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Charlie Comiskey

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball. It is a popular game in North America, parts of Latin America, the Caribbean and East Asia. The modern game initially developed in the United States from an early bat-and-ball game called rounders, and now it has become the national sport of United States.

Charlie Comiskey, a famous Baseball player was born on August 15, 1859, in Chicago, Illinois and he died on October 26, 1931, in Eagle River, Wisconsin. He experienced success as a player, manager and owner for a half century. He became a player and a manager of the American Association's St. Louis Browns at 24 in 1883 and won 4 pennants from 1885 to 1888. He became a founder of the American League in 1901 and owned the Chicago White Sox for 31 years, winning five pennants.

In 1910, he built Comiskey Park which is an impressive steel and concrete structure which lasted for 80 years. His greatest fame came not as a manager, but as a mogul. When Ban Johnson took over the fledgling Western League which was formed on November 21, 1893, few imagined that 8 years after it will challenge the National League for baseball supremacy. Comiskey helped Johnson by buying the Sioux City franchise, which he transferred to St. Paul in Chicago, where it was christened as the White Stockings.

Comiskey's own greed is said to be the real motivation for the Black Sox selling out to gamblers in 1919. When it was revealed that the players threw the Series for 10,000 Dollars as Comiskey underpaid them for many years, his sterling status was tarnished and he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939, as an executive.

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