Ruth, Gehrig and . . . .
Aaron, Mathews and . . . .
Thomas, Franco and . . . Robin Ventura.
He is a terrific baseball player, Ventura is. Right now, with his two starrier teammates capturing so much attention, he is turning into an afterthought.
“I don’t really think about it-not that I care,” he said. “That’s just the way it goes.”
The White Sox are home, briefly, for two games against the defending world champion Toronto Blue Jays. The Canadian writers will arrive in Chicago and, like the New York writers and Baltimore writers last week, looking to do stories on the big White Sox hitters.
The Sox trio of Frank Thomas (.383, 21 home runs, 50 RBIs), Julio Franco (.299, 10, 58) and Ventura (.297, 11, 47) are the best this town has seen since the 3-4-5 of Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks of ’69 Cubs fame. If the Sox stars keep up this unreal pace, they’ll be sharing company with some of the supreme power packages of all time.
Ventura is a key part of this unit, but more than likely the visiting writers will surround Thomas and Franco Tuesday. As they should. There’s no denying what those two have done.
Ventura, after having his still-sore back worked on by Herm Schneider in the trainer’s room, will come into the clubhouse, exchange quiet silliness with neighbor Tim Raines, gather his work tools, then go about his business pretty much unbothered by the visiting media horde.
Ryne Sandberg sometimes turns on a “keep your distance, I’m busy” manner that can chill an unsure reporter. Ventura is naturally friendlier than Sandberg, yet he, too, can intimidate. He, too, takes some knowing.
“It’s not deliberate,” he said. “Just what you get. I’m not going to change. I’m not going to talk in the papers and TV and everything else just so people will start thinking about me. I don’t care about that. That’s just the way I’ve been.”
So in virtual secrecy and with a back that twinged on every low grounder during the just-completed road trip, Ventura is building his finest season. He’s averaging nearly one RBI a game and is hitting 30 points higher than his career average.
His errors-11 so far, two during a thankfully brief turn at shortstop-trouble some people, but not him.
“I don’t really care,” he said. “If I make an error, I make an error. It’s not like I’m trying to do it.
“If there ever comes a point when I don’t make an error during a season, then I kind of feel I haven’t gotten to as many balls as I should have. This year I’ve had more errors on easy plays, but that’s just the way it goes. I’m human.”
He’s also a leader. Teammates and coaches-requesting anonymity so as not to offend others-when asked where the clubhouse leadership is, invariably point toward Ventura.
It’s a role that, like most everything else, he acknowledges with a shrug.
“Maybe because I don’t say too much too often,” he said. “It’d get to be a little obnoxious.”
What he can’t shrug off is losing. He’s known losing. He doesn’t like it.
“The first year when I got called up (1989), it was kind of a miserable atmosphere,” he said. “Thirty games out of first place, everybody just shows up and plays. The thought wasn’t about winning. It was just getting the season over and come back next year.
“My first full year, that whole year is kind of the year it changed. You expected to win-whether it was in Oakland or Minnesota or anywhere else, you expected to win.”
That expectation-created in 1990-is still there.
But the playoff loss to the Blue Jays remains a thorn.
“There were just a lot of distractions (last year) that you don’t expect to happen,” Ventura said. “The George, the Bo-things you don’t expect to happen in the playoffs.”
Bell is in Santo Domingo and Jackson is in Anaheim. Could “distractions” happen again?
“You wouldn’t have expected that to happen last year, but it did,” Ventura said. “So you can’t say that it wouldn’t happen-but I don’t think the potential is here.”
Meanwhile, this team keeps plugging along, winning series after series, staying ahead of one charge by the Twins and now another by the Indians.
The spotlight focuses on Thomas and Franco, what they’ve done, how they’ve had an impact on one another.
And Ventura, in their shadow, keeps playing great ball.
“When I was a kid,” he said, “you look at a team and you remember two, three guys. You don’t remember everybody. That doesn’t mean they’re not important to the team. It’s just the way you think of them.
“You can’t really change people’s perceptions of what things are.”
And sometimes, in baseball, as in life, it just doesn’t matter.
