The original White Sox are now the Chicago Cubs and that dates back to the 1870s. A team called the St. Paul Saints was moved to Chicago in 1901 when the AL became an official major league and ended the NL monopoly (they didn't compete with eachother for the World Series until 1903), which meant that it wasn't uncommon to have two teams in Major League Baseball from the same city, often playing in different leagues like the Cubs and White Sox have done ever since the move.
Boston and Philadelphia used to be two-team cities as well when the AL became an official major league. St. Louis became one a year later. Today the only two-team markets are New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, which are the three biggest cities in the USA so it makes perfect sense to have two teams in Chicago. Not to mention that both of the Chicago teams are older than any of the New York and Los Angeles area teams. |