Jose Quintana trade comes 25 years after the last huge deal between Cubs and White Sox

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At first blush, Thursday's blockbuster trade sending Jose Quintana to the North Side sure seems like the biggest deal ever made between the two Chicago baseball teams.

The Cubs and White Sox haven't been frequent trade partners, especially in recent history, making just 11 trades since 1980, just five since 1990 and only two since the turn of the century.

But a fun part about Thursday's swap? It came a quarter century to the year after the previous biggest deal between the two clubs, when in 1992, the White Sox shipped Sammy Sosa to the North Side to bring George Bell to the South Side.

Sosa was only on the White Sox for two and a half seasons, belting a combined 18 homers in 302 games. But the deal sending him to the Cubs turned out to be far more lucrative for the North Siders, as Sosa went on to slug 545 home runs in 13 seasons, turning in a Hall-of-Fame-caliber career in a Cubs uniform.

Bell, meanwhile, spent just two seasons on the South Side after the trade, the final two years of his career. He hit .255/.294/.418 with 25 homers in 1992 but then just slashed .217/.243/.363 with 13 home runs in 102 games in 1993.

The success in the 2017 trade between the two teams looks like it will be far more evenly spread out than how things turned out in the 1990s, with the Cubs accomplishing their goal of adding a long-term piece to the front of their starting rotation and the White Sox continuing to add highly rated prospects to their farm system.

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