In the first weeks after the all-star break, the White Sox played .500 baseball, which according to the major prognosticators was all they had to play to keep the Cleveland Indians at bay, thanks to the huge lead the Sox built up during the first half of the season. But despite winning as much as they were losing–remaining 23 games over .500 going into this week–the Sox weren’t playing on an even keel. Rather, they were listing from side to side as if tossed in a storm–their obvious flaws in pitching and defense contributing to excruciating losses. A couple of times in the last two weeks the Sox lost particularly agonizing games–the series-opening loss to the Oakland Athletics, for instance, and then the doubleheader sweep at the hands of the Seattle Mariners, with the second game turning on a crucial error by shortstop Jose Valentin–but they came back with crushing victories. The Sox seemed to maintain a placid, businesslike intensity throughout, but their fans were rocked with worry and exaltation. Like a serial killer, Sox fans were plagued by an inner anxiety and tension that could only be relieved by the occasional bludgeoning. Only after a 13-0 or 19-3 victory did everything, for the time being, seem all right.
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The Sox might have saved their season with an extra-inning victory two weeks ago against the A’s. Going into a three-game set with the team that then led the wild-card race and looked to be their most likely first-round playoff opponent, the Sox had lost a three-game series to the Boston Red Sox and another to the Kansas City Royals, had split a four-game series with the Anaheim Angels, and split two games with the Texas Rangers. They still led the Indians by ten and a half games, but they didn’t exactly look like a team prepared for October baseball. Then they lost the series opener to the A’s 5-3, ruining the festive homecoming of Harold Baines, who’d been acquired from Baltimore with catcher Charles Johnson in a trade-deadline deal, and saw their lead over the charging Tribe sliced to single digits. The next night the Sox claimed an early 2-0 lead, but Jim Parque couldn’t hold it; they fell behind 3-2 and appeared to be in full fall. But Chicago came back to tie the game in the ninth inning against Oakland closer Jason Isringhausen, who balked in the tying run, and won it in the tenth on a double by Frank Thomas that scored Valentin on a thrilling head-first slide into home. The next day the Sox administered a 13-0 shellacking to the A’s, with de facto ace James Baldwin coasting to his 13th win of the season against 4 losses.
CTA problems got me to Comiskey Park a little late for the next game, which was two Wednesdays ago. I missed seeing the Big Hurt take batting practice, though I arrived in time for Baines and that familiar water-pump hitch swing of his. But on the way through the clubhouse I spotted Thomas sitting at his locker stall going through mail as soul music played loudly on the sound system. He was all alone, which is how he sometimes likes it. Thomas has taken on more leadership this season–I’ve sometimes seen the Hurt stand at the batting cage after his own cuts and watch his teammates hit, an unfamiliar sight in recent years –but he leads, now as ever, mostly by example. The example he’s set this season has been stellar. Though some critics in the media took issue with his declining a belated invitation to the all-star game, his performance during the season has been above reproach, and when the Sox staggered out of the gate in the second half it was Thomas who kept propping them up. He had homered in the first inning of that pivotal game against the A’s that he won in the tenth with his double, and the evening before he’d homered in the first inning of the nightcap of the ill-fated doubleheader against Seattle.
Yet there were good reasons to go against the book in this case. When the Florida Marlins won a world championship three years ago, Johnson was the Marlins’ catcher and Sox manager Jerry Manuel was their bench coach. So Johnson knows the pressures of playoff baseball and he knows Manuel, who almost certainly authorized the deal if he didn’t actually encourage it. Schueler, Manuel, and the rest of the Sox were clearly hoping that Johnson could help stabilize the Sox’ young pitchers. He’ll have to get to know them first, however, yet another thing for Sox fans to worry about between now and the playoffs. Thank goodness Johnson has some pop in his bat as well; the Sox are going to need to score a lot more runs to ease their fans’ anxiety, especially with their lead over the Indians down to seven and a half games.
