This Day In Sox History 5/12...

Five factoids today:

May 12, 1904 - Future Hall of Famer “Big” Ed Walsh made his White Sox debut pitching in relief. It happened at Philadelphia in a 9-3 loss to the A’s. He threw one inning giving up two hits and a run.

May 12, 1915 - Urban “Red” Faber had one of the most efficient afternoons in baseball history in throwing a complete game win over Washington at Comiskey Park beating the Senators 4-1.

In the game he threw only 67 pitches!

While there was no official pitch-counting 110 years ago, a boy-clerk in Washington, Frank Saffell, tracked each pitch for an electronic scoreboard. He telegraphed the Chicago Tribune after realizing how remarkable Faber’s efficiency was. While it’s hard to recognize the pitch count-tracking of a child not even at the park for the game, Saffell’s inning-by-inning count — adding to 50 strikes, 17 balls and two three-pitch innings — has been accepted enough into baseball lore as to be acknowledged by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Saffell had been at pitch-counting for enough time to have qualified the count to the Tribune as being five pitches better than the previous record (Christy Mathewson, 72 pitches).

Faber carried a one-hitter into the ninth, when with two outs a single, passed ball and double gave the Sens their tally when the game was no longer in doubt. The game lasted just one hour, 35 minutes.

The most efficient officially-counted game at Baseball-Reference is 75 pitches, by Bob Tewksbury (1990) and Andy Ashby (1998). The unofficial but almost certain MLB record comes on August 10, 1944, when Charles “Red” Barrett of the Boston Braves had a 58-pitch win that was tracked by official scorer Frank Grayson.

May 12, 1932 - For the ninth time of the 1932 season, White Sox infielder Carey Selph struck out.

It is also the last time in 1932 that Selph whiffed, as he played another 89 games strikeout-free, setting a Major League record.

When was the record broken? In 1958, when another White Sox second baseman, Nellie Fox, went 98 games between strikeouts.

May 12, 1953 - With a 9-7 win in 10 innings at Boston, the White Sox got a monkey off of their backs; by rallying for the win, the club hung a defeat on Ellis Kinder, snapping his 18-game winning streak against the club. Kinder didn’t even get a chance to defend his streak, as a leadoff walk to “Minnie” Minoso, Jim Rivera beating out his sacrifice bunt and “Chico” Carrasquel moving both runners up brought former White Sox pitcher Bill Kennedy into the game to put out the fire — but instead he served up the eventual game-decider, an RBI double from Ferris Fain.

Kinder himself would come to the South Side to finish out his career, in 1956-57.

May 12, 2013 – Chris Sale couldn’t have picked a better time to show the baseball world what type of pitcher he was as on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball he tossed a complete game one-hitter beating the Angels 3-0 at U.S. Cellular Field.

Sale was dominant, taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning before Mike Trout broke it up with a single to center. Chris would finish the night with seven strikeouts and Trout would be the Angels only base runner that evening. The game was scoreless until the Sox half of the seventh when they scored three runs. The big blow was a two-run single from Alexei Ramirez.