Printed in ink on a strip of tape in Frank Thomas` locker in Comiskey Park are the cryptic initials D.B.T.H. If you ask him what they stand for, the big White Sox slugger will respond: ”Don`t Believe The Hype.”
The hype for Frank Thomas already has begun. Believe it!
Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, who once called a long-since forgotten rookie ”another Mickey Mantle,” said recently after watching Thomas and Robin Ventura each smack a pair of homers in a game: ”I`ve seen the two best players in the American League.”
Carlton Fisk wasn`t really Smokey Joe Wood`s catcher in the 1912 World Series, but he was around when Jim Rice and Fred Lynn made their debuts with the Boston Red Sox.
Rice and Lynn were outstanding talents, Fisk agreed, ”but they didn`t have the patience (Thomas) has. He`s something special.”
Batting coach Walt Hriniak, a hard-bitten pro who wouldn`t be impressed if Babe Ruth himself walked into the cage and asked Hriniak to assess his swing, says he refuses to compare players. Nevertheless he recently mentioned Frank Thomas and Ted Williams in the same context.
Auburn football coach Pat Dye, who signed Thomas to a football scholarship and kept him on scholarship even after he quit football to concentrate on baseball, says of Big Frank: ”Tell Mike Ditka he could line up and play tight end for him right now.”
Auburn baseball coach Hal Baird, who says Thomas came to him as a fully mature hitter, believes Thomas is ”one of the very few players with legitimate Triple Crown ability.”
What`s more, Baird, who also coached Bo Jackson, says: ”I don`t ever want to say anything negative about Bo Jackson, who is the best athlete I ever saw, but Frank is just the best baseball player I ever had.”
The object of all this hype, believable or not, is 6-5, 240 pounds and just 23 years old. In his first full season in the major leagues, just two summers removed from the Auburn campus, Thomas already is being mentioned as a possible MVP in the American League.
He has been in the league`s Top 10 all year in batting, home runs and runs batted in and was drawing nearly a walk a game. It is the mammoth homers and the crushed doubles in the gap that keep fans riveted to their seats when it is Big Frank`s turn to bat. But it is the walks, the incredible patience in such a young talent, that turns the heads of the professionals.
Says Hriniak, shaking his head in wonder: ”Someone once said to me, `If there`s anything negative about Frank, it`s that he`s too selective.` My response was, `They said the same things about Ted Williams.`
”The hardest thing to teach is patience at the plate. And not everyone should be patient. There are some great bad-ball hitters. Frank is a little like Wade Boggs. He wants to see as many pitches as possible. That`s his style.”
It wasn`t always, Thomas says. It started late in his freshman year at Auburn when pitchers, already attuned to his enormous ability, began pitching around him.
The next year, Baird remembers, ”we had nobody hitting behind him, and the pitchers just refused to pitch to him. Frank finally started swinging at pitches three or four inches off the plate. If he hadn`t done that, he wouldn`t have had an at-bat all season.
”The only thing it really affected was his home runs. He still walked 70-some times in a 60-game schedule. He still drove other pitches in the gap.”
”That`s basically where it started,” Thomas agrees. ”I didn`t get too many good pitches to swing at that year. In my freshman and sophomore years, I wanted to hit home runs. When my production went down, I decided that when you don`t think about `em, that`s when it`s going to happen.
”I`m not one who looks to drive the ball out of the park, anyway. I`m more concerned with RBIs. That`s the important statistic.”
Patience, he says, ”is something you can`t teach. I still struggle from time to time. It`s always frustrating when pitchers pitch around you. You come out of your `stuff` every once in a while. When you pull your head out of there and swing too hard, most of the time you don`t get any results.
”But from time to time, you get lucky. That`s probably the worst thing that can happen.”
If others are surprised by Thomas` sudden explosion onto the major league scene-he has been up only since last August-it is nothing more than what Thomas expected. Before he had played an inning of pro ball as a No. 1 draft pick, he was telling writers back in Alabama: ”I don`t want to hang around in the minor leagues. I want to go to the show quickly.”
And quickly he did after what amounted to 2 1/2 seasons in the minors.
”It took longer than I thought it would,” he says. ”After the spring training I had (in 1990), to go to Double A, I was a little frustrated. But I stayed focused and put some spectacular numbers on the board.”
The numbers he has put up with the White Sox this year are even better. If he has found major-league pitching any different than it was in the minors, it has not been apparent.
”I`m basically having the same season I had last year,” he says. ”It`s just highlighted a little more. I`m doing the same things I`ve always done.” And that`s why Thomas is not surprised or impressed with himself.
”I`ve always been able to hit. Always. You have people saying to you in the minors, `Nobody plays like that in the major leagues; the pitching`s too good.` I told people, `I believe I can.` No way did I believe I wouldn`t hit up here, because I`ve always hit.
”A lot of guys when they get up here are overwhelmed by the big crowds, the TV, the media everywhere. It didn`t bother me. I`d been around it at Auburn. Playing football in front of 80,000 really helped.”
Single and the youngest of five children, Thomas says he grew up ”in a pretty poor situation, but I didn`t want for a lot of things.”
Both of his parents worked-”my father (Frank Sr.) for the city of Columbus (Ga.) and my mom (Charlie Mae) for a textile factory. But they were always home for me at night. They always knew where I was. I always loved sports. They never had a problem finding me.”
Thomas played football only in his freshman year at Auburn, catching three passes for 45 yards. He arrived at school the semester after Jackson left, and the comparisons were inevitable.
”It got pretty old pretty soon,” Thomas says. ”It was a distraction because no way did I have that kind of talent. Bo`s probably the best there`s ever been.”
Thomas says, yes, if had he concentrated only on football and not been hurt, he probably could have made it to the NFL. But both ways like Bo? No.
”In baseball, I could dominate,” he says. ”I still had a lot of work to do in football.”
When he developed bone spurs in an ankle ”from driving off the ball,”
Thomas decided to give up football. ”They were minor problems,” he says,
”but they could have been serious problems, and football wasn`t helping.
”Actually, basketball was my first love, but I gave it up because of the bone spurs. I was a pretty good basketball player.”
With his superb baseball talent, neither he nor Baird can understand why he was not drafted out of Columbus High School.
”When I was a senior in high school, I could hit the ball a long, long way,” Thomas says. ”I knew what kind of talent I had. Not being drafted, I was surprised-and a little upset.
”I`d hit .400 three straight years and hit home run after home run for a team that won the state championship once and went to the finals two other years. It wasn`t like the scouts didn`t see me. They saw me a lot. If I`d been drafted, I would have signed. I wanted to play baseball.”
”A lot of pro scouts in this area were called on the carpet,” says Baird. ”They covered themselves by saying they knew he had signed a football scholarship at Auburn.”
What the pro scouts missed was a player who ”was unbelievable for a kid from high school,” Baird says. ”His three years (at Auburn) were the most prolific I ever saw a player have.
”Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro played in our conference, and Frank, in my opinion, was better. We were amazed he wasn`t drafted.
”It`s easy to say now that you saw something back then, but the reality is that from the first couple of days I saw him, I thought he was the best I ever saw. His eye, his knowledge of the strike zone, his ability to hit the other way, his ability to make contact he had from the day he got to Auburn.” Hriniak immediately saw the ability, too. ”But you don`t know until you see a guy day-in, day-out in the pressure of the big leagues,” Hriniak says. Now that he has seen him perform under big-league pressure for more than a year, Hriniak says: ”Frank Thomas has a chance to do things that are exceptional. He hits home runs, uses the whole field, walks, hits for a high average. That puts him in a special class.”
And, says Hriniak, he has one more asset that could put him at the top of that class: ”He`s not afraid of being great. Like certain players in basketball who want to take the last shot of the game.”
