The Cubs plan on giving away 10,000 Michael Barrett bobbleheads at Sunday’s game against Milwaukee, even though Barrett was cast aside 10 days ago.
It’s an awkward position for the Cubs, but marketing chief Jay Blunk had a solution that might satisfy everyone.
“We have a lot of our interns working on it right now,” Blunk said Thursday. “They’re painting all the bobbleheads to look like Mike Fontenot.”
Blunk was kidding, of course, but the symptoms of Fontenot Fever have been noticeable at Wrigley Field for the last three games. Cubs fans always have had a soft spot in their hearts for diminutive Cubs hitters, from Dom “Dim Dom” Dallessandro in the 1940s to Doug Dascenzo in the 1980s and Augie Ojeda just a few years ago.
Listed at 5 feet 8 inches, Fontenot qualifies for the short list, and his .408 average currently puts him a step above the others.
“I’ve never been in this kind of zone,” Fontenot said after Wednesday’s victory over the Rockies.
Not too many players have. Fontenot was a sizzling 9-for-13 against Colorado this week, with three doubles and a 415-foot home run Wednesday that nearly cleared the right-field bleachers.
He has hit safely in 17 of 18 games since being called back up from Triple-A Iowa on June 9 and has a 10-game hitting streak in which he’s batting .439. The best part of the story is the Cubs called him up once this year, didn’t give him a chance to play and demoted him three days later.
Fontenot was called up May 15 in New York after Mark DeRosa hurt the ring finger of his right hand while subbing at first for Derrek Lee, who was out with neck spasms. Fontenot had broken so many bats during an 11-game hitting streak at Iowa that that he was forced to use castoffs Ryan Theriot had left in Des Moines.
Fontenot doubled in his first at-bat while pinch-hitting, but received only one more at-bat before being returned to Iowa after only three games. DeRosa was feeling better, and the Cubs needed to drop a position player after calling up Carlos Marmol.
While discussing Fontenot’s brief stint with the Cubs earlier this week, manager Lou Piniella bluntly said: “We had to send him out because of who knows what?”
Instead of moping, Fontenot returned to Iowa and continued to hit before getting the call again when Cliff Floyd went on bereavement leave.
In his second start June 10, Fontenot was hit in the nose at second on what some believed to be a dirty play by Atlanta’s Edgar Renteria, but he refused to retaliate. He has taken off since and Piniella has decided to play him at shortstop as well as second base to get him in the lineup more often.
“That’s fine,” Fontenot said. “I’ve done it my whole career, including the last few years at Iowa.
“This year I played the majority of games at shortstop at Iowa, but the last couple of years I’d been moving between second and third base. I kind of got used to it — just go out and catch ground balls everywhere.”
Piniella referred to Fontenot as “the little guy” during a recent postgame press conference, and for a while was referring to him as “a nice little player.” But after the developments of the last month, it’s no longer necessary to use the qualifier “little” when describing Fontenot’s big-time contributions.
The players often refer to his size and baby-faced looks as well. Carlos Zambrano has invented the Fontenot-five, a version of a high five in which he makes him jump to reach his hand. Alfonso Soriano joked on Fontenot’s first day up that he thought he was the batboy. St. Louis shortstop David Eckstein used to get similar ribbing, at least before he was named Most Valuable Player of the 2006 World Series.
Do people take Fontenot for granted because of his size?
“I don’t know,” DeRosa said. “I know I don’t. He has more pop than any guy on the team right now. Geez, he almost hit the ball on the street.”
Fontenot doesn’t seem to care if people stereotype him as a little guy. He has heard it his entire life, and every step of the way he has proved the skeptics wrong. So why should the cracks bother him now, when he’s finally making a name for himself as a major-league player?
“I don’t take too much of it seriously,” Fontenot said. “I take it all with a grain of salt. It’s still fun to come to the field every day, no matter what’s going on or what everyone’s saying.”
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psullivan@tribune.com
