They call themselves Club Handicap. And for a few sun-splashed hours Thursday, they turned Ed Smith Stadium into a Field of Dreams for White Sox fans everywhere.
Bo Jackson, Ozzie Guillen, Ellis Burks and Dave Stieb. Four All-Stars trying to come back from what a few years ago certainly would have been-and may still be-career-ending injuries.
The four of them spent the first Spring Training game of 1993 outdoing one another in feats of magic.
Jackson, the only player in history to step to the plate in a big-league game on an artificial hip, singled, scored and drove in a run.
Guillen, playing on a knee rebuilt by surgeons, scored from second base on Jackson’s single, made a diving catch, went 1 for 2 and drove in a run.
Then there were Stieb and Burks, both crippled time and again during the last two seasons by a frightening array of injuries-sore backs, elbows, knees, shoulders, hamstrings.
Stieb threw two innings under orders to hold back his best pitch, a wicked slider that helped him win 174 games in Toronto. Using just a fastball and a still-experimental changeup, he allowed two runs on three hits. And he should have gotten away scoreless. He was hurt by some shoddy fielding.
The most dramatic comeback of all-not medically, perhaps, but in sheer terms of baseball production-was by Burks, who went 2 for 3 with a double, a home run, a run scored and four runs driven in.
“Maybe this will end all the talk about the injuries,” said manager Gene Lamont. “I know it won’t. I know one day doesn’t make or break anything.”
By the fourth inning, the Fab Four’s heroics were over. The Sox were beating the Pirates 7-3 with Guillen, Jackson and Burks accounting for five of the seven runs.
Things fell apart after that. The Sox gave up eight runs in the next three innings, including seven runs (five earned) off former bullpen ace Bobby Thigpen. And the Pirates went on to win 11-10.
But what mattered was that it was 74 degrees and sunny and that four players who might never have been in uniform again were heroes for a day.
“My comeback is complete,” said Jackson, who is right. Just being able to stand in a big-league batter’s box 11 months after having his hip replaced makes it so.
Jackson said it was even better being able to share the moment with three teammates who, in their own ways, struggled as hard as he did to come back.
“With all the guys recovering from major injuries, we have labeled ourselves Club Handicap,” he said. “In Chicago, we’re going to have a big handicapped symbol on the bench where only handicapped guys can sit.”
The players’ bench at Ed Smith Stadium doesn’t have a handicapped symbol-at least not yet. But after he got his single, Jackson knew where to look for Guillen in the dugout and mouthed something to him.
“I was talking to Ozzie,” Jackson said. “We worked out all winter together, and when one of us would do something, we have our little signals. I can’t tell you what they are. Those are the secret signs of Club Handicap.”
Guillen’s wife and three sons were in the stands for Thursday’s comeback. So was Burks’ wife, Dori, who also played an important role in the game.
“This morning she cooked me oatmeal and she said, `This oatmeal is going to be your strength,’ ” said Burks. “She said, `You’re going to hit a home run today.’ I kid you not. I had a hole in my sock, too, and when she saw that she said, `You’re definitely going to him a home run.’ I’m not a superstitious person, but she is. So I guess I’ll be eating oatmeal and wearing a sock with a hole in it this year.”
