It’s the time of year where, as we grimace ahead into 2024 and what awaits us with the Chicago White Sox, we look back at those South Siders we lost in 2023. Included among them are a southpaw star, long-distance slugger, departed but popular broadcaster, and beloved scout.
Please, feel free to use the comments to honor any White Sox close to you who we lost in 2023.
Vince Harris
Center Fielder
White Sox career 1986-88 (minors)
Died January 2
Age 55
Drafted in the fourth round and 97th overall out of Triton College during the old “winter” MLB draft in 1986, Vince Harris brought elite speed (323 steals, nearly one every two games) to the diamond. While he never made it past A-ball with the White Sox or Double-A in his career, he passed his love of the game on to countless youth players, including as head coach of Streamwood High School. Harris is a member of Elgin’s Sports Hall of Fame.
Gary Peters
Left-Handed Starting Pitcher
White Sox career 1959-68
Died January 26
Age 85
Gary Peters stood out as a star even among the many talent arms the White Sox carried throughout the 1960s, ending his career as the 17th-best pitcher and tied for the 38th-best overall White Sox player by WAR. But he didn’t find instant success with the club, and before getting a big assist from pitching coach Ray Berres considered taking his math degree and retiring to teach school.
Mark Liptak memorialized his friend on our pages back in January.
Andrew McKenna
Chairman
White Sox career 1975-81
Died February 7
Age 93
Andrew McKenna was a Chicago investor (McDonald’s) who played prominent roles in White Sox, Bears and Cubs ownership. He was a key investor in the Bill Veeck ownership group that purchased the White Sox in 1975, saving them from a move to Seattle. He served White Sox chairman until the sale of the club to Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn, later filling the same role with the Cubs (while retaining his Sox fandom, saying, “I was never as much of a Cubs fan as I was a White Sox fan”) and buying an ownership stake in the Bears.
While the Bears and Cubs released immediate statements on McKenna’s passing, the White Sox did not.
Joe Goddard
Beat Writer
White Sox career 1974-2000 (alternating years)
Died February 25
Age 85
Joe Goddard was a well-loved mainstay of press boxes on both sides of town, where he alternated covering the White Sox and Cubs for 27 years. The chances that someone reading this story enjoyed his Sun-Times work somewhere in that long run of sportswriting are pretty good. The fact that the practice of alternating team coverage ended with Goddard’s retirement from the beat spoke at least as much to his genial nature as it did the changing nature of coverage.
‘‘Young Joe’’ twice nearly took home the greatest baseball writing honor imaginable, the BBWAA Career Excellence Award; both times, he was the runner-up.
Growing up in the northwest suburb of Inverness, the Cubs were his favorite team. But once he hit adulthood — coincidentally, smack in the middle of Go-Go White Sox domination — Goddard put away childish things and became a White Sox diehard.
Jerry Reinsdorf himself hosted Goddard and his family at the writer’s final White Sox game, during the summer of 2022. The writer was still relatively new to the beat when Reinsdorf bought the White Sox, but made an immediate impression.
‘‘Joe Goddard was the classic old-time baseball beat reporter,’’ Reinsdorf told the Sun-Times. ‘‘They truly don’t make them like Joe anymore. His coverage of Chicago baseball went back decades. Joe loved the game, the travel, the life, was a reporter who developed relationships across clubhouses and front offices and broke story after story. . . . He will be missed and his byline always remembered.’’
Dave Nicholson
Left Fielder
White Sox career 1963-65
Died February 25
Age 83
Dave Nicholson made an unenviable mark in 1963, his first year with the White Sox. In what would end up as his only season as an MLB regular, Nicholson struck out a majors-leading 175 times, setting the all-time mark for whiffs in the process. Especially by 1960s standards, Nicholson was a hulking presence, and packed prodigious power into this swing. While he struck out once every 3.4 plate appearances, his contact could be legendary — including a memorable blast against the Kansas City Athletics that traveled an unofficial 573 feet out of Comiskey Park on May 6, 1964.
Mark Liptak wrote our tribute to Nicholson back in February.
Dave Wills
Broadcaster
White Sox career 1997-2004
Died March 5
Age 58
Dave Wills grew up a diehard White Sox fan, and by age 33 fulfilled a dream of working for the team, as pre- and postgame radio host. With his career stalling a bit after several years in that role and only serving as a backup play-by-play broadcaster, Wills left for a full-time job broadcasting games for the Tampa Bay Rays. At the time of his death, he was still working in that position — a White Sox fan who’d moved to the far, far South Side.
Mark Liptak wrote our tribute to Wills in March, which was accompanied by a reprint of a 2004 interview he did with Dave.
Fred Klages
Right-Handed Starting Pitcher
White Sox career 1966-67
Died March 30
Age 79
Fred Klages only had a brief White Sox (and major league) career, but even throwing just 13 games for the pitching-rich South Siders of the time was a major accomplishment — especially when considering his 3.28 ERA over those games. More impressively, Klages went 3-2 with a 2.67 ERA during the crucial month of August 1967, as the White Sox were fighting for their lives in a vicious, four-team battle for the pennant.
By September, however, Klages developed a sore shoulder that would not heal; what would have been an assured spot in the rotation for 1968 could not be realized, and he never pitched in the majors again.
In retirement, Klages started a plastic pipe company in Texas, and his daughter Kim Klages Johns is an executive with the Missoula PaddleHeads who won the Pioneer League’s Executive of the Year Award in 2021.
Dave Frost
Right-Handed Starting Pitcher
White Sox career 1977
Died April 14
Age 70
Dave Frost pitched just four times in the majors in 1977. But given his outstanding September for the gassed South Side Hit Men, it might have been smart to use the 6´6´´force of nature earlier that summer. Frost was simply outstanding, with a 3.04 ERA and not a single poor performance. Still, he was wedged into the Brian Downing-Bobby Bonds trade that winter and contributed 7.3 WAR in 1978-79 for the Angels.
Dennis Ribant
Right-Handed Pitcher
White Sox career 1968
Died April 24
Age 81
Dennis Ribant was active for the final two months of a sorry season that saw a 17-season winning streak for the White Sox ended, acquired by the South Siders from Detroit in exchange for Don McMahon in July 1968. Just two years removed from a 3.3-WAR effort starting for the New York Mets, Ribant fell right in line with his new White Sox teammates by struggling to a -1.1 WAR in just 17 games.
Detroit bought Ribant (who had been excellent for the Tigers earlier in the season, but the trade to Chicago denied him a chance at winning a World Series ring in 1968) back from the White Sox in October, but he bounced around the majors in 1969 and despite excellent work in Triple-A into the 1970s never saw the majors again.
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