To play for the White Sox in Comiskey Park is to have wet feet.
”I don`t know where the water comes from,” Ivan Calderon said.
”There`s always guys sweeping it, but it always stays there.”
The puddle stands at the end of the dank tunnel connecting the Sox`s thimble-sized clubhouse with the dugout. Even on the hottest day in July, a delicate step-and-hop maneuver is required to avoid soaked sanitaries. When it`s actually raining outside, nothing short of a Wendella cruiser can keep the Sox`s socks dry.
One wonders if this is why Joe Jackson decided to put on spikes.
The Comiskey Canal is just one of the little miseries the players will gladly leave behind when the one-time palace of the baseball world comes tumbling down. For the most part, baseball players aren`t sentimental about their working conditions; history is nice, but dry feet and a clubhouse big enough for two guys to put on sweatshirts at the same time are more important to them.
Though most of the Sox can`t wait to move from baseball`s oldest park to its newest, they`ve gone out of their way to send Comiskey off with a bang. Some of the memories that will remain long after the last parking space is painted over the northeast corner of 35th and Shields:
– For the first time since 1984, the games mattered. The old yard rocked when Oakland invaded in June and kept jumping all summer as the Sox stayed in the race. Not since the days of Tony LaRussa have so many sung ”Na Na Na Na” so often.
– And for the victorious White Sox, four runs on no hits . . .
– Turn Back the Clock, the best promotional idea, ever.
The park whose claim to promo fame had been ”Disco Demolition” found a clever, and fitting, way to make headlines.
– The heroes: Carlton Fisk being showered with a standing ovation every time he stepped to the plate when he came homeafter setting the record for home runs by a catcher. . . . Bobby Thigpen being mobbed by his teammates after his record 47th save. . . . Ozzie Guillen being Ozzie Guillen, finally earning the recognition that winning brings.
– The villains: Jack McDowell whipping strike three past Jose Canseco to cap an 11-1 rout of Oakland just moments after Canseco lashed a foul ball over the left-field roof. . . . Somebody named Lee Stevens taking Thigpen into the bullpen to send the Sox into a five-game skid. . . . The Brewers rallying from a 9-3 eighth-inning deficit to turn back the Sox and the clock on the same gray day.
The memories can be packed away with the stuff tagged for the move across 35th Street. The players seem content to leave the rest in a pile of rubble.
Comiskey has long inspired venom from men in uniform. Bill Buckner, visiting after the Cubs traded him to Boston, likened the place to a penitentiary. Oakland`s Dave Henderson, who sprained his knee in a slide on the wet (what else?) outfield last month, said he could not remember spending a sunny day there in his eight years in the league.
Others have called it dark, grim, depressing, claustrophobic, antiquated and wet. Especially wet. ”It could be 90 degrees out and we`d still be sliding around out there,” Lance Johnson said.
But the dying elephant has its defenders, including relievers Donn Pall and Wayne Edwards.
Pall lived out every bleacher creature`s dream. He went from some of the worst seats in the house to the best-the pitcher`s mound. ”It`s sad to think it will be gone, just like that,” he said.
Edwards has spent a fraction as long there but feels the same draw.
”It`s got a lot more character than a lot of bullpens,” he said. ”If you want to hide out, you can and no one will ever see you under the roof. If you want to talk to the fans, you can stand there and have a normal conversation. ”It`s like a pair of shoes,” he added, pondering the analogy. ”You`ve got a favorite pair that`s all scuffed up, but they`re the only ones you want to wear because they just feel good.”
To hear many of the White Sox tell it, damp feet is only one on-the-job hazards. There`s also a home clubhouse so cramped that all movement ceases when the reporters crowd in after a game. This is, of course, a nice problem to have because TV cameras only show up when you win. But imagine an `L` car at State and Washington at 5:30 p.m., and you have a good idea of the postgame clubhouse crush.
The problems don`t stop there. First the Sox have to make their way down the splintery steps connecting the clubhouse to the dugout tunnel, and then they must ford the fabled water hazard.
Then it`s on to the field, where every member of the club seems to have a private gripe. For the outfielders, the grass is always slick. For the pitchers, the bullpen shelter freezes in April and broils in July. For the coaches, the sloping field eliminates all but the caps of the center-fielder, right-fielder, second and first baseman. Is Sosa too close to the line, or is that the ballboy?
”Most of the time, it`s tough to play here,” Calderon said. ”The field is wet and the wind almost always blows in.”
His complaint is prevalent among hitters, who also gripe about the length of the infield grass. Hitting coach Walt Hriniak has had numerous, shall we say, discussions with head groundskeeper Roger Bossard about trimming the grass a little closer, but it`s still thick enough to gobble up grounders.
Pitchers love that, and they also cherish Comiskey`s deep foul lines and power alleys. But they also grimace every time a foul pop lands two rows into the seats that crowd the lines, and they know that for every drive knocked down by the wind, a bloop is blown into a double.
The players admit that the new park will have rain, cold April nights and sweltering August afternoons, because it`s still in the Midwest. And the configuration of the arced roof has made the wind a subject of speculation;
some predict it will favor hitters, others say it might blow from foul pole to foul pole and a few wonder if it will swirl like it does in Candlestick Park. But if you can`t change the weather-few, if any, of the Sox would like a dome-you can soften its blow with creature comforts. That`s why most of the Sox look forward to April 1991.
”Everybody wants to get a new house sometime in their lives,” Johnson said. ”I guess it`s about that time.”
