World champs stay hungry when they easily could be getting fat, writes Bob Verdi
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Sunday Column
Chicago Tribune
May 21, 2006
I am watching an interview with Ozzie Guillen, the White Sox manager, during a special telecast of batting practice before the "Crosstown Showdown" versus the Cubs. He is trying to act excited, but is failing miserably, as well he should. When you won the last game in October against the National League, you don't worry about the next game against the National League in May.
This is how far the Sox have come to this weekend taffy pull, and we don't mean that long Thursday night flight from St. Petersburg, Fla., where the World Series champions played in a stadium built for them 20 years ago, when Chicago was looking more and more like a one-franchise market. The Cubs were akin to family, the Sox were orphans in their own ZIP code.
Now, as Paul Konerko said matter-of-factly during another batting-practice interview, the Sox are going to get ready for the Cubs because "it's on the schedule." The Sox are all business all the time, and no team in baseball, certainly no team in Chicago, tends to business as professionally, as efficiently, as the Sox. They could have become fat. Instead, they appear hungry.
Who saw this coming? Raise your hand and you're cheating. The Super Bowl XX Bears, for all the local love they engender, lost their edge and their attitude in a flash. The Bulls three-peated twice, yet they scattered before they had a chance to defend, and that contributed to a certain joylessness pervading their reign. There always seemed to be a subplot of angst within the Bulls, an us-against-them mentality that didn't involve the Detroit Pistons.
There is none of that intramural sniping with the Sox, whose only "controversy" after they scratched their 88-year itch involved hair. A few of their players had too much hair, they were ordered to have it cut, and they even turned that into a fun gig. Champions aren't supposed to be so likable, but to the Sox, it comes naturally. To improve, the Bulls hired a rogue, Dennis Rodman. The Sox snagged Jim Thome, baseball's greatest guy.
If jealousy and pettiness exist among the Sox, they hide it well. Perhaps that explains why the ballpark nobody wanted is packed, despite the Dan Ryan mess, and why Sox gear is everywhere, worn by kids and grandfathers and even other athletes. The erstwhile orphans have become a model organization. Management gives the manager whatever he needs, except the seven-second delay, and off the Sox go, built for the long haul, not one parade.
The Sox, on merit, are not to be compared with the Cubs anymore. Baseball insiders don't, nor should we. Outperforming or even outspending the Cubs isn't what the Sox are about now. In Chicago, we can watch batting practice before the Crosstown Showdown in May, but when you think Sox, you think October. You know they are.
The New York Yankees, strapped for pitching despite a $200 million payroll, not only write out huge revenue-sharing checks, they bequeath arms to the Sox, Javier Vazquez via Arizona and Jose Contreras for Esteban Loaiza, wherever he is. The Yankees would kill to have either of them back and also might like Brandon McCarthy, who can't crack the rotation here. Neal Cotts, the baby-faced assassin, would bring huge returns on an open market, but he's invaluable, not available.
Hoarding all this talent is Kenny Williams, who was not treated kindly in "Moneyball," a book glorifying Billy Beane, fellow general manager of the Oakland As. Maybe Williams can author a response, like "Kiss My Ring." But he's probably busy on the phone, working on another title.
Copyright © 2006, The Chicago Tribune |
