Comiskey Park was a ballpark in Chicago, Illinois, located in the Armour Square neighborhood on the near-southwest side of the city.
The park's design was strongly influenced by Sox pitcher Ed Walsh, and was known for its pitcher-friendly proportions (362 feet (110 m) to the foul poles; 420 ft (128 m) to center field).
For many years this reflected on the White Sox style of play: solid defense, and short, quick hits.
The park was unusual in that no player hit 100 home runs there: Carlton Fisk set the record with 94.
In 1918, Comiskey Park hosted the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox.
Comiskey saw its last post-season action in 1983, when the White Sox lost the American League Championship Series to the Baltimore Orioles 3–1, with Games 3 and 4 in Chicago.
During Veeck's second ownership, he installed a shower behind the speaker horns in the center field bleachers, for fans to cool off on hot summer days.
At some point he started "conducting" Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh-inning stretch, egged on by Veeck, who (according to Harry himself) said that the fans would sing along when they realized that none of them sang any worse than Harry did; Caray would take this tradition with him to the Cubs at Wrigley Field, which has continued even with Caray's death in 1998.
A major and oft-mentioned promotional event held at Old Comiskey was "Disco Demolition Night" in 1979, organized by longtime Chicago radio personality Steve Dahl and White Sox promotions manager Mike Veeck (Bill's son) on Thursday, July 12.
[15][16][17] Between games of a make-up doubleheader between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers, Dahl and his crew destroyed a pile of disco records that fans had brought in exchange for a ticket with a discounted price of 98¢ in honor of Dahl's station at that time, WLUP-FM, the frequency of which was 97.9 MHz (98 FM).
"I never thought that I, a stupid disc jockey, could draw 70,000 people to a disco demolition," Dahl said in a Tribune interview.
[22] When Bill Veeck re-acquired the team, he took out the center field fence, reverting to the original distance to the wall (posted as 440 in the 1940s, re-measured as 445 in the 1970s) ... a tough target, but reachable by sluggers like Oscar Gamble and Richie Zisk and other members of a team that was tagged "The South Side Hit Men".
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf received more than $200 million in public financing for the new stadium after threatening to move the club to St. Petersburg, Florida (a similar threat was later used by the San Francisco Giants until they broke ground on what would be their current ballpark in late 1997).
The stadium now called Tropicana Field was constructed by officials in St. Petersburg in an effort to lure a Major League Baseball club to Florida (which arrived in 1998 in the form of the expansion Devil Rays), but Miami beat the Tampa Bay area to the punch when it launched the expansion Florida Marlins in 1993.
[26] On September 30, 1990, with 42,849 in paid attendance, the Chicago White Sox played the last game at Comiskey Park, defeating the Seattle Mariners 2–1.
Mayor Richard M. Daley (a lifelong White Sox fan) threw out the opening pitch, legendary Sox player Minnie Miñoso delivered the lineup card to the umpires, and well-known ball-park organist Nancy Faust played for the crowd during the final game.
Also, former White Sox Vice President Charles Comiskey, grandson of the man for whom the park was named, was on hand.
Comiskey was stuffed to the gills,[further explanation needed] with 55,000 people or more lining the aisles and even standing for 9 (or 18) innings on the sloping ramps that criss-crossed behind the scoreboard.
When the Sox won the 2005 World Series, their victory parade began at U.S. Cellular Field, and then circled the block where old Comiskey had stood, before heading on a route through various south side neighborhoods and toward downtown Chicago.
On May 6, 1964, White Sox outfielder Dave Nicholson hit a home run that either bounced atop the left-field roof or entirely cleared it.
An unofficial no-hitter was pitched at Comiskey Park on July 1, 1990, when New York Yankees pitcher Andy Hawkins did not allow a hit for eight innings, but lost 4–0 to the White Sox.