Deep in the winter that preceded the 1999 season, his second as White Sox manager, Jerry Manuel was plotting his pitching strategy for the midseason series against the Cubs. The Sox won the series, and the Cubs, who’d reached the playoffs the previous year, began tumbling, while the Sox began their rise toward the division championship of 2000. The series showed that Manuel, who had gained a reputation as a calm, considered philosopher-manager, had a competitive edge, an edge that rubbed off on his players.
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Sure, ace Mark Buehrle took the mound the following night and won. (Buehrle had been pushed back behind Ritchie in the rotation because he’d pitched in the All-Star game.) But even he staggered under the weight of an 8-1 lead, and new closer Antonio Osuna had to come on in the ninth to shut the game down at 8-7. The Twins pounded Jon Garland 8-1 the next night and left town again up by 14 games, and the Sox season was certainly over. The fans knew it: 32,353 had rallied behind the Sox in the series opener, but only 23,000 turned out each of the next two days.
I mentioned the pitching rotation above to illustrate that it wasn’t just Williams running this team into the ground (though I’ll add that Chris Kahrl wrote on the Baseball Prospectus Web site that Williams had done as fine a job in that regard as Ken “Hawk” Harrelson did during his brief tenure as GM in the 80s). Manuel aided and abetted Williams at every turn. He announced early and often his faith in his veterans–for instance, he stuck with Ritchie to the bitter end–but his faith produced complacency in the clubhouse, and as the season went up in smoke the Sox seemed to be roasting wienies and toasting smores. Even with Kenny Lofton at the top of the lineup, the Sox didn’t seem to run or hit-and-run as much as in the past. Manuel’s most aggressive move had to be the three-day benching of slumping Frank Thomas, but this was simply a return to his inspiration-through-bashing-in-the-media ways that had been so damaging to the development of Mike Caruso. The only difference was that Caruso was and is a no-talent, while Thomas was and is a veteran deserving of better treatment. Maybe Manuel thought he would improve the spirits of the younger players by picking on Thomas–Paul Konerko, for one, sided against the Big Hurt in the press. But even though a revived Thomas provided some of the few highlights of the Twins series, including a 500-foot homer to the concourse at the back of the left-field seats, the results weren’t enough to make the move worthwhile. Probably Manuel was just being a company man, planting seeds that will allow Williams to exercise a performance clause at the end of the season that dramatically trims Thomas’s contract. This will remind those younger players that they’re working for a franchise that cuts corners and contracts wherever possible.
I went out to see the Sox last Saturday, eschewing Venetian Night for the promise of postgame fireworks and perhaps more during the game. Someone had thrown himself on the third rail at the Grand stop–a Sox fan, no doubt–paralyzing the Red Line, and I had to get off at Clark and Division, hop a Clark Street bus into the Loop, and take the Green Line el to 35th Street, arriving at the park just ahead of the first pitch. The lineup told a fan the Sox weren’t playing for anything but pride. Lofton and Valentin were benched, apparently on the auction block awaiting the highest bidder. Young Gary Glover was throwing strikes, working ahead in the count and letting his fielders make the outs, and he looked good from the get-go. The Sox started clubbing Kansas City starter Darrell May. Tony Graffanino, playing for Valentin, homered, as did Lofton’s replacement, Aaron Rowand. (He turned on a pitch and made it look as easy to hit a homer as Glover made it look to retire big-league hitters.) Ordonez added two homers, his 21st and 22nd of the season, and they weren’t even the high point of his day. He scored the first run of the night by hustling all the way home from second when a whirling May pickoff went astray. Someone obviously forgot to tell him the season was over.
