I went to a fireworks display and a baseball game broke out.
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As the night began, pity was the prevailing emotion, though I’d prefer to label it pathos. There’s a bit of superiority of subject to object in pity; pathos involves a stronger empathy, an identification with the object, and I felt that every time Frank Thomas came to the plate. Thomas began the season coming off his first batting title, and he was in the midst of a career that not only destined him for the Hall of Fame but that compared favorably with those of the greatest players ever. He’d completed seven seasons in the majors, and in each had registered at least 20 home runs and 100 runs batted in, while scoring 100, drawing 100 walks, and hitting .300. When he began putting up those numbers he earned comparisons with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, the two greatest hitters in baseball history, yet not even they managed what he’d done for seven straight years, much less their first seven seasons in the bigs. Thomas, with his evocative nickname the “Big Hurt,” was the best Chicago baseball player I’d ever seen–by a large margin. Yet he opened the Mariners game mired in a season-long slump, hitting just .251 with 19 homers, 73 RBIs, 71 runs scored, and 79 walks. Home runs were a given, and he still had a shot at reaching the basic figure of 100 in those last three categories, but raising his batting average 50 points in the final quarter of the season seemed a near-impossible task.
To see such a great player struggle over a season has been agony for Sox fans. Thomas’s famed batting eye has grown suspect, as he has argued regularly with the umpires over their clearly expanded strike zone, and his quick-trigger swoop of a swing has had a loop in it, resulting in pop-ups that poke holes in the clouds before plopping into some infielder’s mitt. Yet the most aggravating thing about Thomas’s woes has been that there is no obvious physical reason for them. Those who point at his weight are off the mark; last season he became the biggest man ever to win a batting title, at 280 pounds. This has been his first full season as a designated hitter, and maybe he needs the involvement of playing in the field to stay in the game. I’ve always said Thomas’s bat was worth any amount of butchery in the field. Replacing his glove clearly hasn’t helped the team; the Sox entered the game at 53-65, 10 1/2 games behind the Cleveland Indians in the American League Central, with a homer-prone pitching staff that would make a Gold Glove defense inconsequential. Thomas’s recent public admission that his marriage is in trouble, with three kids involved, probably comes closest to explaining his struggles. The pursuit of excellence in sports is, first and foremost, mental, and sometimes things seem to go bad for no reason at all. Then a player like Thomas becomes a tragic figure, no less compelling to a fan than Michael Jordan is in victory.
It’s been that sort of year for the Sox pitchers, too, but the staff has shown signs of coming around under the tutelage of coach Nardi Contreras, longtime colleague of first-season manager Jerry Manuel. In May Contreras replaced Mike Pazik, a crony of general manager Ron Schueler, when the pitching couldn’t get any worse. He hasn’t produced any miracles, but earlier in the week he had seen freshly promoted starter Scott Eyre and middle reliever Keith Foulke combine for seven no-hit innings against the Oakland Athletics. The Sox went on to win that one. Starter Mike Sirotka, too, has thrown very well of late, and Friday he looked like a real pitcher, changing speeds and working the corners while cruising to a 14-2 victory, his team-leading 12th of the season against 10 losses, and keeping Griffey in the park to boot, no mean feat.
