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Hickey's Unlikely Story
Isn't One to Forget

Posted on Thursday, May 17
Paul Ladewski photo
There have been more talented pitchers, for sure. But I've never known one to appreciate the major leagues more than Kevin Hickey, who passed away much too young this week.

Hickey grew up in Brighton Park, about six miles from Comiskey Park, but he didn't find himself and baseball until his late teens. For the heck of it, he took a break from 16-inch softball to attend a White Sox tryout. Darn if the kid didn't make the cut.

The 1983 White Sox had a bunch of good stories, and Hickey's may have been the best of all. As he joked to me that memorable season, a familiar smile on his face, “I better enjoy this before they find out who I really am.”

I'll remember Hickey as a South Side boy who made good, an overachiever who lived each day as though it might be his last.

'72 Rewind:
Wilbur Wood & the Art of the Knuckleball

"I have no idea of what any pitch of mine will do," says Wilbur Wood of his knuckleball. "All I want is to get it over the plate."

The Chicago Baseball Museum will pay tribute to Dick Allen and the 1972 White Sox in a June 25 fundraiser at U.S. Cellular Field. We will chronicle the events of that epic season here in the weeks ahead. Sports Illustrated published this story in its June 2, 1972 edition.

By Al Hirshberg
Posted Monday, May 7

You look at Wilbur Wood's broad shoulders and solid six-foot frame and if you didn't know otherwise you would think he won 22 games for the White Sox last year by overpowering hitters with a blazing fastball and an exploding curve.

But it's not power that made Wood the anchorman of the Chicago staff. This chubby faced competitor with a soft Boston accent plucked himself from the jaws of oblivion by learning to control baseball's most delicate and baffling pitch – the knuckleball.

Wood is the natural heir to and indeed the product of the ageless Hoyt Wilhelm, who went south last spring with the Dodgers on the eve of his 49th birthday. Except for Wilhelm, today Wood might be commuting between his Lexington home and a nine-to-five job in downtown Boston. Or, if he still were in baseball after seven years of mediocrity, he would be winning in the minors and losing in the majors as he had been doing before he mastered the knuckler.

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Hickey Beat Long Odds
to Realize His Dream

By Paul Ladewski
Posted on Wed., May 16
Of all the unlikely major leaguers in Chicago baseball history, Kevin Hickey may have been the most unlikely of all.

Despite limited baseball experience, the native South Sider realized his dream at a tryout camp, and he lived it for much of the rest of his life.

Hickey passed away at 56 years of age on Wednesday morning.

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