White Sox/Red Sox - Spelling

[Kel_Varnsen_Latex_Division]

Why do are these team names spelled with an X, not cks?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

IIRC, they were originally the White Stockings and the Red Stockings. The headline-shortening press cut the words down to fit, and the fans picked up on them to the extent that the team changed the names as well.

It happened pretty quickly. The White Stockings were formed in 1900 and became the White Sox in 1902.

It’s a bit more convoluted for Boston, so I’ll let Kristen D. Cornette tell it:

It was over. On a routine play missed by the first baseman, the Red Stockings had lost the game and ended their incredible streak. The Cincinnati team was never the same. Attendance dropped off, and their sponsors were no longer interested in financing the players’ salaries, which they called unreasonable. The team folded. Harry Wright took three of his best players and moved east, to Boston.

The Red Stockings did well in their new city, and the team was among the founding members of the National League in 1876. They eventually changed their name to the Beaneaters (and later the Braves), and in 1907, John I. Taylor, owner of the American League’s Boston Pilgrims, used the old Red Stockings name as inspiration when he changed his team’s name to the Red Sox.

[Chairman_Pow]

According to my copy of the Encyclopedia of Chicago entry on White Sox, the spelling was from an abbreviation used by local sportswriters. At the time, the team name proper was White Stockings.

[Polycarp]

Wait a minute – the Boston and Chicago teams in the National League back in the late 1800s were the Red and White Stockings respectively. It sounds like the NL RS became the Braves (and peripatetically ended up in Atlanta) and the NL WS became the Cubs – in both cases the AL team adopting the former nickname of the NL team. Is that in fact the case?

[Redsland]

Polycarp, that is correct with respect to the Reds/Braves/Atlanta. I can’t speak to the Chicago teams, though.

[pulykamell]

@Redsland

Polycarp, that is correct with respect to the Reds/Braves/Atlanta. I can’t speak to the Chicago teams, though.

That’s right. The Chicago Cubs were known as The Chicago White Stockings from 1876-1889, then the Colts (1890-1897), then the Orphans (1898-1901), then the Cubs after that.

The Chicago White Sox adopted the old NL name in 1900, when a Western League franchise from St. Paul moved to Chicago, and they played their first official AL game a year later.