Don Cooper, who first reached the majors as a pitcher for the Yankees, Twins and Blue Jays before becoming a fixture on the White Sox coaching staff, has died at 70.
Cooper’s playing career covered 44 big-league games, but his lasting impact came over 33 seasons in the Chicago organization from 1988-2020. That run included 18 seasons as the White Sox’s pitching coach, and it helped define one of the club’s most successful stretches on the mound.
Chicago’s 2005 World Series team featured Cooper in the dugout, and that staff made a little slice of postseason history by becoming the first club since the 1928 New York Yankees to throw four straight complete games in one postseason. Former White Sox second baseman and current general manager Chris Getz said Cooper’s influence went well beyond the numbers.
“He made so many pitchers better through the years,” former White Sox second baseman and current general manager Chris Getz told the team’s website. “He had that Northeast very direct personality that resonated really well within the White Sox culture and clubhouse and I think fans adored him as well.”
Cooper’s road to the majors began when the Yankees took him in the 17th round out of the New York Institute of Technology in 1978. The Minnesota Twins picked him in the 1980 Rule 5 draft, and he broke in with them in 1981, making 27 appearances and two starts while going 1-5 with a 4.30 ERA.
Minnesota sent Cooper to Toronto in December 1982 in a deal for Dave Baker. He spent most of the 1983 season with the Blue Jays’ Triple-A club in Syracuse, where he went 10-5 with a 3.21 ERA out of the bullpen. His time in Toronto’s big-league bullpen was brief: four games, four runs, 5.1 innings and a 6.75 ERA.
The Yankees brought him back in March 1984 in a trade for minor league outfielder Derwin McNealy, and Cooper closed out his major-league pitching career with seven appearances out of New York’s bullpen in 1985. He then spent his final two seasons in the minors before retiring as a player after the 1987 season. In all, he finished with a 1-6 record and a 5.27 ERA in the majors.
For Cooper, though, coaching was where everything clicked.
“I will always believe him to be one of the best pitching coaches the game has seen,” former White Sox executive Ken Williams said of Cooper.
The White Sox also issued a statement on social media, calling Cooper a longtime member of the organization and sending condolences to his family, friends and fans.
From 2003-20, Chicago’s pitching staff ranked fourth in baseball in FanGraphs’ version of WAR, a stretch that came with a revolving door of aces from Mark Buehrle to Chris Sale and uneven offense around them. Former players remembered Cooper’s personality fondly, too, which only deepened the mark he left on the franchise.
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