Sox Century: Aug. 28, 1917

The White Sox and Yankees departed from their penultimate series of the season on the same course they entered it. By completing the sweep with a 4-3 victory over New York today, the White Sox improved to 18-9 in August, while the Yankees sank to 7-18 during the month.

And this was even with the Yankees thwarting the Sox’ opportunity to pull away early by pulling off a triple play.

The Sox scored the first run of the game in the third inning when Lefty Williams singled, then scored two singles later. Eddie Collins then bunted the singles up a base, and because Ray Caldwell decided to throw late to third instead of taking the out at first, he suddenly had the bases loaded with nobody out.

He just needed one pitch to escape the jam. The Chicago Tribune’s description:

Jackson whaled a liner toward left, but [Home Run] Baker hopped over and squeezed it at the risk of losing a hand or two. All the runners were in motion toward the plate on the expected hit, so it was soft for Baker to slip over and touch third base, then throw to second to complete the three cornered killing.

Such was the White Sox’ fortune that they didn’t need to maximize every scoring chance. They were able to take a 3-0 thanks to four straight one-out singles in the fifth inning, which gave Pants Rowland a big enough cushion to get through the rest of the game.

He had to go to Red Faber for the third time in four games to close it out. Faber threw a five-hitter against the Senators on Aug. 25, then came back to record a two-inning save against the Yankees the day before.

Today, Rowland called on Faber to relieve Williams and preserve a 3-1 lead with one out in the sixth. It narrowed to 3-2 when Faber gave up a sacrifice fly to start his day’s work, but the Sox were able to get one of those runs back in the bottom of the sixth when Caldwell issued three consecutive walks with two outs to force home one more White Sox run.

That run ended up making the difference. Faber wasn’t in his top form, as he issued walks to lead off the seventh, eighth and ninth innings. Yet despite those three walks and five hits over his 3 ²⁄₃ innings, the Yankees could only get one of the two runs they needed before Faber closed out the game and extended the White Sox’ AL lead to 3 ¹⁄₂ games over the Red Sox, whose game against Detroit was rained out.

Record: 79-46 | Box score