Way Back in '27....

 If the White Sox had won yesterday at Fenway (which, of course, they didn’t), it would have been their first four-game sweep there since June of 1927.  I sort of remember.  Let me explain.

There was a time in my life when I had to go through 15-1/2 years of the Chicago Tribune—1915 to 1931—on microfilm.  Sitting in a dark corner of a library hunched over a machine with a flickering light bulb can be a lonely business, trust me, especially if it goes on for close to two years.  My relief was to scan the sports’ pages.

I followed the Black Sox scandal, the Dempsey-Tunney fight and the accession of the Sultan of Swat.  I paid attention to the 1927 season because Babe Ruth hit all those homeruns; it only seemed most of them were against the Sox.  In fact, Sox pitchers yielded six, or ten percent, of the total, with poor Tommy Thomas responsible for three of them.

And, when it was all over, I had a Ph.D. in American history.  Babe Ruth just had a lot of homers.