Abstract of Thesis

"Charles Comiskey: South Side Scrooge

or 'Epitome of a Self-Made Man?'"
By Mary OMalley

As a life-long Chicagoan, I grew up believing that the

1919 Black Sox scandal was due to Charles Comiskeys
refusal to pay his White Sox players a living wage. In a
course on baseball literature at Northwestern University,
Bill Savage encouraged me to investigate the 1919 Black
Sox, a moment in baseball and history immortalized by
baseball historians and journalists and filmmakers. Did
those historians, journalists. and filmmakers get
Comiskey's legacy right? Or was there more to learn?

My research began by tracing Comiskey as a child

growing up in Holy Family parish on the citys West Side,
the son of Alderman Honest John Comiskey. In 1859,
the year Comiskey was born, his father, went door-to-door
collecting money for stained glass windows for the Gothic
church that stands today at 1080 W. Roosevelt
Road. Charles grew up playing baseball on the prairies
of Chicago and, against his fathers wishes, made
professional ball his career, first as a player and then, as
an owner of the White Sox.

In my thesis, I argue that in establishing Chicago as the

home of the White Sox, Comiskey was honoring both the
city of his birth and his Irish heritage. It was no accident
that the cornerstone laying of the modern ballpark at
35th and Shields took place on St. Patricks Day, March
17, 1910. Although conscious of his Irish roots, Comiskey
also understood that baseball was the American sport
that crossed ethnic and racial lines. To an extent that
baseball historians have not acknowledged, Comiskey
was in a league of his ownan owner who had also
revolutionized the sport as a player.

My research challenges the conventional wisdom that

Comiskey was a shrewd businessman who valued the
revenue to be generated from baseball more than he did
his players. Unfairly targeted as owner of the White Sox
in 1919, he never fully recovered from the scandal that
captured headlines across the nation. Comiskeys legacy
as a city-builder has been overshadowed by the 1919
Black Sox scandal and my research is an attempt at
setting the record straight.