The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and plays its home games at Guaranteed Rate Field, located on Chicago's South Side. The White Sox are one of two MLB teams based in Chicago, the other being the Chicago Cubs of the National League (NL) Central division.
One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the White Sox were established as a major league baseball club in 1901 as the Chicago White Stockings, before shortening their name to the White Sox in 1904. The team originally played their home games at South Side Park before moving to Comiskey Park in 1910, where they played until 1990. They moved into their current home, which was originally also known as Comiskey Park like its predecessor and later carried sponsorship from U.S. Cellular, for the 1991 season.
The White Sox won their first World Series, the 1906 World Series against the Cubs, with a defense-oriented team dubbed "the Hitless Wonders", and later won the 1917 World Series against the New York Giants. Their next appearance, the 1919 World Series, was marred by the Black Sox Scandal in which eight members of the White Sox were found to have conspired with gamblers to fix games and lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. In response, the new MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the players from the league for life. The White Sox have only made two World Series appearances since the scandal. The first came in 1959, where they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, before they finally won their third championship in 2005 against the Houston Astros. The 88 seasons it took the White Sox to win the World Series stands as the second longest MLB championship drought of all time, after the Cubs' 108 seasons.
From 1901 to 2023, the White Sox have an overall win-loss record of 9,553–9,491 (.502).[3]