Good morning!
Last week, fearless leader/curling extraordinaire/managing editor of Sox Machine –Jim Margalus, in other words– raised an interesting question. A question which, ultimately, has led to what will be a two-part Sporcle Saturday: have we ever had a quiz covering White Sox pitching and/or hitting coaches?
As you likely have guessed, the answer to that is a firm no. Managers have been a theme in the past, but I’ve never strayed down the path of any members of the coaching staff. This week will be pitching coaches, while next week will be hitting coaches.
Baseball Reference lists coaching staffs with defined roles back to at least the 1960s in most instances. From there, SABR’s BioProject came in handy to go a few decades further back. In all, I felt comfortable listing pitching coaches for the White Sox back to 1933, a total of 21 names: how many can you get? Good luck!
Quiz Parameters
- I’ve allotted 20 minutes for completion attempts.
- For hints, I’ve provided the tenure of the pitching coach.
Useless information to amaze, annoy, confuse, and/or confound your friends and family:
- It’s entirely possible that White Sox great Ed Walsh was a pitching coach for the team for several years during the ’20s. He’s listed as a coach during those years but I wasn’t able to confirm he served as the pitching coach.
- This is less “useless information” and more of a PSA: look up some of these guys in the aforementioned SABR BioProject. There are some great stories contained within.
All names from a combination of Baseball Reference and SABR’s BioProject.
Love this, Ted. Thank you, and I’d love to see the hitting coach version of this, which I will probably be much worse at guessing.
15/21, and I would have had zero chance of getting any other names. I got everyone after 1976 except for the 1988 guy who I don’t remember at all. (Forgetting 1988 is not a bad move for Sox fans.)
I didn’t get 1970, but will give a hint that his nickname is the PERFECT one for the pitching coach of that team.
EDIT: I echo Ted’s suggestion to search out the bios of several of these coaches. You won’t regret it.
Wow, that’s really impressive. I only got 5, and I don’t feel ashamed at all.
There are some famous names involved that made a few guesses click. Beyond that, the guy doing the job for the 1959 Sox might have been the Leo Mazzone of his time. In more recent years, I remember plenty of names I blamed for atrocious performances of the pitchers they coached.
I was impressed with myself for spelling Hard Art Kusnyer correctly, only to realize that he wasn’t ever the pitching coach.
This does raise the possibility of Ted developing a quiz on bullpen coaches.
That would be sadistic.
Or bullpen catchers, so we can include Lee Man-soo!
Or, as the subject of recent discussions, assistant hitting coaches!
Amazing that other than Cooper, Berres and Ruel they were all pretty short tenured
To give him his due, Sain had a great career as a pitching coach for a half-dozen teams (a couple of which won the World Series) with guys like Whitey Ford, Jim Bouton, Jim Kaat, Wilbur Wood, Stan Bahnsen, Mickey Lolich, and Denny McLain all having some of their best years under him. Duncan also had a great career as a pitching coach.
Reading his bio, I learned Sain was the last mlb pitcher to face Babe Ruth and the first mlb pitcher to face Jackie Robinson which I found interesting.
Really? I think it’s amazing Cooper lasted as long as he did, through, what, four managers?
Me playing this sporcle:
8/21, and a couple of those I only got because of the common last name. I probably could have gotten a couple more, but I didn’t really think much about pitching coaches back then. How about a quiz for third base coaches? One of the old time ones visits this site often!!
You all are gluttons for punishment! I can certainly look into bench coaches, third base, etc. (not sure about bullpen catchers and the like) Hitting coaches next week: up to 18 names already, and that’s only to the late ’70s! We’ll see how far back I get with that: already having to resort to the newspaper archives to find more.