“When the wind was blowing from the southwest into the ballpark, Comiskey Park wasn’t the most pleasant place to be. Those stockyards had quite an aroma, I’ll tell you that.

“When I first got to the Sox, they had experienced a string of losing seasons, and the fans weren’t coming to the park. The Sox were 51-101 in 1948, but after I joined the club, Frank Lane, the general manager, began making a lot of trades to improve the team. So by 1951, we had the Go-Go Sox. We had Nellie Fox and Minnie Minoso and a pretty good ballclub. I think that by July 4, 1951, we were in first place. What really got us going was our speed.

“As for pitching in Comiskey Park, when I first got there, it was a great park to pitch in because the dimensions were very deep. Center field was 440 feet from home plate, and the wind seemed to be blowing in all the time. Over a period of years, the Sox brought in the fences and built a fence to make center field 400 feet from home plate. Then, the winds started changing directions. Instead of blowing in, they began blowing out. What was once a pitcher’s ballpark became a hitter’s park.

“Comiskey was a beautiful park, and the fans were fantastic. They were always behind our team, hollering, ‘Go, go, go.’ They would stand on the stairway that led up to the clubhouse to greet us. And they would line up around the parking lot looking for an autograph or for us to take a picture with them. They were very friendly. We must have had about 10 fan clubs for the players, made up of girls and boys who would pull for their favorite player and make signs.

“Mayor Richard J. Daley was a great Sox fan. He would bring his sons out to the ballgame quite often and sit right by the third-base dugout. The city itself became very pro-White Sox in the ’50s. We even had a parade when we won 14 games in a row.

“We used to have big weekend series with the Yankees, the Indians and the Red Sox. Those games provided most of our total season attendance. We would draw from 50,000 to 55,000 fans to those games, partly because night games weren’t televised. It was just a very good time for the players, for the fans, and for baseball itself, and the 1959 pennant was the high point for our team.”

— Billy Pierce, former Chicago White Sox pitcher

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