The notion defies all logic in a game that relies on hard-line statistics and numerological probabilities.
The very idea that good hitting or poor hitting can be “contagious” even sounds silly. But hitting a major-league-pitched baseball — a feat often referred to as the most difficult in sports — has brought the sanest of men to their knees and has the White Sox believing it is indeed a communicable disease as they try to work themselves out of a season-long team batting slump that had shown signs of abating before Wednesday night’s shutout loss to the Oakland A’s.
“It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be true,” veteran Paul Konerko said. “The vibe can be very good or very bad sometimes, and it shouldn’t be like that because other guys should be taking it upon themselves when they go up there to not let that [enter in], but it just happens. It happens when you see the guys in front of you doing well and getting hits. It kind of picks up your game. So the reverse of that, I think, has to be true. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Anybody who knows the game sees it happen all the time.”
It certainly seemed the case during the first 5 1/2 weeks of the season, when the Sox did not bat around in an inning one time or put together three consecutive hits in an inning. At one point Konerko and Joe Crede were mired in a collective 2-for-36 funk.
It has played out in reverse form as well. Before Chad Gaudin and two Oakland relievers blanked them on five hits Wednesday night, the Sox had collected at least 10 hits in four consecutive games, hitting .336 (48-for-143) with 34 runs scored (8.5 per game) to raise their team batting average 11 points to .233.
“I think hitting can be very contagious,” said Jim Thome, whose return to the lineup from a pulled rib-cage muscle coincided with the breakout. “I was on teams in Cleveland that when we’d get on a roll, it kept going and kept going, so I really buy into that. You have one or two guys in the lineup who are swinging the bats well, and next thing you know, two more guys or three guys jump in.”
Jermaine Dye has an 11-game hitting streak, having gone 14-for-43 (.320) with five doubles, four home runs and nine runs batted in. He agrees with Konerko and Thome, to a point.
“I think hitting good is contagious, but I don’t think about hitting bad as being contagious,” he said. “I don’t see too many teams go into a big, big slump like we have early in the season. I just think you feed off each other. When a couple of guys are hot and getting on base, it gets the few behind them a little more excited and gives them a little more confidence. And once you have a team that’s real confident and has a lot of swagger, then no matter what situation they’re put in, they’re going to fight and do whatever they can to succeed.”
Several Sox players agreed it can often be something as isolated as one big hit — say, A.J. Pierzynski’s grand slam Sunday against the Cubs — that can get a whole team going. But Sox hitting coach Greg Walker believes one big hit would not have cut it when things were at their worst.
“No, not in this case — this was too deep,” he said. “It was going to take a lot. I knew it. When we were out in Seattle I said, ‘Hey, this is ugly, and it’s going to be ugly for a little while. So let’s just fight and try to win some games. We look up in two weeks to a month from now and we’re three, four or five games out of first place and we get Jimmy [Thome] back and Pods (Scott Podsednik) back and warm weather and we get to feeling good about ourselves.’ “
Walker said the feeling in the dugout was palpable upon Thome’s return, and indeed, the Sox are statistically a significantly better team with him in the lineup: 14-9 in 23 games with Thome, along with averages of 4.8 runs and 3.2 walks per game. Without Thome they’re 9-11 and average 3.4 runs and 2.4 walks.
“Having Jim Thome back is unbelievably huge because of his presence,” Walker said. “Not just because of his production, which we know we’ll get, but Jim Thome is a Hall of Fame middle-lineup hitter that any team in this game would be better having in the lineup. He gives everybody confidence.”
Even with Thome, Sox hitters acknowledge that during the worst of times, they have simply been trying too hard. And clearly, they are reliant on each other, both for their baseball survival as well as their mental health.
Rob Mackowiak recalled a recent situation in which he and Alex Cintron struck out with the bases loaded. “Darin [Erstad] comes out there, and it’s one of those things where I’m ready to hang myself in the dugout because I was the first guy and all I had to do was put the ball in play and a run scores,” Mackowiak said. “Then Darin comes up and gets a huge hit for us, and that just picks everybody up.
“That’s huge. It takes the weight off me because I feel [terrible] when I didn’t get a hit. It lifts everybody up because we’re like, ‘Whew, thank God it worked out.’ “
Having veterans in the clubhouse who understand the ups and downs of a long season helps a lot.
“Come November, when all the dust settles, if you went about it the right way you’ll probably end up where you usually ended up all the other years,” Konerko said. “There may be a couple of things off here and there, but the basic stuff will still be the same. We know that.”
In the meantime, a sense of humor also helps.
“I sit there and every day talk about taking a sharp turn off of Lake Shore Drive into the lake when I went 0-for-4,” Mackowiak said. “Not that that’s normal, obviously, but we continue to joke around.”
“Sometimes,” the usually staid Erstad said, “you have to. Humor is definitely a good way to break the tension and deal with it. You deal with a lot in this game, so you can’t beat your head against the wall every single time you fail.”
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misaacson@tribune.com
