White Sox manager Gene Lamont is cursed by a fatal sense of fairness. This is not how baseball or the real world generally works. Egos and agendas scorn decency.
Coming into these playoffs, Lamont was undefined as a manager, as vague and inanimate as waxed fruit.
One of the very first questions put to him was why he was not more fired up.
“I guess there are a lot of managers sitting at home today who are fired up,” he said.
There is spirit hiding under that blank surface.
However this series with the Blue Jays turns out, we at least know a lot more about Lamont. Playoffs, like battlefields, have a way of getting to the soul of a man quickly.
A baseball season accepts leisure, and the job is deliberate. Managing for the long haul requires a sense of pace. In a short series, it demands impulse. One is design, the other is disaster control.
The fact that the Sox made it to the playoffs was proof that Lamont could handle the one. Now it is obvious that he can also handle the other.
Of all the Sox, none has stood taller than Lamont.
If George Bell could be believed, the Sox were on the verge of some sort of mutiny, his precise statistic being that 48 percent of the Sox didn’t respect Lamont.
“He’s not your regular-type manager,” said Tim Raines. “He gets criticized for not being more outspoken or more animated. I have confidence in Gene, and so do my teammates.”
This may be the first case of a manager getting a vote of confidence from his leadoff hitter.
Billy Martin always maintained that a manager’s toughest job was keeping the five guys who hated him away from the five who were undecided. Still, that would only be 10, and Bell’s numbers come out to 12.
“I must have been using a lot of those guys,” Lamont said.
It is not exactly clear when Bell took this poll, and my guess would be that at least 48 percent of the Sox do not respect Bell. But Lamont faced Bell’s accounting with numbers of his own, the number of times Bell has gone hitless recently.
Again, when pushed, Lamont pushed back, however softly.
I personally would have fired Bell on the spot. Sent him home. Told him to find a new team.
Instead of anger, Lamont confessed disappointment. Bell had no bigger supporter than Lamont, accent on the had. But my solution and Lamont’s eventually will be the same.
Not that it matters to him, but Lamont has gained considerable respect from the media for the way he handled the Bell thing, and earlier, the complaints of Bo Jackson.
Whereas he had no national reputation at all before, he is now considered at least a gentleman, if not yet this season’s genius.
Lamont will stay with a pitcher too long, as he did veteran Jack McDowell in the first game, but not with rookie Jason Bere Saturday night.
He will overexpect as he did from Joey Cora. He will feel genuine sympathy for Dan Pasqua, whom he put in a very tough spot, and wince for Ron Karkovice.
If his decision not to play Frank Thomas at first base in the first two games put the Sox in too deep a hole (no team has ever won a playoff series after dropping the first two at home), don’t expect Lamont to shift the blame away from himself.
What has become evident about Lamont is that he is a standup guy who will stand up for his players and for himself, will make his choices, explain his choices and not agonize over whether they worked or were agreed with.
That only makes him a good man. What makes him a good manager is whether he wins.
