The White Sox took the black clouds and bad weather that seem to have plagued them ever since the 1994 baseball strike and used them as a weapon against the Cubs in Wrigley Field. They practically ran the Cubs off their own ball field in the early going of each game two weeks ago, and whenever the Cubs threatened a comeback the dark forces the Sox know so intimately thwarted it. The Cubs trailed 5-3 but were on the charge when a downpour that lasted for hours stopped Friday’s opener in the sixth inning. On Saturday, the Sox took another early lead and this time kept extending it until they were out of the reach of even the cardiac Cubs. Even so, the weather remained at the Sox’ beck and call; the Cubs at last scored and loaded the bases in the ninth inning, but the game ended when a Mark Grace drive to right field was knocked down by the wind, which had turned in off the lake after wafting out to straightaway center most of the day. If Grace had hit the same ball in the first inning, it would have wound up on Sheffield Avenue instead of in Magglio Ordoñez’s glove. Sunday, with the dubious Jaime Navarro starting for the Sox and thus giving the Cubs an excellent chance to save face, the game was tied at two when the skies opened again and forced a rain delay of over three hours. This sent Navarro to the showers and chased away all but the most rabid Cubs and Sox fans, who gathered behind their teams’ dugouts when play resumed like warring armies hunkering down in the mire. It was then that the Sox crushed the Cubs and their fans’ spirit by beating them at their own game–long ball.
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Of course I don’t really suspect the Sox of turning their bad karma into a weapon through the use of the cabala or the black arts. Yet the series did seem a defining moment for the south-side team. They’d already become a slashing, scrapping, rah-rah running squad–they had to, after the departures of Albert Belle and Robin Ventura–that produced games like the 2-1 early-season victory in which Ray Durham scored the winning run on a potential inning-ending double play broken up at second by Mike Caruso. Yet with the city’s sports spotlight on Wrigley Field, the Sox seemed to take a special pride in their role as underdog spoilers. In the first inning Friday, Caruso scurried from first to second on a Frank Thomas groundout and scored on an Ordoñez double that might not have scored Thomas. Later, Durham went from first to third on a hit-and-run groundout; he didn’t score, but he showed up the Cubs. Ordoñez scored from third on an infield grounder by going as soon as batter Carlos Lee made contact with the ball and another time was thrown out at the plate after running through a stop sign by third-base coach Wallace Johnson. Even that was simply overaggressive baseball with two outs. Meanwhile, the Cubs’ Jeff Blauser was letting Ordoñez score on that infield grounder by nonchalantly taking the out at first; and when Cubs scrub Manny Alexander wasn’t muffing plays at second base–he let a slow roller by Chris Singleton bounce up and bite him, resulting in two unearned runs when Greg Norton followed with a homer–he was getting himself into boneheaded fixes on offense by dashing around the bases with his head down. If the Sox couldn’t have looked any better in winning that game, the Cubs couldn’t have looked worse.
As prepared as the Sox pitchers were for the Cubs, that’s how ill prepared the Cubs looked for the Sox. It wasn’t just a matter of the Cubs being outscrapped and outhustled, although they certainly were on Friday. Saturday the Sox simply crushed them, pounding out 18 hits. Two came from Sirotka, who as an American League pitcher isn’t used to batting. He slapped a single to left in the second inning and singled again and scored in the fourth, signaling the end for Steve Trachsel, who as usual was throwing everything at the same speed. This made his pitches little more than batting practice for the Sox. A couple of their slap hitters bat out of a crouch, but the heart of the order–Thomas, Ordoñez, Lee, and Singleton–all have erect batting stances and hold their hands high, so that when they’re on they seem to be simply dropping the head of the bat on the ball and driving it to all fields. Part of this is probably due to the natural leadership of Thomas, who hits in that fashion and who came into the Wrigley series on a hot streak. He was scalding the ball in batting practice Friday and soon extended a hitting streak to 17 games. He made it 18 on Saturday with a first-inning single that helped set up the team’s first run, and he crushed a Trachsel fastball onto Waveland Avenue to lead off the third inning. Yet that erect, slashing style is also probably due to batting coach Von Joshua, and no one has thrived under his tutelage more than Ordoñez. He was on a tear, going three for three Friday with two runs batted in and three for five Saturday with two more RBIs. On Sunday he added two more hits and drove in another run, giving him a team-high 50 RBIs on the season.
