The White Sox remain the south-side equivalent of what Jack Brickhouse used to call “a snakebitten Cubs ball team,” and that’s even truer off the field than on. The Sox returned from a road trip in mid-May with a record of 18-16 and with every sports reporter in town repeating the club slogan “the kids can play” and chiding Sox fans–that dying breed–for not supporting their club. The Sox at the time had the lowest average attendance in the American League, and were beaten in the National only by the soon-to-be-moving Montreal Expos, who have been completely abandoned by their fans. Then rain threatened the first two games with the Cleveland Indians, and though late-afternoon sunshine defied the weatherman both days the forecast was enough to hold attendance to the low teens, only a few thousand above the meager season-ticket base. The Sox didn’t help their cause when the league-leading pitching staff gave up 13 runs in each game, and the Indians went on to sweep the three-game series. On Friday rains washed out the opener of a three-game series with the world-champion New York Yankees, forcing a Saturday doubleheader. The Sox already figured to have a decent crowd on Saturday, thanks to a postgame fireworks display, so a Sunday doubleheader would have made more sense; it was no doubt precluded by baseball’s getaway-day union rules. So the Sox salvaged a split of the Saturday doubleheader in front of a reported 35,310 fans (there were probably never more than 30,000 in the ballpark at any one time), and lost Sunday’s finale in miserable fashion in front of 22,845. By Memorial Day, which the Sox took off, they’d dropped to 22-25 and were a distant third in the AL Central behind the Indians and only slightly closer to the Yankees in the wild-card race. The kids could play, but they’d also proved they could screw up royally.
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That’s the downside to trading established stars for phenoms during a playoff race, which the Sox did two years ago. Bringing in exciting young talent raises expectations. When a team’s management insists it isn’t content to be merely competitive, that it wants to build a champion, then the players, exciting or not, have to be assessed as championship material. The main problem with the Sox right now is that their young talent often plays at cross-purposes. General manager Ron Schueler has put together a staff of promising pitchers but has hindered their development with clumsy fielders. A likable group of slashing young hitters pales next to the powerhouse lineups Cleveland and New York have put together. There’s nothing wrong with Sox attendance that a 90-win season couldn’t help fix, but the Sox have done such a good job of chasing away their core south-side fan base that they’ll probably never again see the day when the new Comiskey Park is packed to the top row of the upper deck. Sox fan that I am, I can’t yet argue that south-siders should feel guilty about not supporting their team. The Sox are still a work in progress.
So label the Alvarez-Caruso trade still dubious, and consider the deal that brought Simas to town for Jim Abbott in 1995 a definite if limited gain, simply because Abbott wasn’t much to begin with. Also included in that trade were McKay Christensen, back in the minors after being rushed to the majors out of spring training, and John Snyder, who has become the team’s most successful starter–all good location and changing speeds. Though he looks menacing with that growth of beard and his cap pulled low, he has an elegant little kick in mid-delivery, as if he were a vaudevillian strutting onstage. Otherwise, the pitching has been erratic at best. Jim Parque gives up a run every other inning, and James Baldwin and Jaime Navarro–yes, he’s still around–are lucky to do that well. Navarro keyed the three-game fiasco against Cleveland by getting bombed the first night and then complaining about the umpiring. It seemed Baldwin was squeezed by the home-plate ump the following night, and he gave up seven runs in two innings. He threw a first-pitch ball to each of the seven batters he faced in the first, and he walked the bases full in the second, at which point he gave up a grand slam to Manny Ramirez on a first-pitch fastball. Baldwin doubled over as if he’d been kicked in the stomach.
