Is Carlton Fisk back?
Well, he was back in the lineup. And he was back hitting triples.
The White Sox continued their. . .
Back hitting triples?
Yes, the White Sox extended their little roll to three games Thursday night when they stopped the Milwaukee Brewers 6-2 in front of 28,310 warmly dressed folks in County Stadium.
Jack McDowell pitched into the eighth to raise his record to 13-5 and cut the Twins` margin over the Sox to an even 10 games. Ricky Bones (6-6), who beat McDowell last weekend, was the loser.
And yes, Fisk tripled.
It came in the fourth inning. The Sox already led 1-0 when Warren Newson drew a walk from Bones and Lance Johnson moved Newson to third with his second straight single. That gave Johnson, who earlier had extended his hitting streak to eight games, 15 hits in his last 29 at-bats.
That brought Fisk to the plate. After Johnson stole second, Fisk hit a towering drive that dropped between Robin Yount in center and Darryl Hamilton in right, then rolled to the wall.
Newson and Johnson scored easily. And Fisk didn`t stop until he belly-flopped into third base ahead of Kevin Seitzer`s tag.
”The thing was, it looked like Pudge was trying to hit the ball that way (to the right side) to get the guy in and get the other guy over,” said Gene Lamont. ”They probably should`ve given him the ball.”
In Fisk`s long, long, long, etc., career, he`s hit 47 triples. Most were long, long, long, etc., ago.
His most recent triple was in 1989, when he was a kid of 41.
Remember it?
”I don`t remember yesterday,” Fisk said, sort of joking.
Which brings us to ”yesterday”-Wednesday.
Fisk, after that game, was in high-simmer over not playing. Lamont said afterward the two would talk, but circumstances postponed the chat to Friday, Lamont said.
Impossible to say if Fisk`s lingering dourness Thursday was over the same issue, but it was probably rattling around somewhere up there. For sure, the issue reemerged when someone asked if the catcher felt his game was coming around.
”The more you get a chance to play, the more you see pitches, the more you get to do things in situations-yeah, it`s coming around a little bit,”
said Fisk, as always choosing his words carefully.
Anyway, there was more to come in the inning.
Bones hit Craig Grebeck on the left hand with a pitch, then walked Tim Raines to fill the bases with nobody out. Two outs later, George Bell hit a rocket at left-fielder Greg Vaughn, who got a glove on it but couldn`t hold it. Vaughn was charged with an error, Fisk and Grebeck scored, and the Sox led 5-0.
By this time McDowell was breezing, but he had to survive an interesting third, when the Brewers filled the bases with one out and Paul Molitor and Vaughn coming up.
But Molitor chased a wicked 0-2 splitter for one strikeout, Vaughn missed another one for the third out, and McDowell had his shutout intact.
The shutout vanished in the seventh on successive singles by Franklin Stubbs, B.J. Surhoff and Ron Gantner, a forceout and Seitzer`s flyball.
A one-out single in the eighth by Yount, his 2,966th career hit, ended McDowell`s night and brought a call for Radinsky, who finished the inning without incident and-with Bobby Thigpen`s back a little sore-the game.
The Sox did add a final run off Doug Henry in the ninth when Bell bounced a double off the wall in left and Robin Ventura matched it.
Nothing could match Fisk`s triple.
”By the time he got to third, it almost wasn`t a slide,” Lamont said.
”I don`t know how many he had last year.”
None, he was told. None since `89, he was told.
”Eighty-nine?” said a stunned Lamont. ”Then he should`ve gotten the ball.”
