Like many another White Sox fan, I circled September 20 on my wallet schedule back in March. The day would bring the Minnesota Twins to Comiskey Park for the first of six games against the Sox over the last ten days of the regular season. The young and hungry Twins had led the American League Central Division for much of last summer before surrendering to the Cleveland Indians. With the Indians rebuilding this year (that much was clear even before they wrote the season off with a rash of trades that dealt high-priced talent for prospects), the final Sox-Twins games figured to determine the division championship–unless, of course, the Sox had it wrapped up by then.
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The catalyst was rookie third baseman Joe Crede. It wasn’t so much his arrival on July 30, called up from Triple-A Charlotte as general manager Ken Williams joined Cleveland in waving the white flag by trading Lofton and Durham. It was when Crede started hitting. It’s worth noting that his first big-league homer tied a game in the ninth inning, his second was a game-winner, and starting on August 21, when his average sat at .214, he went on a tear, raising his average to .287 by the start of this week with 10 homers and 30 runs batted in.
Listed at 6-foot-2 and under 200 pounds, his jersey worn loosely tucked, Crede is a tall, thin third baseman reminiscent of Scott Rolen of the Saint Louis Cardinals. At the plate, however, he looks more like Matt Williams, the old San Francisco Giants slugger now with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He has a slightly open stance, weight back on his right leg, and seems to lock his head down with a dip of the chin as the pitcher delivers. Crede is a more than capable fielder with a penchant for easing up on his throws whenever possible; he might toss the ball across the field on the run to get a catcher going down the line, then drill it over after a backhanded stop down the third-base line. He was named the best defensive third baseman in Triple-A last year and again this year–this after being named his league’s most valuable player at the Class-A level in 1998 and at Double-A Birmingham in 2000. He was an all-star at Charlotte last year, hitting .276 with 17 homers and 65 RBIs in abbreviated duty, as he served a couple of brief tours with the Sox. Yet the front office decided this spring to send him back down.
They loaded the bases in the fifth, and newly acquired infielder D’Angelo Jimenez lined a shot off reliever Juan Rincon’s knee. Rincon chased the ball down but threw badly to first base, allowing two runs to score. The Twins came into the game with the best defense in the league but it failed them again in the sixth, when Ordoñez singled and Koskie threw away Paul Konerko’s grounder to third, allowing both to advance an extra base. Lee drove home Ordoñez with an infield single, and Crede sliced a shot that pounded off an advertisement on the right-field fence and straight to the fielder. Konerko scored but Crede was held to a 365-foot single. (He rounded first base on the run and stopped himself by falling to his knees and bouncing back to his feet, like a dancer in some 50s movie musical.) A sacrifice fly scored Lee, who would go on to cap a four-run seventh with a three-run homer. The Sox put a 0-1-2-3-4 straight on the board from the third through the seventh and coasted home with a 10-2 win. Wright worked efficiently through eight innings on the way to his 13th victory.
