The funk that has oppressed the White Sox since the 1994 players’ strike seemed to lift a little when they opened the second half of the season with a 13-game home stand. Albert Belle, the epitome of funk, started clubbing the ball, with ten home runs in the first ten of those games, giving him 28 on the season and an even 300 in his turbulent career. The team’s two other big guns, Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura, both won games with homers in the bottom of the ninth. Pitching, the club’s weak point all season, stabilized, with de facto ace and prime culprit Jaime Navarro winning two straight. Crowds returned to respectable levels, and one afternoon even topped 30,000 for a season high. It was easy to get enthusiastic and maybe even optimistic about the team, especially if one was actually going out to the new Comiskey Park, where an obstinate south-side spirit of endurance has grown up in the face of the occupation ownership and high-level mismanagement of the team.
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In short, any sense of improvement in the Sox’ fortunes is purely a matter of perception.
Meanwhile, we were settling in, enjoying the beautiful evening and the box seats Mark had gotten from an uncle. When Navarro got the first two men in the second inning I turned to Mark and said, “He’s gonna pitch a perfecto. That’ll show up us experts.” He promptly surrendered a home run to Jeff Conine. But Durham got the run back with a homer in the bottom of the second, so we relaxed and started listening actively to organist Nancy Faust, who was playing her usual mix of groaners and hidden delights. She played the first few notes of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” for KC’s Jose Offerman, but then mixed her musical metaphors by playing the Meow Mix jingle for Hal Morris (Morris the Cat is, of course, the 9-Lives spokesman), and then played Barry Manilow’s inexcusable “Mandy” for Mendy Lopez.
So with the wife and our oldest daughter out of town last weekend, I took the two-year-old to Comiskey to expose her to that unique fan environment. She got it full bore, but before that happened we sat down and watched batting practice. I pointed out the “Big Hurt,” thinking the nickname would attract her, but no: she complained about being in the sun. Thomas fell into that distinctive rhythm–weight on back foot, left foot off ground, weight transferred to left foot, back foot off ground–and hit some monster shots, including one off the bull pen roof, where a certain travel destination offers to pay some lucky fan $1 million should anyone hit it there in regulation play. “Save it for the game, Frank,” called a fan from the bleachers. Thomas was teamed with Caruso, and watching him hit after Thomas was sort of like watching your neighbor slap mosquitoes during the finale of the Fourth of July fireworks. In Caruso the Sox have replaced one light-hitting shortstop with no batting eye whatsoever, Ozzie Guillen, with another. Caruso came into (and would leave) the game with five walks on the season. He may be just 21 years old, but like Guillen before him he does not appear to be a pennant-caliber shortstop. Belle and Ventura came up next, Belle clobbering the ball, Ventura cocking the bat behind his head with his wrists and then letting his swing unfold in one smooth horizontal arc. After they hit we went and had lunch.
More people might have laughed at that if these guys hadn’t already offended or intimidated most of them. They ran off the husband and wife and two teenage daughters sitting in front of them fairly early, with only a few muttered and half-meant apologies to smooth things over. Then a guy from across the aisle told them to cut out the swearing, and the lead lout responded with the usual First Amendment BS. Security came and cooled everybody out, not without some choice name-calling by the lead lout, who said he had $100 in his pocket, enough for bail. There were Cleveland fans sitting behind us and enjoying the whole show, as if they were in a skybox with the game in front of them and an R-rated movie on the TV. Everybody’s spirits improved–everybody’s except the Cleveland fans’, that is–when the Sox tied the game with an eight-run explosion in the fourth, but Scott Eyre surrendered a go-ahead homer to Cleveland’s Manny Ramirez in the fifth, and one had the feeling the Sox wouldn’t recover. They didn’t, eventually losing 15-9. Caruso left the bases loaded in the seventh by popping to third. With Thomas on deck and Belle behind him, a walk sure would have looked good.
