Chicago White Sox games for the first time during the upcoming season.
Veteran radio broadcasters Jack Brickhouse and Harry Creighton would become the first White Sox TV announcers in history. The first game WGN aired was an exhibition game against the Cubs from Wrigley Field on April 16, 1948, in the freezing cold!. The White Sox won, 4-1.
WGN televised White Sox games from 1948-67, 1981, and 1990-2019.
1961
Former White Sox player and bullpen catcher Mark Salas was born, in Montebello, Calif. The catcher, drafted in 1979 by the St. Louis Cardinals, made a major impact as a rookie, with 2.2 WAR and an eighth-place finish in AL Rookie of the Year polling as a member of the Minnesota Twins. However, Salas never played in as many as 92 games after that season, taking tours with the Yankees, Tigers, Cleveland, and in 1988, the White Sox. The catcher had a barely-positive season (0.3 WAR) backing up Carlton Fisk, but was released at the end of Spring Training 1989.
Salas spent much more than one year with the White Sox later, as a coach and scout. Immediately upon retirement, he went to work as a coach in the White Sox system. Later he served as White Sox bullpen catcher from 1996-99, and again under former teammate Ozzie Guillén starting in 2007. In-between coaching, Salas scouted for the Sox.
Salas is also one of 10 major-leaguers in history whose surname is a Palindrome.
2011
On International Women’s Day, former White Sox front office analyst Kim Ng moved from assistant GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers — the highest-ranking woman in baseball — to MLB senior vice president of baseball operations.
Ng got her start with the White Sox, hired for an internship in 1991 in what she thought would be public relations. Instead, assistant GM Dan Evans saw promise in her analytical thinking and background in the game (Ng was a University of Chicago softball player) and took her under his wing. When Evans lost out on the White Sox GM job that went to Ken Williams, Evans knew his future was outside of Chicago, and when he left for the Dodgers, Ng came with him.
Nine years after taking this executive position with MLB and after at least four failed attempts at landing a GM position, Ng was hired as the general manager of the Miami Marlins.
2019
Former White Sox catcher Mike Colbern passed away in Tempe, Ariz. He played his only 80 career games with the South Siders in 1978-79, tallying 0.1 WAR and a .627 OPS/73 OPS+. He played two full seasons for the White Sox in Triple-A after that, and wound up his career with a season in the Atlanta organization.
In retirement, Colbern became the lead plaintiff in a class action for what lawyers turned into (against Colbern’s wishes) a reverse-discrimination lawsuit against MLB demanding his health costs be paid akin to an approved plan that paid for pre-1947 Negro League players’ health bills. Although that lawsuit failed, Colbern later received $3,700 in medical payments as part of a partial restitution plan initiated by MLB.