Sporcle Saturday: Power outage
Good morning!
Something I certainly didn’t anticipate Sporcling about this season was the White Sox and their lack of offensive firepower. As I was commuting to work on Friday morning, I was thinking about how Abreu was the only guy with double-digit home runs and how the possibility existed that this team could finish the year without a 20-home run player. And, I wondered, when was the last time a White Sox team didn’t have such a player?
Well, Jim saved me the work of looking. As he noted in his doubling the numbers post yesterday morning, the 1990 season is the last time the Chicago White Sox fielded such a team. (For the record, I would have guessed the early ’80s, but the ’89 team also didn’t have such a player) The 1990 season, of course, was far more entertaining than has been the current season as the Sox finished a surprising 94-68, second in the A.L. West behind Oakland: a far cry from their last-place finish in 1989, a near-reverse record of 69-92.
Anywhoozles, today’s theme will revolve around that 1990 squad. I thought it would be more fun to include both pitchers and batters, so in total there are 37 names for you to guess from that team: how many can you get? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 10 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I’ve provided the position of the player (as noted by Baseball Reference) and the number of games that player appeared in.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- The 1990 team had five regulars with an OPS+ over 100, same as this 2022 team (so far).
- Three players finished with more than 30 stolen bases.
- One position player pitched for this team: a 2-inning, one-run effort starting in the 8th inning in a blowout 12-3 loss to…Tony LaRussa’s Oakland Athletics. Somewhere, a young Jim Margalus intoned after the game, “A’s 12, White Sox 3: [Spoiler] pitched.
All data from baseballreference.com
34/37. I got everyone who played more than 8 games. Thank you for focusing on one of the more enjoyable teams of the Reinsdorf era.
Jeff Torborg is three years older than Tony La Russa. I’d rather have him manage the 2022 team.
23/37. Only a couple of names that I missed that I should have gotten. A lot of very obscure names on that team. That was certainly a well-managed team, something we haven’t seen in many years
25 / 37. Two more I definitely should have got (one who only played in 5 games!). This was one of my favorite Sox teams. I was 10 years old most of that summer, and lived and died with that team trying to take down the evil Oakland A’s. I was surprised how many guys from the back end of that roster that I had forgotten about.
26/37. One of my better quiz results. That summer I was 13 going on 14 and I went to about 15 games with my dad, the most games I had gone to any season, ever. I remember that they were something like 14-1 in those games, which seems impossible.
I remember the relief corps well, especially the guy from Evergreen Park. Before a day game, I was sitting with my friend in that “Picnic Area” underneath the outfield stands, near the metal grate that looks out on the field, and this tall guy in a Sox uniform come out of nowhere and kneels down on the warning track and starts talking to us, asking us where we were from. He talked to us for a good 10 minutes.
The trio of 30+ base stealers doesn’t surprise me, but the number of caught stealings does. Specifically a guy who stole 13 bases but was caught 17 times (!).
Thanks for this nostalgia trip, Ted!
You bet!
18/37. Not bad I think considering I was 5. Most I got from trying guys from the 93 team, which is the first season I remember pretty well
18/37. Giving myself credit for Radinsky, whom I misspelled.
That was the final season at old Comiskey Park, which could explain the power outage, though the fences had been moved in (home plate moved up?) some years earlier.
I was at the final game, a win against the Mariners, which featured Griffeys (Sr. & Jr.) in the outfield for the M’s, and the highest pop-up I’ve ever seen (from a young Frank Thomas).
Oops, I don’t know how to hide spoilers – sorry.