Jerry Manuel approached closer Keith Foulke in the subdued White Sox clubhouse Friday and offered a simple message.
“Good job, Keith,” he said. “Be ready for the spring.”
The hidden message was there too.
It went like this: Don’t let the embarrassment of getting swept in the division series cloud a bright future. Don’t let Seattle’s three-game dominance cause a hangover that creeps into the next season. Report to Tucson prepared.
Just a few minutes earlier, Manuel had described the series in blunt terms. As if reading off a checklist, he acknowledged that the Mariners had whipped the Sox in every facet of the game.
“They outhit us, they outplayed us and they outmanaged us,” he said.
The Sox players would have been wise to take Manuel’s cue and portray their defeat in similar terms. Instead they spouted excuses as if they had just been pulled over for running a stop sign at dawn.
Second baseman Ray Durham stopped hiding from reporters after Game 3 long enough to attribute his botched play in the fourth inning to a bad bounce. Right.
Frank Thomas moaned about the shadows, saying that the hitting conditions were the worst he’d ever seen. Come on, I know Seattle is hardly synonymous with sunshine, but was this the first day game ever played at Safeco Field? I don’t think so.
Paul Konerko talked about not getting good breaks from the umpires and suggested instant replay would have helped.
He’s right. It would have. Instant replay would have helped the Sox realize that the only culprits were the Sox.
After leading all of baseball with 978 runs scored in the regular season, the Sox crossed the plate once in the final 15 innings.
After combining for 458 runs batted in in 162 games, Thomas, Konerko, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Lee drove in a total of two runs during the playoffs.
“We’re all numb,” said Thomas, who went hitless in nine at-bats.
Thomas’ struggles were particularly surprising. Ordonez, Lee and Konerko had as much postseason experience as you and I. But Thomas had been here before, reaching base 16 times in 27 trips to the plate in the 1993 championship series against Toronto.
What could have been different this time? Thomas is superstitious enough to have told Manuel that he stopped hitting after his manager stopped shaving. So by Game 3, Manuel’s beard and mustache were no longer.
The Big Hurt also didn’t let one other quirk escape him.
Some background: I had the distinction of covering Thomas’ only two subpar years, 1998 and ’99. He lost 82 points on his average from ’97 to ’98. And he slumped to a career-low 15 homers in ’99. Suddenly fans in his own town were rushing to print T-shirts labeling him “The Big Skirt.”
So I expected some ribbing last month when my editors sent me to Minneapolis for the Sox’s clinching of a playoff spot. I had been given a weekend furlough from covering the worst team in baseball, the one that resides at Clark and Addison.
The moment the door opened to the Sox’s clubhouse, I saw a familiar figure–a very large, familiar figure–preparing a cup of coffee. Thomas looked at me and did a double-take as if he had just seen the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Thomas smiled and couldn’t contain himself.
“Hey, look who it is,” he hollered. “Teddy Greenstein, the front-runner.”
“Hey, Frank, nice to see you again,” I said.
“No, no, I don’t want to see you,” he replied. “I’m already in a slump.”
It would continue. Over his final nine games, Thomas drove in just one run. Then came his disappearing act in the playoffs before a modest-sized media contingent, including me.
A few colleagues in the press box began to smell a trend. They pointed out that I had never seen Big Frank play well. I had become a jinx.
My response? This wasn’t new. In my first year covering Notre Dame, 1996, the Irish didn’t even play in a bowl game. Then I covered the Sox’s first back-to-back losing seasons in almost a decade.
At least you can’t pin the Cubs’ mishaps on me. We all know that greater forces are at work there. Namely a goat.
As for Thomas’ plight I defer to Manuel, who would tell you that there’s no room for excuses in baseball.
But just in case, I’ll stay away, Frank.
