There was no batting practice before last Friday night’s White Sox game. Instead, there was a softball-hitting contest. So while the softball players gathered in the outfield in their patchwork uniforms, before the doors were opened to the small crowd gathering outside, an occasional member or two of the White Sox strolled out onto the field. Donnie Hill–looking like some new creature out of Greek myth, half normal human/half ball player, wearing only a freebie shoe-company T-shirt from the waist-up, his uniform perfect from the waist down–played catch with pitcher Steve Rosenberg. Ozzie Guillen strolled out onto the field, also in T-shirt and uniform pants, but wearing thongs on his feet, Dave LaPoint, wearing his full uniform and warm-up jersey but augmenting the ensemble with running shoes, came up into the stands to talk to a few people apparently down from the White Sox offices above.
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I re-create this scene not to make the Sox look bad or negligent in fulfilling their duties, but to convey the calm, relaxed atmosphere at at Comiskey Park these days. Compared with the night-game turmoil at Wrigley Field–and compared with the Sox’ own comings and goings of earlier this season–the atmosphere at Comiskey is now relatively placid (a sweep at home at the hands of these same Angels notwithstanding). The team is playing good if not winning baseball, their hitting renaissance is in full flower with the return of Carlton Fisk (who homered in his first game back, last Thursday night), the fielding is alert and adept–especially up the middle–and the frontline pitching retains the promise that makes the Sox interesting for this season and possible contenders in years hence.
The Sox’ other rookie hurler is Jack McDowell, who seems to be that pitcher (there’s one every year) who, whenever I turn on the Sox on television, is on the mound. Which turns out well, I think, because McDowell has a classically stylized motion that requires a bit of distance to be believed. McDowell is even thinner than Perez, taller too, and with his thin, fragile forearms and calves he seems almost unnaturally limber, In the exact middle of his motion, while his left leg is lifted and poised to stride down the mound, he strikes a pose that is almost impossible to believe; he seems bend his back a bit, right in the middle. It defies logic. It is that same awkward, graceful, complicated, corkscrew windup reflected in cartoon drawings of, say, Hobbes the stuffed tiger or Albert the alligator in mid-delivery, or the same pose struck by awkwardly graceful figures on the covers of cheap paperbacks entitled Freshman Fireballer or Southpaw Smoke. Of course, the plot behind such cheap books is always that of a wild but talented youth trying to harness his abilities, which is exactly the story of Jack McDowell this year. Because out of that winding, complicated delivery (almost stiff, sometimes, in his effort to keep it together) comes a wicked fastball, faster than Perez’s and with much more movement. His breaking stuff can be equally sharp. Yet while he can sometimes be in utter command out there (beating Roger Clemens earlier this year in Boston, or shutting out the Mariners earlier that same Seattle series only to leave the game and watch the Sox win in extra innings), he can also go to pieces in the blink of an eye. (He failed to get out of the fourth inning against the Angels last Sunday.) He has also pitched in tough luck, which is in itself almost a redundancy for a White Sox pitcher, because no one on the staff–with the possible exception of Perez–has been well supported this year. McDowell’s earned run average is almost exactly that of Perez, just under 4.00, yet he has only four wins to Perez’s ten. Meanwhile, LaPoint, the team’s most consistent starter, has an ERA a half run below theirs, while his record is only 7-11.
