As the Chicago White Sox popped champagne and poured it over one another in the visiting clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium, I’d like to think Don Cooper was looking down with a smile.
The White Sox’s 9-1 win over the Royals in Thursday’s series finale secured the organization’s 12th postseason appearance in franchise history. Cooper was the pitching coach for three of them, having devoted nearly half his life to White Sox baseball.
Just one day earlier, news broke that Cooper had died at 70.
The word “legend” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s hard to describe Don Cooper’s tenure with the White Sox any other way. Simply put, Cooper is woven into the fabric of White Sox baseball. You can’t tell the story of the franchise without him.
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Cooper spent 33 seasons in the White Sox organization from 1988 to 2020, including 18 full seasons as the team’s pitching coach.
For years, Cooper was regarded as one of the best pitching coaches in baseball. He oversaw the 2005 pitching staff that played a pivotal role in the White Sox’s World Series championship, including a historic run through the ALCS. Chicago became the first team in MLB history to throw four consecutive complete games in a postseason series — a record that still stands today.
Cooper was also in the dugout for Mark Buehrle’s and Philip Humber’s perfect games, while Buehrle and Lucas Giolito each threw no-hitters under his watch.
While Cooper may be gone, his impact on the players he coached remains. He was fiercely loyal to his pitchers and a natural motivator, giving them the freedom to be themselves while never shying away from tough love when they needed to hear it.
But if someone from the outside came after one of his guys, Cooper wasn’t having it. Whether it was a criticism from the media or someone else, he was often one of the first people to stand up and have his pitchers’ backs.
“Who he was to me when I was a young guy in Chicago, the things that he instilled in me, I wouldn’t be here without him,” former White Sox left-hander Chris Sale said during a postgame press conference in Atlanta on Wednesday. “I felt like he was the perfect pitching coach for me when I got to him. He allowed me to be myself; he let me know when I needed to get it cleaned up and back on the rails. But he always put his arm around me and I knew he loved me.”
Many of Cooper’s former colleagues shared Sale’s sentiment. William Contreras told MLB.com that he viewed Cooper’s death like losing a family member. Chris Getz recalled making a costly error against the Cubs, only to have Cooper be the first person to put his arm around him and tell him to forget about it the next day. Former White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen also credited much of his success as a manager to Cooper.
“This man prepared you so good to his pitching staff. He make you believe you was Roger Clemens every night or Cy Young every night,” Guillen said during Wednesday’s CHSN pregame show. “You could not get anything by that man. He was always thinking ahead.”
Cooper wasn’t just good to his players; he loved interacting with fans, too. Before games, you could often find him down the third-base line signing autographs and swapping stories with fans. He could get so wrapped up in the conversation that, at times, he’d forget whose ball he was signing.
And if you ever attended a panel with Cooper at SoxFest, you knew what was coming: story after story about the glory days, told with the kind of enthusiasm that could make you feel like you were right there with him.
His tenure with the White Sox ended unceremoniously when he was fired before the 2021 season. At the time, Cooper was angry. He felt like he had spent half his life with the organization, only to find that no one in the front office seemed to care about him.
His departure from the White Sox may have ended with hard feelings, but 2026 offered a reminder that his legacy was never defined by how his tenure ended. It was defined by the pitchers he helped, the players he supported, the fans he entertained, and the countless stories he left behind. So as the White Sox celebrated their return to October, it was hard not to think of Cooper — a man who was part of so many of the franchise’s special moments over the years — and imagine him smiling right along with them.
