Chris Sale set the White Sox record for pitcher strikeouts Friday night:
By getting James McCann looking at a 3-2 breaking ball for the first out of the second inning, Sale fanned his 270th batter of the season.
“It’s awesome, something that hasn’t set in yet but I know what it means,” Sale said. “I know what it is, I’m very thankful for it and appreciative of it.”
The lefty ace began the game with 267 strikeouts and topped the mark set by Hall of Famer Ed Walsh in 1908 when he struck out No. 269.
On a 1-2 pitch to McCann, Sale tried to set the mark with an eephus — a high blooper ball — but the pitch drifted well inside.
That last bit reminds me of Phil Niekro winning his 300th game without his knuckle ball.
The White Sox have an interesting history in regards to power on both sides of the plate. If you look at the top ten White Sox home run hitters, the oldest person on the list is Bill Melton, who hit 154 and last played for the White Sox in 1975. The home run revolution of the 1920s bypassed the south side of Chicago until the 1980s. Likewise, they have very few 200 K seasons. The lack of batting power and pitching power was a big reason for their long championship drought.
The mention of Ed Walsh reminds me that in the late 1970s, when I was in my mids-20s, I went out with a young woman in Lake Placid who was born and raised near Syracuse but whose mother’s family had lived in Meriden, Ct. I remember her telling me that her mother’s uncle, I believe, had been a baseball player. “Ed Walsh was his name.” “Big Ed Walsh! He’s a Hall of Famer!” I drive past Meriden a lot now on Route 15 and almost always think of that.
Tom Andersen » Was he a coach at Wesleyan?
All I know about him is what I read when I followed your link to his bio on sabr.org: He became a chemical engineer and worked at the Meriden water filtration plant and then became the pro at the Meriden golf course. His pro baseball career seems fascinating and typical of that era. And of course his pitch was the spitball, which was legal.