Here might be the biggest reason the White Sox can’t consistently draw crowds worthy of their best-in-baseball record.
They have no Sammy Sosa, thank goodness. No Rodman or Rocker, praise be. No media dream golden boy like Mark Grace. No star at the top such as Mike Ditka or Phil Jackson or Dallas Green. No better-than-fiction characters right out of the 1985 Bears. No rock stars circa the ’98 Bulls.
No lightning rods, no rough edges, no easy handle, no national stars except fallen star Frank Thomas, potentially only one All-Star in out-of-nowhere pitcher James Baldwin, who went nowhere Wednesday night. Only 23,516 turned out to see a 10-1 pitcher against the reigning division champs from Cleveland.
To many fans, Baldwin as yet has all the charisma of a piano. He was gone in the fourth inning after allowing six runs. The Sox, more buoyant than flamboyant, battled back before losing 8-6.
The Sox’s secret is being something that no longer sells in our idol-craving culture: a beautifully boring team.
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To all but hardcore fans this team remains nothing more than a vague surprise, those darned Sox. Outside Chicago they might as well be the Gray Sox. They’ve been winning anonymously.
While Big Hurt Thomas isn’t quite the force he used to be–despite Wednesday night’s two homers–the Sox lineup is packed to the bottom with Little Hurts.
While Sosa has become the master of the meaningless home run, the Sox wear out pitchers with meaningful doubles. They’re tied for the major-league lead in doubles.
They lead the league in errors, but they’ve canceled them with the second most double plays. “The errors we’ve made,” first baseman Paul Konerko said, “have not been costly. The double plays have been huge.”
Most important, the Sox have led the league in contagious chemistry. Their postgame buffet still includes humble pie. Their manager, Jerry Manuel, has one of baseball’s smallest egos and refuses to make a highlight-show spectacle of himself by going nose-to-nose with an umpire.
Manuel quietly says his team’s 15-4 June has been about “guys picking each other up. We have a lot of guys with good numbers, but nobody with great numbers.”
Nobody will hit 60-something homers and strike out 170-something times. No starting pitcher will strike out 20 as the Cubs’ Kerry Wood has done.
The Sox bullpen is baseball’s best, yet they have no Mad Hungarian or Goose or Eck, no colorful closer. That duty is split between Bob Howry and Keith Foulke, whose most feared pitch is a changeup.
If you appreciate good, solid, smart baseball, the way it was meant to be played, this team is a pleasure to watch.
If you’re easily awed and amused, go to Wrigley Field. Even as the Sox were sweeping Cleveland and the Yankees on the road, Sosa’s soap opera was getting more national attention.
Many on-the-bubble fans who will go to Wrigley or Comiskey probably stayed home Wednesday night to watch Kerry Wood pitch in Atlanta.
Manuel took care of his “Sosa,” Thomas, by confronting him in front of the team early in spring training. That was the most important move Manuel has made as Sox manager. He officially won the respect of his team by proving Thomas wasn’t bigger than the manager.
But Thomas already had alienated many fans–those who weren’t already turned off by owner Jerry Reinsdorf.
The result is this team has a much better chance of capturing a division flag than the country’s (or city’s) imagination.
Casual fans just wanting to be entertained won’t consistently pack Comiskey’s upper deck unless the Gray Sox are leading the division in September.
That’s why Nova Lanktree has virtually no interest in trying to market any Sox player, locally or nationally. For 15 years Chicago-based Lanktree has been making appearance and endorsement deals for sports stars from Ditka to Thomas.
She no longer represents Thomas because he has “methodically eroded his relationship with the fans of Chicago.”
But Thomas’ teammates, she says, have fallen into “the paradox of blending in to create a winning team. Kobe had to defer to Shaq for the Lakers to win. But with a team like the Sox, it keeps any one entity from becoming a superstar.”
Maybe they’ll need to trade for a star-caliber starting pitcher to hold off the Indians. But so far it has been refreshing to watch an all-for-one team built to last.