TRAPPED
IN THE LOVELY AMBER OF THIS MOMENT
GAME FOUR, WORLD SERIES:
Chicago White Sox 1, Houston
Astros 0
(White Sox win Series, 4-0)
"Any questions?"
Billy licked his lips, thought for awhile, inquired
at last: "Why me?"
" That is a very Earthling question
to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us
for that matter? Why anything? Because
this moment simply is. Have you ever
seen bugs trapped in amber?"
" Yes."
" Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped
in the amber of this moment. There is no why."
—Kurt
Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Did White Sox fans eschew curses
because they are wise people who love life? People
who don't look for superstition to guide
them, who aren't content to let baseball
so rule their roost that in reality they can enjoy
it more for what it is, a beautiful game played
from the budding spring to the crisp fall? Is
it so that they can finally win a championship
and enjoy it, without all the stupid fatalistic
dogma we see in Boston. Did they sense that all
the weird calls might pop up in the Series, just
as it does in baseball in general, and that it's
merely the way the game goes, not the unsteady,
drunken hand of some god who seeks victory or
defeat? That maybe, just maybe, Chicagoans wanted
simply to enjoy this World Series like it's
a game, and not some act of God, not some whim
of the fates, but a game of baseball in a town
that loves sports?
This World Series did not, for instance,
heal anyone. It did not reunite the north and
south sides, it did not end a long era of futility
that was felt in the marrow of generations and
was finally exorcised after 88 years. It didn't
do anything but bring some fun and joy to the
city of Chicago.
Because curses are silly, and the
White Sox and their fans know this. I didn't
know this before. I know it now.
In fact, I would argue that these
White Sox are wonderful for a number of reasons:
because they played old-style ball and they played
Moneyball-style ball and they weren't picked
to win, but win they did. And it proves very little
except that you win baseball games by playing
well—hitting and pitching and fielding better
than the other team. No one will fill our already
overcrowded bookshelves with titles suggesting
that the White Sox prove a certain point, made
over and over again by the beleaguered fellows
at this website or that. It doesn't prove
that the grumps are right, the old men who can't
stand the numbers-crunchers. For once everyone
seemed to shut up and just watch the game.
And soon they'll have their
memories: there's tons of them. Like a four
game sweep that was, in reality, four nail-biting
games that could have gone either way. Though
I respect Phil Garner, I have to admit that it
was wonderful to see him so baffled as to why
nothing went the Astros way, especially in the
hitting department. That'll be fun to remember.
And great plays, like Uribe's falling into
the stands to record out two in the ninth, not
to mention his final grab and fire to Konerko
for the final out. There will be Scott Podsednik's
walk-off homer in Game Two, Jeff Blum's
homer to win game three in fourteen long innings,
and this nail-biting 1-0 final game four. Ozzie's
sitting in his director's chair, mistakes
and taking advantage of mistakes and the best,
the best, four game sweep in World Series
history. Will the White Sox be able to repeat?
Will Konerko return? Will Ozzie Guillen run for
mayor?
Who cares? Right now, we're
here. In the now. The now is preparing
for a parade in Chicago. Right now they're
laughing to themselves, wondering what Ozzie will
say over the next few days, whether or not they
should buy a White Sox wool cap for the grueling
two hour wait on Michigan Avenue during the parade.
Right here, right now, all there
is in Chicago is a celebration of baseball, and
it has nothing to do with anything but baseball.
Isn't that just how it should be?
—Peter Schilling
Jr.
Thursday, October 27
ROLL OVER,
GENE AUTRY, AND TELL THE BAMBINO THE NEWS
The last time the Chicago White
Sox won four games in one World Series, they were
beating John McGraw's New York Giants 88 years
earlier, they were managed by a man named “Pants”,
and even Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg gave no
thought to throwing a thing to the other guys.
Roll over, Gene Autry, and tell
the Bambino the news. Three curses busted in four
seasons. At this kind of conversion rate perhaps
next year really will be next year, at long enough
last, for the other Chicago team. The
one whose ballpark is as lovely as its team is
not, compared to the new World Champions being
as lovely a team as their ballpark is not. Unless
your idea of lovely is vertigo in the nosebleed
seats.
This time, the White Sox won four
straight after throwing nothing at the Houston
Astros but pitches the Astros couldn't hit with
shovels, panels, or doors when it mattered. And
whenever the Astros could find any way to hit
what these White Sox threw or extort their way
on base, they treated their baserunners like castaways
rather than runs in waiting.
For most of Game Four the sound coming from Minute
Maid Park public address system should not have
been buzzing bees but the theme from Gilligan's
Island. But Phil Garner was no Professor,
the Astros' hitters resembled Gilligan more than
the Skipper, and don't even ask about the millionaire
and his wife.
Brandon Backe had saved boldness
from bathos, throwing seven shutout innings in
which he alone among the Astros resembled Houdini
more than vainglorious Mr. Howell, and it was
his malfortune to do it on a night when Freddy
Garcia made these Disastros look even worse than
Backe made the White Sox look. And he made the
White Sox look paralyzed enough that it took Garner,
with no little disbelief, lifting Lidge for a
seventh inning pinch hitter and bringing in Brad
Lidge for the top of the eighth before anyone
put something on the scoreboard.
Lidge did what he could in the wake
of his shattering Game Two hour, including and
especially standing up in the hours since, making
no attempt to shirk his responsibility for Scott
Podsednik's walkoff tracer, but he could do nothing
this time to stop pinch hitter Lenny Harris (for
Garcia) lining a base hit the other way to left
field to open the White Sox eighth; nothing to
stop Podsednik from bunting Harris to second or
pinch hitter Carl Everett (for Tadahito Iguchi)
grounding him to third, or eventual Series MVP
Jermaine Dye—four hits in his final five
Series at-bats—lining one up the pipe to
send home Harris.
These White Sox—six parts
Go-Go and half a dozen parts Winnin' Ugly; shaken
into re-smartening by a stretch drive swoon that
almost left room for an upstart band of Cleveland
Indians to steal the division the Sox once had
under armed guard—were probably far more
gracious in conquest than the Astros deserved
them to be. "Hats off to the Houston Astros,"
Podsednik said breathlessly in the immediate wake.
"They grinded it out the whole way . . .
they were a class act the whole way."
"This was an unbelievable World
Series," said owner Jerry Reinsdorf, the
World Series trophy nestling in his left arm.
"We won four straight, they could easily
have won each and every one of those games. A
great battle by a valiant club." This was
hardly the first time the primary instigator of
the 1994 players' strike—you know, the one
that cost the White Sox a legitimate shot at doing
this a decade plus one year sooner than they did
at last—was wrong, and it will not be the
last.
"We missed a lot of pitches
that we could have hit, and we did expand the
zone a little bit," Garner said when it was
all over but the second-guessing. We were a classic
sort of a slump, and they had the other side of
that circle, where they hit everything that we
pitched up there over the middle of the plate."
As much as it will fall to profound
analysis as to just how these White Sox did what
scattered predecessor teams (1959, 1983) could
not accomplish, the record will show that in a
World Series in which the White Sox's suddenly
invincible starting rotation began to look a little
more human than they had in cauterizing the Los
Angeles Angels, these Dis-astros swung as though
lacking plan or reason while the White Sox bullpen
proved best able to pick up, dust off, and drive
home the screws.
Five times in the final game did
the Astros put their leadoff hitter on base, three
times was he put into scoring position, twice
did they load the bases including on walks that
finished intentionally, and they left them all
that way. And in the bottom of the ninth, after
pushing their leadoff man into scoring position
yet again, the best the Astros could do was hit
balls serving to make White Sox shortstop Juan
Uribe resemble Derek Jeter just waiting to hang
them out to dry.
"Jason Lane," Tim McCarver
crowed on Fox, "drops a little parachute
into center to open the ninth for the Astros,"
hitting Bobby Jenks's 2-2 fastball on a high flare
that fell between oncoming center fielder Aaron
Rowand and Harris outgoing from second. Brad Ausmus
bunted Lane to second, and pinch hitter Chris
Burke (for Adam Everett) hitting a 2-2 pitch on
a high pop outside the third base line and heading
for the seats foul, when Uribe ran full force
and dove over the rail into the crowd to catch
it as his head aimed toward the floor behind the
fence.
Go ahead, Juan, stick the knife
in a little further if you dare. Come
in hard on that slow chop pinch hitter Orlando
Palmeiro (for Lidge) sent behind the mound, the
ball dying when it hit between the back mound
dirt and the grass. Pick that dead sponge
with your bare hand, bag Palmeiro by
a half step. Send half of Chicago, the
half which roots for those other guys in those
Friendlier Confines, into a spasm unseen since
Lew McCarty, pinch hitting for Poll Perritt, grounded
one to future Clean Sox second baseman Eddie Collins,
who whipped a throw to future Black Sox Chick
Gandil at first for game, set, and 1917 Serious.
But please have the decency not
to ask why on earth Garner added insult to injury
when he decided to stick a premature fork into
Backe and send up Jeff Bagwell to bat for him
in the seventh, instead of saving the Astros'
franchise-best slugger for something a little
more important that might come up; say, in the
bottom of the ninth. Don't even think about asking
Garner why he lifted a pitcher with a shutout
in the making, with no need to save him for a
blessed thing in light of a game that was beyond
merely must-win.
And, please, too, have the decency
not to say how it felt leaving Craig Biggio—with
Bagwell the longest suffering among these Astros,
whom not even the White Sox would have begrudged
had their juniors found a way to quit playing
Dumb Ball around them—stranded in the on-deck
circle, battered batting helmet barely masking
a still-boyish face straining not to betray what
he knew to be true, that they had looked worse
being swept by these White Sox than they ever
made the St. Louis Cardinals look in taking the
pennant in six.
The Astros inertia wedded to the
White Sox's alertness made one wish that Ozzie
Guillen—who opened his season looking as
much like a Calgulan-style diplomat as a delightful
rake and finished looking like Casey Stengel reincarnated
up from the arterials of Venezuela—had been
handed competition worthy of his cheerful risk-friendliness.
He out-thought and out-generaled Garner, and his
players out-pitched and out-executed the Astros
so profoundly, that there should be as little
further talk of how tainted the postseason was
by dubious umpiring as there should be much further
investigation into why this postseason's umpires
were as allergic to extra labor toward getting
it right as last season's had been allergic to
shirking that duty.
The Disastros had made few friends
and influenced fewer people except as examples
of what not to do and how not to execute or excuse
it; their inability to produce on the bases had
finally caught them in the pincers of a gang of
relentless junkyard dogs and their sesquipedalic
master; and, they had nothing and no one to blame
but their own sad selves, for becoming the first
of major league baseball's original expansion
class to reach their first World Series and not
win even one game, contra those elitists
from New York and Los Anaheim.
"I can't say anything about
it,'' Backe said, speaking specifically about
Garner's seventh inning pinch-hit decision, perhaps
inadvertently speaking beyond those things. "He's
the manager. He's the one who makes the decisions,
he's the one who made the decisions that got us
here.'' The White Sox have just let the world
know that "here" has a double meaning
that the Astros will spend a painful enough winter
conjugating.
—Jeff Kallman
Thursday, October 27
 TWINS
IN THE WORLD SERIES?
Dear Mr. Mudville –
True Story:
I was watching game one of this year's World Series.
It was about the 4th inning out here, and it was
time to put our 2-week old twins down for bed
in their nursery. We had been holding them and
feeding them while watching the game. Unfortunately,
the little guys just wouldn't go to sleep. They'd
fall asleep in our arms while we watched the game
(and, yes, drank beer) but the moment we moved
them away from the TV and the sound of baseball,
they went crazy.
Finally, we had to put them both to sleep right
next to the speaker of the television, where they
could hear the sounds of the game and the play
by play. As soon as we did that, they fell into
a blissful slumber, listening to the chatter of
the final innings, and our cheers as the rough-and-ready
White Sox beat those Red State Sombiches Astro-nots.
—A.
Editor's note: Peter
& Will Clason were born October 5 to our good
friends (and fellow Loafer publisher) A. D. Clason
and artist Sher K. Blankner.
THE GIFTS THEY KEEP ON
GIVING BACK
WORLD SERIES, GAME THREE:
Chicago White Sox 7, Houston
Astros 5
(Ozzfest Leads the Serious, 3-0)
For a Houston Astros fan, it may
take awhile to answer as to whether their best
pitcher's better stuff abandoning him at home—letting
him belch up a five-run fifth inning that killed
a 4-0 lead—hurt worse than a former teammate
not long removed belting up an unexpected, tiebreaking,
proved-to-be-the-winner fourteenth-inning home
run.
Was it less painful to watch Roy
Oswalt, his best fastball guilty of desertion
in Game Three of his team's first World Series,
poised to defend that early Astros lead when Joe
Crede opened the Chicago White Sox fifth with
an opposite field launch into the right field
seats, from which point the White Sox sent ten
more to the plate and four more across it? Was
that a greater sting than the Astros' whip-around
fourteenth-inning double play turn merely setting
a stage for Geoff Blum—a thirteenth-inning
substitute for Tadahito Iguchi at second base—to
pull reliever Ezequiel Astacio's 2-0 pitch down
the line and just a row or two into the low right
field corner seats?
Crede's drive almost felt like a
momentary lapse of reason compared to what followed
him: single (Juan Uribe), strikeout (White Sox
starter Jon Garland, up to bunt), single (Scott
Podsednik) and first and second, RBI single (Iguchi,
punching a liner up the pipe, Uribe scoring),
RBI single (Jermaine Dye, lofting a soft liner
off the end of his bat and up over the middle),
deep fly out to center field (Paul Konerko, with
Iguchi slipping off second and forced to hold
his base when Houston center fielder Willy Taveras
was all but conceding him third base), two-RBI
double (A.J. Pierzynski, bouncing one off the
fence to the right of Minute Maid Park's center
field berm, driving home Iguchi and Dye)?
It was almost a wonder that the
White Sox kept it there for the next nine innings,
strictly speaking, considering Oswalt was so stripped
of powers by this point that he walked Aaron Rowand
and plunked Crede (pitching him tight as it was,
drawing no little yapping from Carl Everett and
other assorted White Sox) to load the pads for
Uribe. The White Sox shortstop popped a 1-2 pitch
to right center field where Jason Lane ambled
over to catch it for the side.
There went the joy of Craig Biggio,
one of the Astros' eternal warriors, co-founder
of the Killer Bs, producing the first three runs
of the first World Series game ever played in
Texas—whacking a high liner to the left
center gap bouncing off the track for a double
and scoring one out later on Lance Berkman's opposite
field line single; sending home Adam Everett (he
reached to lead off when Uribe couldn't handle
his slow roller past the mound, and was bunted
over by Oswalt) with a neat punch through the
hole between first and second, and scoring two
batters later, after Berkman singled him to third
and Morgan Ensberg singled through the left side
to drive him in.
There went the joy with interest
in the bottom of the fourth, when someone other
than the White Sox caught a break for a change
and Jason Lane's drive to slight left center hit
the wall just left of the Conoco billboard in
one of the wall arches and just left of the yellow
home run line, letting Lane take the round trip
for the 4-0 lead that had exactly one half inning
to live.
And there went the joy of Oswalt
pitching on coarse gallantry alone, surviving
with as much breaking material as alleged fastball
through four innings, putting his defenders to
work and getting splendid enough play for his
investment, which only began when Everett over
from shortstop picked off Dye's grounder for a
nothing-to-it step-and-throw inning ending double
play in the top of the first.
Then Crede greeted him rudely to
open the White Sox fifth. And while the Astros
handed it over to the bullpen, after Oswalt opened
the top of the seventh by walking Konerko on four
unintentional balls, they pried the tying run
out of Cliff Politte in relief of starter Jon
Garland in the top of the eighth.
Ensberg pried a two-out walk out
of Politte, compelling Ozzie Guillen to bring
in Neal Cotts, and Mike Lamb, starting in left
field for the Astros, getting a four-pitch unintentional
pass from Cotts, pushing him out and Dustin Hermanson
in from the White Sox pen. And Lane shot a hanging
slider up the left field line and on a carom off
a billboard along the fence angle, enough to let
Ensberg score but also to keep pinch-runner Eric
Bruntlett (for Lamb) from thinking beyond third
base.
How conscious do you think either
the Astros or the White Sox were about the oddball
umpiring calls that have helped to govern the
incumbent postseason? Ausmus was aware enough
to pounce on a thirteenth-inning bunt by Podsednik
that bounced just behind the back corner of the
plate, with White Sox reserve catcher Chris Widger
(a ninth-inning substitution) on first, and throw
up to second as the foul call was registered by
home plate umpire Jerry Layne.
One pitch later, Podsednik bunted
again, this time right off the plate. Once again,
Ausmus pounced, reaching with his mitt as Podsednik
lingered in the batter's box, thinking he had
bunted another foul, but Ausmus whipped another
throw to second hearing no foul call and Everett
alertly had the pad covered to force Widger before
throwing on to first to get Podsednik—not
customarily a double-play victim—by several
steps.
The Astros must have thought they
were on the receiving end of blessings, too, when
Brad Lidge—who flinched not once after Podsednik
continued what Albert Pujols started upon his
psyche—shook away any demons in the top
of the ninth, coming in on a double switch (Chris
Burke to left field, spelling Bruntlett with Berkman
moving to first) to bail out Mike Gallo (who had
come in to bail out Dan Wheeler after the latter
plunked Konerko with one out, and got Pierzynski
to ground out to Biggio at second), and blasting
Rowand for a strikeout on a low-and-away slider
with just enough to tempt the White Sox center
fielder and preserve the tie.
But Orlando Hernandez relieving
Hermanson for the bottom of the ninth seemed bent
upon giving to the Astros until it hurt too much
for them to receive. El Duque threw away a pickoff
bid against Burke (a one-out, four-pitch walk),
letting Burke have second on the house, and walked
Biggio after Burke stole third on a pitchout.
And Taveras—why didn't Phil Garner put the
squeeze on with one out? —swished on an
offspeed service down the pipe, and Ensberg wasted
a bases-loading walk to Berkman (intentional after
a 2-0 count), swinging right through a pitch just
under his belt.
And after Lidge sawed through the
White Sox in the tenth (an infield out and two
swishes), El Duque tried his best to give the
Astros another present, walking Lidge's pinch
hitter Orlando Palmeiro on four pitches to open
the bottom, before leaving with an apparent sore
shoulder. Everett pried a walk out of reliever
Luis Vizcaino before Burke bounced back to the
mound to strand two more of sixteen total Astro
castaways.
Chad Qualls took his own turn ducking
the bases loaded in the top of the eleventh when
he got pinch-hitter Timo Perez to ground out to
Berkman unassisted at first, and Bobby Jenks ducked
trouble in the bottom of the inning after plunking
Taveras and walking Berkman, thanks to Ensberg
popping out down the left field line and Palmeiro
grounding one back to the mound for the side.
Qualls and Jenks swapped three-threes in the twelfth,
and the Astros wasted another early baserunner
(pinch hitter Jose Vizcaino, for Qualls, a leadoff
walk) off Damaso Marte spelling Jenks in the thirteenth,
when he punched out Biggio and Taveras on practically
the same pitch, an inside corner fastball just
on the knees, before Berkman forced Vizcaino at
second to end it.
And then for a moment it looked
as though Astacio would escape the fourteenth
as swiftly as he had stepped into trouble, when
Dye's leadoff single to right center got turned
into a highlight double play, when Ensberg slid
to his right knee to pick Konerko's smash up the
line and throw a strike to Biggio, who whipped
one likewise to Berkman to nail it.
Blum turned out to have a different
net result on his mind. So different that it almost
seemed as though the Astros were too numb to notice
when Widger walked on 3-1 with the bases loaded
on Astacio (Rowand, a chopper to third too slow
for Ensberg to throw him out; Crede, a roller
up the line that stopped off the pad at third
fair; Uribe, a full-count walk) to push home the
insurance run.
Wandy Rodriguez came in to get Podsednik
half-swing, whole-strike, but after the Astros
got themselves first and second in the fourteenth
with two out (a one-out walk to Palmeiro, Ausmus
safe when Uribe bobbled his grounder), Guillen
reached for Mark Buehrle, his Game Two starter
and winner, and Everett reached for a 1-1 pitch
and popped it behind shortstop for the game.
Unless the Astros have a little
Idiocy in them behind Brandon Backe for Game Four,
the White Sox are going to see the Red Sox, if
not quite raising them, for ending curses actual
or alleged and for the swiftness with which they
will have done it.
—Jeff Kallman
Monday, October 24
VOTE EARLY,
VOTE OFTEN
WORLD SERIES GAME TWO: Chicago
7, Houston 6
(Black Sox lead Colt 45s 2-0)
Like Al Capone years back, the Chicago
White Sox of the new century are relying on the
men in black to turn their heads now and again
and act as though they're on the payroll.
For the third or fourth time (I've lost
count), an arbiter has helped extend a Sox inning
longer than the usual three outs. This time, Jermaine
Dye, standing on a full count, checked his swing
as the pitch came in and bounced it off his bat.
He took a half step backwards and then, perhaps
with larceny on his mind, took a couple of steps
and stared at the ump as if to remind the arbiter
that this was the time to cash in on certain favors.
The ump quickly shot an arm toward first, and
Dye was on, bases loaded. Tim McCarver made some
foolish point over the air, suggesting that if
a pitch hits a player, it always caroms
in a certain direction (I've never been
hit with a pitch, but logic and physics tells
me that Tim is dead wrong), but then, like a seasoned
reporter on the take himself, suggested no wrongdoing.
Phil Garner shook his head, emerged slowly from
the dugout and argued (though I'm not certain
he was convinced of his own position. He was the
stranger here, he didn't own these cops,
and was probably frustrated that back home in
Houston he wasn't going to get the same
breaks.
As in the days of Prohibition, the
benefactors of a very public crime seem to respond
with moxie, without sheepishness, without morals,
proceeding to beat their opponents who foolishly
thought the game would be on the level. These
White Sox carry their Tommy Guns out in the open:
this is their town, that exploding monstrosity
is theirs, U. S. Cellphone Park belongs to them,
and those neighborhoods that surround the place?
The dirty and beat up old neighborhoods with the
fans who are sitting at home watching the game
while wealthy bastards steal their seats? Those
people are the fans of these Sox. Even when the
cast of the Fox pabulum "Prison Break"
sit in the front rows, pretending to care in the
rain.
Unlike Al Capone, however, the White
Sox are also legitimately plying their trade.
No one told Paul Konerko in advance that there'd
be a fat pitch waiting for him to blast out of
the park. And no one guessed that Scott Podesnik
would smack a home run out for the second time
this postseason, not coincidentally the second
time this year. Mr. Podesnik has the look, at
least, of the clean cut guy trying to escape the
world of the gangster, only to get wrapped up
in everything.
I'm exaggerating, of course,
because exaggerating is fun, and I'm not
from Chicago. I can take that whole section of
the city and make it seem like they're almost
criminals simply because I want to: and I'm
doing it, of course, because there's not
a drop of baseball up north other than in Chicago.
And I like the Sox. I like their lack of self-pity,
like the fact that the bookshelves won't
be filled with everybody and his brother's
account of finally winning the thing. I like reading
stuff like White Sox Interactive's rambling
account
of the fans. And I like the lady who has a sign
that reads "I've been waiting for
92 years." I don't know what
that means—she certainly doesn't look
92 years old, and if she was there was a World
Series in her time. The combined years of a lack
of World Series appearances between the Sox and
Cubs is over a hundred years (and is a silly way
of looking at futility anyway). Her math ain't
so good, or her memory's shot, but at least
she's sitting propped up at the game, and
looking miserable in the rain.
There are stories here, but they're
clumsy, and that's wonderful. Neither team
is doing anything that would make the dull folks
at Baseball Prospectus suggest blueprint status;
neither team is going to go into dynasty mode,
and the owner of the Sox still can't evoke
a drop of sympathy even from the faithful. He's
a shit, nothing but a lug, and thus far I have
yet to come across any praise for building this
team. Rather, this is one of those fun occasions
when a team is just a good team for one year,
firing on all cylinders, a team whose pennants
and pictures and t-shirts will fade and become
part of a memory in a short time. That's
good. Baseball should be fleeting.
So for now I'm content to
watch a pair of tight games, lap up the fun history
(even the New York Times is covering the Sox,
and Bill Veeck), enjoy the surprising heroes,
and wonder in print whether or not the umps are
on the take, even when I know they're not.
This is good baseball, a drama that I can't
predict, and one that is giving the right people
a few weeks of joy. I wouldn't doubt that
this is one of the least-viewed series in history,
but, like most of those, it will be cherished
by the cities themselves.
—Peter Schilling
Jr.
Monday, October 24
BURNING
LIDGES
Throwing the pitch that delayed
the National League pennant by one game cannot
taste half as grotesque to Brad Lidge as throwing
the pitch that won the second game of the World
Series for the Chicago White Sox.
You expect at least a fifty-fifty
chance that Albert Pujols will hit something you
throw him ten miles, but you do not expect Scott
Podsednik to check in in any inning, never mind
the bottom of the ninth, and take you anywhere
within ten nautical miles of Pujols's customary
coordinates.
Lidge threw Podsednik a 2-1 fastball
and Podsednik drove it into the first row of the
right field seats. And if anyone in Chicago or
elsewhere had asked how to top Paul Konerko's
seventh-inning grand slam before Podsednik swung
on Lidge, they might have discovered that even
God was stuck for finding the answer in a man
who had spent 507 regular season at-bats sending
nothing to the far side of the fence.
The White Sox went up two games
to none, while Lidge's morale must have
been driven down about twenty thousand feet beneath
the soggy U.S. Cellular Field grounds, on a night
during which they got the benefit of yet another
one of those dubious calls for which benefit they
have become almost as famous as they have become
for their schpritzing manager.
Dan Wheeler had relieved Andy Pettitte
after the former Yankee lefthander had pitched
six innings a little laboriously but mostly in
his usual gallant style, leaving the game with
a 4-2 lead and Wheeler primed for the eight (Joe
Crede), nine (Juan Uribe), and one (Podsednik)
White Sox hitters. And there but for the rude
interruption of Uribe, hitting the left center
field fence on the fly for a double, had Wheeler
gotten two swift enough outs, as the rain began
to drive a little harder onto the field, with
Crede fouling out to Morgan Ensberg outside third
base and Podsednik swishing on a sleek splitter.
But Wheeler walked Tadahito Iguchi
on 3-1 and fought Jermaine Dye back to a full
count, before throwing Dye a fastball a little
up and a little more in. The ball ricocheted off
the White Sox right fielder's bat, as a
closeup replay showed clearly enough, but home
plate umpire Jeff Nelson seemed to have heard
nothing resembling a ball striking wood and something
resembling a ball striking a human arm, ordering
Dye to first as a bases-loading plunk.
Wheeler yielded to Chad Qualls, about whom the
White Sox had noted that his sinkerball was slightly
more pestiferous than Wheeler's. Had Qualls
been aware that his adversaries had read him and
prepared for him, resolved to wait for whatever
sank not, he might have thought better than to
say hello to Konerko with the first pitch fastball
to which Konerko said gone, goodbye, Qualls serving
it up over the plate and Konerko serving it up
over the left field fence. Hence the White Sox
with a 6-4 lead that Qualls kept them from fattening
when Carl Everett's followup single went
wasted, Astros catcher Brad Ausmus throwing him
out stealing right on the spot.
The Astros seemed unworried in spite
of such a turn. Ensberg had opened the game's
scoring by hitting Mark Buehrle's first
pitch of the top of the second over the left field
fence; a one-out double (Willy Taveras) and a
sacrifice fly (Lance Berkman) tied the game at
two in the top of the third; a leadoff double
(Ausmus, a smash off Crede's glove) and
a two-out infield hit (Taveras, beating out a
soft grounder to Crede) handed them a 4-2 lead
in the top of the fifth.
And they had caught a huge break
when Rowand was caught flatfoot in a baserunning
gaffe in the bottom of the second. The White Sox
center fielder was on with a one-out single when
Pierzynski drove one toward the left field wall,
sending Houston left fielder Chris Burke running
back, but Burke misjudged the ball's flight
and reached for it about two feet shy of where
it hit the edge of a square, chain-link opening
in the fence. Certain from his vantage point that
Burke was likely to make the catch, Rowand was
nowhere past second base and forced Pierzynski
to hold at first rather than pass him on the basepath
as Burke recovered and threw in, holding a first-and-second
that should have been a second-and-third.
Did I do the right thing?
Rowand asked Guillen in the White Sox dugout,
after scoring on Crede's double down the
right field line that moved Pierzynski to third,
aware enough that if he had taken third Pierzynski
would have had a double and both would have scored
on Crede's drive. You did what you could,
answered the boss. You couldn't know.
Pierzynski ended up scoring when Craig Biggio
ran out from second to reach for, bobble, and
drop Uribe's short right popup, but the
veteran Astro recovered quick enough to catch
and force Crede too far off second on the play.
The White Sox wasted another chance
in the bottom of the fifth, when Uribe spanked
a leadoff double just past Ensberg playing close
to the pad but got himself hung in a rundown when
Pettitte fielded Iguchi's bouncer precisely
enough to run Uribe back toward second at his
own pace, tossing to shortstop Adam Everett to
dispatch Uribe. Then, with Dye batting, Pettitte
picked off Iguchi like a rancher roping a prize
steer for the side.
And the Astros proved unworried
enough to shoot their way through Bobby Jenks's
aura when the husky young closer came in for the
top of the ninth. Fittingly enough it was Jenks's
first Saturday night victim who landed the first
stab, a night after looking helplessly overmatched.
Now, however, Jeff Bagwell took a strike, fouled
one back, and laid away from anything higher than
the middle of the plate: a ball in the dirt, a
ball up over the strike zone ceiling, another
foul straight back, and a straightaway liner dropping
several feet in front of Rowand.
Jason Lane may not have paid that
much attention to Bagwell's at-bat, swishing
him on three pitches the third of which was a
bullet high and inside, but Burke must have paid
plenty, reading Jenks for a four-pitch walk before
Ausmus's check-swing first base side roller
pushed Bagwell and Burke over. Veteran spare part
infielder Jose Vizcaino was sent up to hit, instead
of a bombardier like Mike Lamb, and the lefty
hitting veteran flea-flicked one right over shortstop
Uribe's head, sending home Bagwell easily,
with Burke coming home daringly enough, sliding
behind the plate and touching it just before Pierzynski's
tag.
Then Astros manager Phil
Garner sent up Lamb, with Neal Cotts relieving
Jenks in an inversion of the tandem's otherwise
dazzling Monday night appearance. And Lamb skied
one that angled enough toward the left field line
that Podsednik had to come over on the run to
snap it for the side.
Podsednik running for that fly looked
almost as though rehearsing a home run trot. One
White Sox out later, he needed that trot at the
best possible time, while Brad Lidge needed a
drink as stiff as his system could tolerate.
—Jeff Kallman
Monday, October 24
 A
STRAIGHT SET
Does the myth really remain that
the 1919 Chicago White Sox would have squashed
the 1919 Cincinnati Reds like household pests
but for the Eight Men Out, most of them, playing
less than on the square, as the saying went at
the time? Is it still canonical law that the White
Sox were so much the decade's most potent
team that all comers were goners before the first
Series pitch should have been delivered?
Mr. John Erardi of the Cincinnati
Enquirer suggests in a splendid article that
if it is, it ought to be debunked and amended
out of existence. "Largely overlooked is
that, on paper, the 1919 Reds were at least as
good, and most likely better, than the team now
known as the Chicago Black Sox," he writes.
"All indications are that if the World Series
had been played on the up-and-up, it very well
could have gone the full nine games . . . and
maybe even down to the final pitch."
The day may yet arrive when the
White Sox can make it to the World Series without
the 1919 ghosts invited to roil around the grounds,
but they have revived for now an ancient debate
even while provoking a contemporary debate. Above
and beyond the perpetual question of whether Shoeless
Joe Been Done Wrong, the question before the house
should be how on earth the 1919 Reds, with a 96-44
regular-season record, were supposed to have been
steamrolled in an honest nine-game competition
by the 1919 Sox who went 88-52 on the year.
Understanding that slugging in that
day meant doubles and triples preponderantly,
the home run barely accepted as an offensive weapon,
and pretty much belonging to a certain kid on
the Boston Red Sox, the 1919 Reds slugged 38 points
lower than the White Sox and their team on-base
percentage was 24 points lower, to say nothing
about the Reds' position regulars being
a little lower in both of those critical categories
than the White Sox regulars.
Does good pitching not beat good
hitting, as the saying goes? There was no reason
why the 1919 Reds should have inspired the like
of Hugh Fullerton, he whose skepticism began the
sequence that provoked exposure of the scandal,
to do as Cincinnati star Edd Roush's granddaughter
Susan Dellinger has told Erardi he had done, "dop(ing)
the 1919 World Series to be in favor of the White
Sox," doping in those years a synonym for
handicapping.
The Reds' two best starting
pitchers, Slim Sallee (21-7) and Dutch Reuther
(19-6), lacked the gaudy season records of the
White Sox's two best, Eddie Cicotte (29-7)
and Lefty Williams (23-11), but the Reds had the
deeper pitching overall, with a team earned run
average (2.23) almost a full run lower than the
White Sox (3.04), with the Cincinnati rotation
(2.14) better than half a run lower (63 points)
than the Chicago rotation (2.77) without Dickie
Kerr. With Kerr, who had quite a few more relief
appearances than starts on the season, the White
Sox rotation's ERA would be two points higher.
And as it happened both teams' ERA leaders,
Dutch Reuther for the Reds and Eddie Cicotte for
the White Sox, finished the season with identical
ERAs: 1.82.
The author of Clearing the Bases:
The Greatest Baseball Debates of the Last Century,
Allen Barra, has argued that reading all available
materials related to the 1919 World Series scandal
left him clueless for what nourished the myth
of the White Sox's unquestioned superiority.
"Except for one thing: an
assumption that any team that won the American
League pennant was automatically superior,"
he continued. "The American League had,
after all, won eight of the previous nine World
Series (after the National League had won four
of the first six played starting in 1903) but
three of the AL's champions after 1909-10,
'11, and '13, were Connie Mack's
powerful Athletics with their famous 'One
Hundred Thousand Dollar Infield.' The A's
were simply the best in the period . . . By 1919,
the AL teams had won 16 of the previous 22 World
Series games, and were 12-5 in the previous 17.
The notion that this automatically signified a
superior league may seem a bit naive to us nowadays:
the Yankees won 16 of 19 World Series games from
1996 through (2000) and 12 of 13 from '98
through 2000, but few would make an argument for
American League superiority based on that alone."
Given his title and the concurrent
mythology, even the sobriety of Eliot Asinof's
Eight Men Out was not entirely immune
to a hyperbolic dash, enough to fatten rather
than flatten the myths, as demonstrated in his
description of the opening atmosphere of the 1919
World Series. "On this Wednesday morning,
30,511 people paid their way into Redland Park,"
he wrote. "To the Cincinnati fans, there
was a throbbing nervous excitement and a secret
foreboding. For all their enthusiasm, few could
realistically anticipate a World Championship.
Deep down inside, they foresaw the adversary walking
all over them. Not even Miracle Men could be expected
to stop the all-powerful colossus from the West."
A team winning two pennants in three
seasons with a sixth place finish rudely interrupting
them, and finishing sixth, fourth, fourth, fifth,
seventh, and third, prior to the first of those
two pennants, is a colossus? The Philadelphia
Athletics won back-to-back pennants twice with
a third place finish rudely interrupting the back-to-backs.
The 1912 and 1915 Boston Red Sox won the first
of that pair with a .691 winning percentage that
was 62 points higher than the 1919 White Sox,
winning the second with a .669 percentage that
was 40 points higher. The Red Sox also won the
1916 and 1918 pennants (and World Series); the
Red Sox won all four World Series to which they
went in the decade and the Athletics the first
three of their four.
Mr. Erardi noted two forthcoming
editions to the literature of the time, Ms. Dellinger's
Redlegs and Black Sox: Edd Roush and the Untold
Story of the 1919 World Series and Mr. Jim
Sandoval's The Other Side of the Black
Sox Scandal, both of which may add toward
conferring upon the 1919 Reds their overdue. The
mythology holding that the White Sox might have
murdered the Reds in a straight set ought to be
buried, as profoundly and less reluctantly, with
the myth that Shoeless Joe Jackson was entirely
blameless among the Eight Men Out. The 1919 World
Series scandal did have a victim and its name
was the 1919 Cincinnati Reds, and there is no
concrete evidence that they could not have won
that World Series in a straight set.
—Jeff Kallman
THE EX-YANKEE
FACTOR
WORLD SERIES GAME ONE: Chicago
White Sox 5, Houston Astros 3
(Crede and the Bulls Lead, 1-0)
There was talk enough about this
World Series having a former Yankee factor, given
four such—Roger Clemens, Jose Contreras,
Andy Pettitte, and Orlando Hernandez— on
the combatants' rosters, two each. But Game One
turned on a pair of Chicago White Sox who may
or may not have known their resemblance to a pair
of Yankees more ancient, turning what began with
two tie scores into a 5-3 win, opening the Series
Saturday night with a park-rocking scream for
Chicago White Sox fans having no compunction about
spoiling the Houston Astros' Series debut.
And one of the pair helped make
everyone in U.S. Cellular Field forget any talk
of prospective rust settling upon a White Sox
bullpen while they enjoyed an unexpected, only
too memorable near-fortnight off.
When Joe Crede didn't channel Graig
Nettles at the plate, hitting one into the left
field seats in the bottom of the fourth, providing
the Chicago White Sox their third and last lead
of the night, he channeled the old Yankee vacuum
cleaner at third base. He leaned above the line
taking a possible extra base hit from Adam Everett,
throwing him out deftly with one out in the top
of the fifth; he moved right and to his knee stabbing
Morgan Ensberg's bullet up the grass for the second
out in the top of the sixth; and, he dove for
Craig Biggio's up-the-line shot with Jeff Bagwell
on third, throwing out Biggio for the side in
the top of the seventh.
Then White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen
did what enough had begun thinking was either
unthinkable or potentially unnecessary, based
upon his starting rotation's League Championship
Series performances: he went to his bullpen in
the top of the eighth, after Taveras whacked his
second leadoff double of the night. And after
Neal Cotts showed that at least he had passed
through the bullpen's long vacation unrusted,
Bobby Jenks saw Crede's Graig Nettles and raised
him with Goose Gossage.
It was almost enough to make the
U.S. Cellular Field audience forget Jermaine Dye
wrestling Clemens for a nine-pitch at-bat in the
bottom of the first, hitting the ninth pitch into
the right field seats. It was almost enough to
make them forget—after Mike Lamb tied it
up in the top of the second, with a shot off Contreras
into the first row of the center field seats—the
White Sox then going small in the bottom:
lined single up the pipe (Carl Everett), chopped
single through the hole at second (Aaron Rowand,
Everett to third), infield bounceout allowing
the tiebreaker home, two-out RBI double bouncing
off the left center field wall, before Clemens
swished Scott Podsednik after a twelve-pitch foul-heavy
at-bat.
And it was almost enough, certainly,
to make them forget that the White Sox looked
in a rumble in the top of the third, when the
Astros retaliated with Brad Ausmus's leadoff single
to right, Adam Everett forcing Ausmus at second,
Biggio floating a liner that dropped into left
center for a hit, Taveras pushing Biggio and Everett
to second and third with a short, smart bunt,
and Lance Berkman ripping the first pitch of the
sequence down the right field line for a double
that tied it at three.
First, after Taveras ended Contreras's
gutsy starting performance with a high liner that
hit the base of the left center field wall, manager
Ozzie Guillen reached out and touched Cotts. After
Berkman singled past shortstop in spite of hitting
from his weaker right side, Cotts pounded Morgan
Ensberg and Mike Lamb for a pair of hard swinging
strikeouts. Then Guillen came to the mound again
and motioned to the bullpen, spreading his arms
wide above his head and below his belt before
moving them in a spread wide of his sides, a playful
signal for the tall and broad Jenks. Guillen got
his laughs and the White Sox got the last laugh.
The Astros didn't take Jenks with
any kind of a smile, and Jenks didn't take Jeff
Bagwell with any sense of the sentimentality such
as seemed to surround Bagwell even in the road
ballpark, the ancient first baseman joining his
longtime teammate and friend Biggio in a first
World Series they might have thought once that
they would never see. Still compromised by the
shoulder whose surgery cost him most of his season,
Bagwell was left overmatched helplessly, Jenks
cranking as a fourth-generation Gossage, blasting
the old man away for the side with as violent
a swish as might ever be seen in the fall Chicago
chill.
And, after A.J. Pierzynski (a bottom
of the eighth leadoff base hit pushed through
to short right field) came home on Scott Podsednik's
two-out stand-up triple, lined high up the pipe
and bouncing to the wall, for the insurance on
what proved an irrevocable lead, Jenks in the
top of the ninth allowed only Ausmus's meek grounder
to shortstop to interrupt his Goose call. He blasted
Lane away to open the inning, with a swish on
the first breaking ball he threw on the night,
and he fired a high fastball right through Everett's
dowel for the inning and the game.
The Astros showed that at least
one of the White Sox's lately-vaunted starting
rotation was only human, after all. The White
Sox showed, again, that all the rhapsodizing about
small/smart ball could not crowd out a little
two-way powerball. Roger Clemens's left hamstring
showed him yet again who's the boss around here.
And if Crede minded Cotts and Jenks showing their
Gossage to see and raise his Nettles, he seemed
too much caught in the win's refreshment to let
on.
—Jeff Kallman
Sunday, October 23
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