If a sports fan should have a heightened appreciation for the play of a Tiger Woods or a Michael Jordan in today’s unforgiving media spotlight, what’s the proper response to a Frank Thomas? Thomas, like Jordan before him and Woods now, has faced steadily increasing scrutiny and pressure during his career. Unlike those two champions, he seems to have cracked.
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It wasn’t all that long ago that the “Big Hurt”–easily the most evocative nickname of the current generation, in which nicknames have for the most part gone out of fashion–was the darling of the south side, a certain Hall of Famer. He is the first and only baseball player to put together seven straight seasons of hitting 20 homers, both driving in and scoring 100 runs, walking 100 times, and batting .300. Considering that he began that streak in his first full season in the majors, 1991, he seemed destined to be one of the game’s greats. But something went wrong, beginning with the media brouhaha over the nonunion labor he employed to build his Oak Brook mansion a few years ago. Last year his batting average dipped 82 points from his league-leading mark of the year before to an abysmal (for him) .265. The slump was largely blamed on the breakup of his marriage, which also received widespread attention. This year he vowed to regain his focus, but he never found the equilibrium that made him both a fearsome and an intelligent hitter. He raised his average back over .300, but his power suffered. He called it a season two weeks ago with a strained ligament in an ankle, a bone spur on a foot, and an aggravating corn on a toe. Surgery was required, but he admitted he could have played if the White Sox were in contention, which of course they weren’t. In 135 games, his 15 homers, 77 runs batted in, 74 runs scored, and 87 walks failed to meet his aforementioned standards, and his .305 batting average was still the second-worst mark he’s ever posted. In the papers, on TV, on sports-talk radio, and in bars, Thomas was called a quitter, someone who had succumbed to a hurt that wasn’t nearly big enough–this after being labeled the “Big Skirt” in the spring series with the Cubs and being booed at home this summer for the first time in his career.
But they might not have a choice in the matter. Thomas’s whole demeanor this season suggested someone in a funk so deep only a total change could pull him out of it. I last saw him in person in a mid-August game against the Anaheim Angels, when the boos were just beginning. It was a cold, damp late-summer night in which the wind came blowing in off the lake bearing a mist that was almost tactile. Thomas hit one hard in the first inning, but the wind and humidity knocked the ball down and it was caught in deep center. He hit a rope straight at the left fielder his second time up, but the fans weren’t giving him any style points. “You suck, Frank!” yelled one leather-lunged guy. As the crowd was small and quiet–the “Com Ed Energy Meter” on the scoreboard was showing yet another power outage, this one in the grandstand–Thomas certainly heard him. Keep in mind that Thomas had won the game the night before with a hit in the Sox’ last bats, and he would go on to win this evening’s game, albeit less deservingly. He came up in the bottom of the eighth with the lead run on second base. “Let’s go, Frank!” yelled someone, perhaps even the guy who had yelled before. Thomas smashed a hard grounder down the third-base line. The third baseman snagged it but it was a tough play, and he threw the ball away trying to get Thomas at first, allowing the run to score.
The most tantalizing question in any measuring of the lopsided Robinson-Pappas trade is whether Robinson would have enjoyed the same career if he’d stayed in Cincinnati. Almost certainly not. Sometimes a place is contaminated for a player–just as sometimes a workplace seems contaminated for an embittered employee–and the only cure is to get out. Me, I think it should be left up to Thomas. If he wants out, Schueler should move him, and without dealing in the media, where his value will only decrease if it’s known he has to be traded. I, for one, am already preserving memories of Thomas–the wave of his bat behind his head, like the twitch of a tiger’s tail before pouncing; his almost dancelike rhythm in shifting his weight back and forth from swing to swing in batting practice; even his girlie throw, cocking the ball behind his ear and then leading with his elbow–against the possibility that he’ll be gone. Say it ain’t so, Big Frank. But if it is, so be it. The current Sox management not only deserves to rebuild without Thomas, it deserves to get a modern-day Milt Pappas in return.
