With the Chicago White Sox’s record-worst season now in the rearview mirror, it’s likely that big changes are ahead for the team, including new players.
The Sox’s own chairman, Jerry Reinsdorf, has said as much, suggesting — in a letter issued to fans that he released during the team’s final game — that changes are coming, “while embracing new ideas and outside perspectives.” Reinsdorf is reportedly in “active discussions” to sell the team.
That suggests that fans should see some new faces on the Sox in 2025. Some of this season’s players no doubt will leave the team and Chicago as a whole, and will need to find new places to live next year.
Where have Sox players lived over the years? A review of more than 60 years of Sox players’ area ownership and rentals shows that the homes that players have owned have been roughly equally divided between the city and suburbs. Those in the suburbs especially have favored west and southwest suburbs like Palos Heights, Hinsdale and Burr Ridge.
While there are not a lot of other obvious trends, it’s clear that few players ever have chosen to live on the city’s North Side — home of the rival Chicago Cubs — or in the northern suburbs. And since 2020, very few Sox players have bothered owning area homes at all.
Many renters
With an itinerant lifestyle making them subject to team owners who can trade or release them at any time, most Major League Baseball players don’t bother owning homes in their teams’ cities. Instead, many lease residences in their teams’ towns. In Chicago, Sox players in recent years have rented places in the Loop and the South Loop, given those areas’ relative proximity to Guaranteed Rate Field’s Bridgeport location.
When ballplayers do own their own homes, many choose permanent bases in warmer-weather states with no state income tax, such as Florida and Texas. Arizona and Southern California also are popular locales with players for permanent residences.
After World War II, many players’ in-season homes were in South Side hotels, including the Piccadilly Hotel, which was on Blackstone Avenue in Hyde Park, and the Flamingo Hotel on South Shore Drive in Hyde Park. In December 1952, Tribune nightlife writer Will Leonard wrote that the Piccadilly was “the summertime off-the-field rendezvous of the White Sox.”
Tribune baseball writer Richard Dozer wrote in September 1959 that fully a dozen Sox families were residing at the Piccadilly, while others hung their caps at the Flamingo Hotel, and Dozer labeled the Piccadilly’s Sox-related denizens “an exclusive colony of South Side couples.”
One of the greatest White Sox players of the postwar era, Billy Pierce, lived with his family in the Flamingo Hotel, the Tribune reported in 1957.
In later years, however, most Sox players renting in the Chicago area have chosen either apartments downtown or housing options in the suburbs, largely to the southwest.
“When I first came up in 1988, I do recall there were a number of people in the suburbs like Burr Ridge, Willowbrook and Palos (Heights),” recalled retired Sox pitcher Donn Pall, an Evergreen Park native and now an Oak Brook-based financial adviser. “A lot were in the suburbs. But later on, over the next few years, it seemed like most people were downtown, just renting apartments downtown. Almost everybody I knew was there (downtown) unless you were a homeowner.”
Hall of Famers (and near-Hall of Famers)
Other Sox players — including the greats, and particularly those with long careers with the team — have chosen to lay down roots in the Chicago area by buying a house or a condominium here.
The Sox player who has owned the largest and most valuable house in team history is Hall of Fame slugger Frank Thomas, who built a 41-room, 25,000-square-foot mansion in Oak Brook in the 1990s and sold it in 2003 for $7.95 million, in what then was a DuPage County sales record. Two years after leaving the Sox, Thomas paid nearly $1.8 million in 2007 for a six-bedroom, 5,793-square-foot house in Libertyville, and he sold that home for nearly $1.36 million in 2020 — a little more than six months after he paid just under $1.6 million for an eight-bedroom, 17,826-square-foot mansion in North Barrington.
Thomas isn’t the only retired Sox Hall of Famer to own a massive DuPage County mansion. While a Sox player, slugger Jim Thome and his wife paid $3.8 million in 2006 to buy a 6,783-square-foot mansion in Hinsdale. Shortly before Thome’s career ended, he and his wife paid $4.6 million in 2012 for a seven-bedroom, 8,154-square-foot mansion in Burr Ridge, and two years later, they sold the Hinsdale mansion for $2.6 million.
Another Sox Hall of Famer, catcher Carlton Fisk, owned a four-bedroom, 3,446-square-foot house in what now is Homer Glen in Will County for many years. He and his wife then paid $650,000 in 2002 for their current place, a 3,320-square-foot house in New Lenox.
Several White Sox greats have chosen to own homes in the city. Hall of Famer Harold Baines owned a 10th-floor condo in the 400 East Randolph Street Condominiums building in the Loop from 1982 until selling it in 1991. Long after his retirement, Baines in 2005 bought another place in the city — this time in the South Loop — paying $355,500 for a seventh-floor condo. Longtime Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, who was captain of the 2005 World Series-winning team, paid $2.9 million in 2006 for a Lincoln Park mansion that he still owns. And the late Hall of Famer Minnie Minoso owned a condo on Marine Drive in Uptown before buying former Cubs player Leon Durham’s condo on Lake Shore Drive in Lakeview in 1991.
Two Sox pitching greats who have received Hall of Fame votes over the years were suburban homeowners. Mark Buehrle, who pitched for the Sox in the 2005 World Series, owned a two-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot townhome in Darien from 2002 until selling it in 2005 for $222,000. Buehrle then bought a four-bedroom, 3,535-square-foot house in Lemont in 2005 for $770,000 and took a major loss on it in 2012, selling it for $550,000. And Pierce later became a homeowner. He and his wife, Goldie, long owned a four-bedroom, 1,886-square-foot split-level in Evergreen Park, which they sold to the Salvation Army in 1997. That same year, they bought a townhome in Lemont for $222,500, which they owned until Pierce’s death in 2015.
The suburbs
Sox players who have owned houses in the suburbs largely have owned in the south, southwest and west suburbs. The strong White Sox teams of the late 1970s had several players own in those suburbs, including second baseman Jorge Orta, who from 1978 until 1982 owned an 1,800-square-foot split-level in unincorporated Darien; center fielder Chet Lemon, who from 1977 until 1983 owned a split-level in Wheaton; and third baseman Eric Soderholm, who long has owned a house in unincorporated Hinsdale. Pitcher Bart Johnson, who was a scout for the team after his playing career ended, had homes in Oak Lawn and Bridgeview before buying a Palos Heights condo that he owned until his passing in 2020.
Apart from the city-dwelling Baines, several early-1980s players owned houses in the west, southwest and south suburbs. And slugger Ron Kittle, a Gary native, lived in Chesterton and Valparaiso, Indiana, while with the team.
“It was good for me, because after the game, it was 45 minutes to an hour drive back, and I kind of unwound then (on the drive),” said Kittle, now a team ambassador.
Kittle recalled most of his teammates living in the suburbs.
“I knew nobody who lived in the city other than Harold Baines,” he said. “Most of (my teammates) were out in Palos or Hickory Hills or Burr Ridge. We used to go over to (Palos) and hang out — there were probably 10 guys in that vicinity. And it was 20 minutes to go into the city back then. You could zip in and zip out. Guys wouldn’t live there today with all the traffic.”
About 14 years ago, Kittle moved to southwest suburban Mokena, owing to a personal relationship, he said.
“You gotta go where’s best for both people,” he said. “I’m in a nice, secluded area. But I miss my (northwest Indiana) friends, and my property taxes went up 43% when I moved to Illinois.”
Among Kittle’s early-1980s teammates, slugger Greg Luzinski owned a Palos Heights condo from 1982 until 1985 and pitcher Rich Dotson owned a Palos Heights condo from 1984 until 1988.
Numerous Sox players from the 1990s and early 2000s owned places in the suburbs, with a particular bent toward Burr Ridge. The upper-end village, which straddles the DuPage County-Cook County border, has had plenty of Sox players owning homes there, including Robin Ventura, Ron Karkovice, Lance Johnson, Ray Durham, Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordóñez, Toby Hall, Ozzie Guillén and Bo Jackson. Still residing there is two-sport star Jackson, who paid $1.08 million for his house in 1991.
Starting pitcher Kirk McCaskill, who threw for the Sox from 1992 until 1996, owned a house in the suburbs during his time with the team, but in a very different location from his teammates, owning a house in Winnetka. McCaskill and his wife paid $600,000 in 1992 for a newly built, four-bedroom, 5,020-square-foot house, and they sold it in 1997 for $728,000.
There’s a story behind McCaskill’s decision to buy in Winnetka, however. He’s the son of the late professional hockey player Ted McCaskill, who had gotten to know Mike Leonard. Leonard eventually became an NBC “Today” show correspondent and owned a home in Winnetka.
“Mike and I reconnected after (a) number of years, and when I signed with the Sox, I was talking with Mike, and he said, ‘You’d love Winnetka. Plus, you’re going against traffic (to the ballpark) and (when it’s time to sell) you’d sell your house in a day,’” said McCaskill, who now lives near San Diego. “And that’s basically what happened. And it wasn’t that bad of a commute. As soon as we put the house on the market, it sold. My wife loved it — it’s such a beautiful town.”
Pall and his wife bought a house in 1992 in northwest suburban Bloomingdale, which was midway between his hometown of Evergreen Park and his wife’s hometown of Deerfield.
“We knew we’d be here forever, so we bought it in between — she didn’t want to go way south, and I didn’t want to go way north,” he said. “So we’re in between. It’s kind of funny, it’s always said that it seems like teams, as soon as they find out you buy something, that’s when you get traded. So we bought the house in ’92, and I kind of flew under the radar, and then they figured it out and I was traded in ’93. We kept the house because we knew we’d be coming back.”
Homeowning Sox players early this century have chosen other suburbs as well. Slugger Dan Pasqua paid $550,000 in 2011 for a house in Orland Park that he still owns, while relief pitcher Bobby Jenks in 2006 paid $967,500 for a four-bedroom, 5,063-square-foot house in Hinsdale that he sold in 2011 for $710,000. And relief pitcher Scott Linebrink in 2008 paid $815,000 for a five-bedroom house in Hinsdale that he sold in 2011 for $745,000.
One of the most recent suburban owners among Sox players, shortstop Tim Anderson, paid $450,000 in 2017 for a five-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot house in Flossmoor.
The city
Beyond the Hall of Famers, other Sox players have chosen to live in the city. Years ago, versatile player Carlos May owned in the city, including in the South Chicago neighborhood, although since 2004 he has owned a house in south suburban Matteson. In the 1980s, two players — pitcher Ken Kravec and infielder Greg Pryor — owned high-floor condo units in the Newberry Plaza building on the Near North Side.
Former Sox pitcher Ross Baumgarten, a North Shore native who pitched for the team from 1978 until 1981, bought a condo in Old Town in 1980 as a single man. After getting married, he and his wife bought a home in Glencoe in 1986, several years after his career concluded.
In the 1990s, Sox starting pitcher Jack McDowell made the relatively unusual choice for a Sox player of buying a single-family house in Lincoln Park. He paid $450,000 in 1991 for the five-bedroom, 6,100-square-foot vintage mansion, and he sold it in 2002 for $975,000.
McDowell isn’t the only Sox player in the past few decades to own a city home on the North Side, however. Slugger Albert Belle paid $665,000 in 1997 for a Gold Coast condo that he sold in 1999 for $720,000. Catcher A.J. Pierzynski paid nearly $1.63 million in 2006 for a five-bedroom Lincoln Park home that he sold in 2013 for nearly $1.68 million. Pitcher José Contreras owned a 26th-floor condo in a building on Lake Shore Drive on the Gold Coast from 2006 until selling it in 2014 for $825,000. Shortstop Alexei Ramírez owned a modern townhome in Old Town from 2011, when he paid $835,000 for it, until selling it in 2022 for $725,000. Infielder Juan Uribe paid $1.04 million in 2007 for a three-bedroom, 1,887-square-foot condo on the New East Side, which he sold in 2019 for $885,000. And starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel, whose career with the Sox was short-lived, paid $2.14 million in 2020 for a contemporary-style house in what many Sox fans would call enemy territory: an area of Lakeview not far from Wrigley Field.
A few Sox players have owned Northwest Side homes. Onetime Sox catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. owned a four-bedroom, 4,200-square-foot house in Wicker Park from 2003 until selling it in 2015 for nearly $1.39 million. And Guillén, who is both a former Sox player and the manager of the World Series-winning 2005 team, paid $1.95 million in 2011 for a four-bedroom, 6,100-square-foot contemporary-style house in Bucktown. Guillén, who since 2020 has owned a house in Homer Glen, sold his Wicker Park home in 2020 for $1.85 million.
On the South Side, recent city-owning Sox players have included pitcher Jon Garland, who paid $293,500 in 2003 for a top-floor condo in a six-story building on the Near South Side and then sold it for $325,000 in 2008; pitcher Freddy García, who paid $1.05 million in 2005 for a four-bedroom Near South Side townhome that he sold in 2011 for $820,000; and pitcher Javier Vázquez, who paid nearly $1.33 million in 2006 for a four-bedroom, 4,000-square-foot Near South Side townhome that he sold in 2012 for $860,000. And outfielder Carlos Quentin paid $650,000 in 2010 for a Near South Side condo that he still owns.
Since 2020, it’s not clear that any current Sox player has bought a Chicago-area home — whether in the city or in the suburbs.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
