Sometimes the journey flies by so fast it’s hard to remember where it all began.
When everything is clicking and everyone’s grinning like the Cheshire cat, the imperfect past becomes nothing more than a discarded memory. There’s really no need to dwell on the tough times when the present is bright and the future looks brighter yet.
But for five White Sox players who were around the last time the White Sox were in a real pennant race–the notorious summer of 1996–the rags-to-riches rise of the 2000 club is something to cherish.
Make no mistake about it. They know the journey is far from over and the destination is an elusive goal. But for the remaining vestiges of the ’96 Sox–Frank Thomas, Bill Simas, Ray Durham, James Baldwin and Mike Sirotka–the sizzling pace the Sox have set is reason enough to believe.
They are the survivors. And just what have they survived?
The White Flag trade. The Albert Belle experiment. Jaime Navarro’s finger-pointing and manager Terry Bevington’s call to the bullpen with no one warming up. They witnessed the demise of one era and the birth of another.
“When you’re going through tough times, you never think this is going to be what’s going to come out of it,” Simas said. “You learned from the hard times, and when you look back on it, it makes this even that much better. The journey has been worth it. But it’s what you learn along the way that matters.”
During the summer of ’96, when the Sox were challenging Cleveland, Baldwin was a rookie starter who had won nine of his first 10 decisions, establishing himself right off the bat. Durham was a second-year second baseman who was beginning to jell, and Simas was a primary setup man for Roberto Hernandez. Sirotka bounced up and down between Class AAA Nashville and the Sox, often being employed as the fifth starter. Thomas was having a monster season, and wound up hitting .349 with a career-high 134 RBIs.
But the ’96 season was filled with turmoil from the start. Tony Phillips retired, then returned during spring training. Bevington got into a scuffle with umpire Rich Garcia in a downtown steak house. Phillips punched out a fan in Milwaukee, and Ozzie Guillen forced an evacuation from the Sox dugout after smashing a sprinkler pipe with a bat.
The Sox held a 4 1/2-game lead in the wild-card race in late August, but ran out of steam in September with a bullpen collapse that defied description. While Sox fans had cried for another starter to go with Alex Fernandez, Wilson Alvarez, Kevin Tapani and Baldwin, the Sox kept sending out kids such as Sirotka and Mike Bertotti. The only trading deadline acquisition was left-handed reliever Tony Castillo, who struggled from the start.
“I’ve learned a lot since then,” Baldwin said. “I learned the importance of having a good chemistry, the importance of having someone very positive around, from the manager on down. You need someone who is willing to help us do what we do best and has the knowledge of the game.”
Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, who was a lot more chatty back in ’96, said near the end of the season that Sox fans didn’t like the players and the team had to be revamped. Enter Belle, with a price tag of $11 million and a reputation for surliness.
When Belle’s arrival didn’t change the team’s success, the infamous White Flag trade went down July 31, 1997, signaling the start of the rebuilding process. The Sox trailed Cleveland by only 3 1/2 games, and the perception in Chicago that the Sox had quit is something the organization has yet to shake.
“I was a little bitter, of course,” Thomas said. “It killed my spirit for a little while. When everyone is saying, `This season really doesn’t matter’ and `We’re building for two years from now.’ … It’s hard to go out there and do your job day-to-day on a high level. There’s not as much motivation when you know you’re just playing the season to play the season.”
But Thomas defended the trade at the time, and the other four players weren’t about to speak out against it.
“I was young, and when we traded those guys for [Keith] Foulke and Bob [Howry] and [Mike] Caruso, I was just happy to be here at the time,” Baldwin said. “There was not too much I could say because I didn’t know what they were doing. I knew that they got rid of some good people that I had been around, and when we got rid of those guys, we started talking about rebuilding. I was young, so therefore it didn’t really hit me.”
With Fernandez and Alvarez gone, Baldwin and Sirotka both moved up a couple of spots in the rotation. That was good for their careers, but it gave them added pressure to perform. It wasn’t until ’98 that Sirotka began to blossom under Manuel’s leadership.
“In ’97 with the [Sox-Giants] trade, I kind of realized, and `J.B.’ kind of realized–all right, it’s up to us to make a difference now,” Sirotka said. “You know it’s going to be a couple of difficult years, but bringing in [manager] Jerry [Manuel] and his staff has been great.
“They’re great with the younger major-leaguers and really emphasize the growth as a team. That was probably the biggest thing–getting the right people in here to start the rebuilding process. You’ve seen every little building block, and every little block has benefited the team as a whole.”
Perhaps no one has enjoyed the upsurge more than Thomas, who was designated the scapegoat in ’98 and ’99 but regained his bearings after a long, lonely winter in Los Angeles. Thomas has seen just about everything in his 10 years on the South Side.
“I’ve just been in this organization a long time,” Thomas said. “I’ve been through the good and the bad times. It feels good to be a survivor.”
No one, not even Manuel, Reinsdorf or Thomas, predicted the rebuilding process would yield so much success so soon. The Sox still have one of baseball’s youngest teams, but they have played like a bunch of veterans, doing the little things like tagging up and advancing from second to third on fly outs and pitching to hitters’ weaknesses instead of relying too much on their “out” pitch.
Many theories exist as to why the Sox have done what they’ve done, but one sticks out like a sore thumb. By changing the man in the managers’ office, the Sox gradually changed the entire atmosphere of the clubhouse.
“Jerry is so positive,” Baldwin said. “He’s one of these guys who, to us, when he walks into the clubhouse, or when his presence is here, it’s like a big bright bulb. And anytime you get a big bright bulb, it gives off its energy, its power. All of a sudden it shines on us. And when it shines on us, we try to get everyone lit. That’s just the way it is.”
