White Sox General Manager Ron Schueler and beleaguered manager Terry Bevington differ semantically over the status of Bevington’s contract.
Bevington, under fire because of the Sox’s 77-77 record, said before Saturday’s 6-4 victory over Boston that he is under contract for 1998. Schueler, however, said the organization has an option on Bevington’s contract, with a buyout clause providing Bevington a lump-sum severance if he is let go.
Schueler said it is consistent to review Bevington’s status after the season in the same manner that players such as Ozzie Guillen and Ron Karkovice will be reviewed. Those players have club options for the 1998 season.
Bevington, hired on an interim basis to replace Gene Lamont in June 1995, signed a contract for 1996 with an option for ’97. Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf discussed the manager’s job with Jim Leyland before Schueler retained Bevington for this season.
Bevington got a new contract last winter. Both he and Schueler have said they replaced the one-year-and-an-option arrangement with a two-year deal. Schueler has said that was done to show a strengthened commitment to Bevington.
But Schueler is making no promises now. He said Saturday that decisions on Bevington, his coaching staff and players with options will be made “within 48 hours” of next Sunday’s season finale.
The hot seat: Bevington might not have much longer to sit in the manager’s seat on the team bus. But his uncertain status did not keep a majority of the players from protesting what they perceive as Bevington’s seasonlong breach of transportation etiquette.
Upset that Bevington has traveled all season on the bus previously considered to have been reserved for players, as many as 20 players rode from Kauffman Stadium to the Kansas City airport Thursday night on a second bus, which is generally used by coaches, trainers and other non-uniform members of the traveling party. That act of petulance prompted an angry response from Bevington on the team flight to Boston, according to witnesses.
Bevington declined to discuss details of the incident. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “What am I going to talk about?”
The growing size of baseball traveling parties forced most organizations to begin traveling to and from airports in two buses during the 1980s. With the addition of a second bus came an unwritten set of rules. As those rules have evolved, players are granted complete privacy on one bus in most organizations.
The White Sox followed that protocol in previous seasons, but not this year. Schueler says Bevington made a decision in the off-season to ride with his players.
“We talked about it last winter,” Schueler said from Chicago. “Terry said he wanted to see more interaction. He asked what I thought about him and a couple of coaches riding on the (players’) bus. He said he wanted to do it, to get more unity with the team.”
Schueler sees the bus situation as a practical joke that went wrong. “Terry wasn’t in the mood for it,” he said.
Short hops: Jaime Navarro survived a 59-minute rain delay to work six innings, but he remained winless over his last seven starts. He’s 1-5 in his last 11. . . . Frank Thomas had his seventh consecutive one-hit game, keeping his league-leading batting average at .349. . . . Albert Belle’s grand slam Friday came off one of his best friends in baseball, Tom Gordon. “Me, Bo Jackson and Albert were in instructional league together, and I think we were the only two guys (Belle) talked to,” Gordon said. “Everybody else thought he was crazy.” . . . Belle’s four grand slams this season are a Sox record, breaking a mark set by Pete Ward in 1964. Belle is tied for 19th on the all-time major-league list with 11 career slams.
