White Stockings or "Chicago White Stockings" was an original name of two professional baseball clubs in Chicago, Illinois, namely the two Major League Baseball clubs that operate today:
- Chicago Cubs. The first professional baseball club in the city joined the National Association of Base Ball Players for the 1870 season with the nickname "White Stockings" and was a founding member of the all-professional National Association in 1871. Following the Great Chicago Fire it built a new ballpark, where it hosted baseball games for two seasons before returning to the field of play in 1874. It initiated the National League in 1876. Called the White Stockings through 1889, the nickname "Colts" supplanted "White Stockings". That club is now officially the Chicago Cubs, originally a nickname that supplanted Colts and short-lived rivals (Orphans, Remnants) in the early 1900s.
- Chicago White Sox. The American League team, now officially the Chicago White Sox, entered Chicago in 1900 with permission of its crosstown competitor, one condition being that it would not take the "Chicago" city name. So it adopted the old "White Stockings" name from the glory days of its rival. After a few years that was shortened, perhaps by reporters or headline writers.
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“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)