One of baseball’s inherent contradictions is that this most individual and intensely quantified of games is also a team sport so subject to the intangible of “chemistry”–that vague, all-encompassing term applied when things go inexplicably well and a group of players becomes a unit. Sometimes a good team matures and comes together, as the young White Sox did last year; other times, a team simply enjoys a one-year blessing. The 1998 Cubs were an example, the 1990 Cincinnati Reds a more spectacular one, the “Miracle” New York Mets of 1969 the most painful of all from a Chicago fan’s point of view. There is an aura or, to be more prosaic, a confidence that a winning team exudes. It can sometimes be captured in statistics–a team wins because it learns discipline at the plate or because the pitchers stop walking batters–but it sometimes can only be hinted at, as in fictional depictions of baseball like Bang the Drum Slowly.
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The White Sox came into this season with every reason to expect more than the American League-leading 95 wins they amassed last year. They had speed and patience at the top of the order in Ray Durham and Jose Valentin. The heart of the order–Frank Thomas, Magglio Ordonez, Paul Konerko, and Carlos Lee–was powerful. In Herbert Perry and Harold Baines they had skilled role players to fill out the lineup, and in Chris Singleton and the newly acquired Royce Clayton good gloves. The Sox scored runs in bundles last year, but it wasn’t lucky hitting that did the job; they simply got guys on base and drove them in. The defense wasn’t great, but Clayton figured to improve that area this year. The pitching likewise figured to be better. Cal Eldred and James Baldwin were coming off arm surgery, but the Sox made the excellent move of exchanging Mike Sirotka for David Wells, a true ace whose winning attitude offered an inoculation against complacency. The bull pen was back intact, aside from the minor switch of Antonio Osuna replacing Bill Simas in middle relief.
Those three losses at home to the Tigers could have happened to anybody. After the Sox swept the Indians they were four and four and looked ready to take on the league. But then they dropped three in Minnesota. The Sox went on to Detroit and staged a nice late-inning comeback, but Kelly Wunsch gave up a game-winning homer to Tony Clark–who has always given the Sox fits. Though the Sox won the next night they didn’t seem out of their funk until Wells won the rubber game of the three-game set. That game, a week ago Thursday, was everything the Sox got Wells for. After a couple of poor performances–one of them against Detroit in which he gave up a couple of critical hits on 0-2 counts–Wells said he would bury the Tigers next time he saw them and he did. Going the distance he threw a scant 100 pitches, an amazing 81 of them strikes, and in the end even dominated manager Jerry Manuel, all but chasing him from the mound when Manuel came out after Wells got into a little jam with two out in the ninth.
The Sox know they have the talent but they’re waiting for it to show. Over 162 games it should. But for now they look like a team playing not to lose rather than to win. That’s no way to impress anyone from game to game–certainly not kid opponents trying to make names for themselves. As the Sox well know.
