Let’s step back, for a moment, from the batting cage and the field, back from the grandstand and the bleachers beyond, back, in fact, all the way home–the place where most of us, after all, experience what sport we allow into our lives, through television, newspapers, and the various other media that keep it ever before us, whether we like it or not. There’s a view, from here, that claims to be more objective than our various views in and around the city’s stadia, a vantage where we rely on experts and statistics to form our opinions and bolster our biases. So that, sometimes, we can go off to the ballpark for the first time of the year (I’d imagine many of us have yet to expose ourselves to baseball this year, preferring to wait out the cold, wet weather for the warm sun and moderate breezes of May and June) and believe we already know it all: a dangerous proposition, and one we’d best guard ourselves against.
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The pitching that we believed would be the Sox’ longtime salvation and short-time scourge has instead turned out to be the team’s strong suit, start to finish. The staff has an ERA below 4.00, which puts it safely in the middle of the American League’s pitching pack. This stat is being held down by Dave LaPoint, who has quickly reestablished himself as the team’s ace, just as he did in the second half of last season. LaPoint is a young Tommy John, a nibbler with a slight, direct motion and something (almost) of a fastball, and his ERA is below 2.00, which–when factored in along with his team-leading 51 innings–has contributed greatly to the pitching staff’s decent stats. The other starters have run hot and cold this spring, especially Jack McDowell and Melido Perez, the White Sox’ future. McDowell is a thin, spindly pitcher with a high-school motion–gangly from time to time, raw but somehow effective-and last Wednesday we watched him shut down the Boston Red Sox on television in a duel against none other than Roger Clemens. We had thought McDowell and Perez would contribute to a rough start for the Sox, but quite to the contrary they have been impressive if not quite dependable–consistently inconsistent. The same is true of the bull pen’s Bobby Thigpen, who is suffering through a flamethrower’s usual spring doldrums. He’s already suffered three losses, and his ERA is remarkably high for a reliever, but he should steady himself as the temperature rises. The surprise of the team has been the middle relief, awful in spring training but now solid with the newly acquired John Davis spelling Bill Long and vice versa. I’d forgotten how good Davis looked, on occasion, with the Kansas City Royals last year, and he has put up good numbers this spring, numbers almost exactly duplicated, thus far, by Long. (Indeed, Davis’s one bad outing this year included ameliorating circumstances: he hit the Baltimore Orioles’ Billy Ripken in the head with a fastball and then buckled and failed to retire a batter.) With strong middle relief, the Sox can live with some inconsistency from their young starters. The other regular starter, Rickey Horton, has had a good first month, especially if one overlooks a rough outing in his first Fenway Park start.
The same problem hurt the Cubs in the early going, although it’s showing signs of abating. As of early last week, the Cubs were leading the league in batting but were eighth in on-base percentage. They were next to last in walks received, with only the lowly, young, and petulant San Diego Padres more antsy at the plate. When combined with manager Don Zimmer’s reluctance to play a running game (the slow-footed Rafael Palmeiro was tied for the team lead in stolen bases earlier this week, with four–these mostly the results of failed hit-and-runs) this meant the Cubs simply weren’t scoring. Only when Zimmer resorted to flip-flopping Dave Martinez and Ryne Sandberg in the top two spots in the batting order did they begin to put men on base and move them around in the first inning, with Andre Dawson showing a corresponding increase in his RBI count.
It was magic the way they captured the feel of the game, the Bulls’ determined effort in climbing back into the contest, and–once they took the lead–the way the team (and the announcers) confidently, carefully ushered the win home. At one nervous moment, Kerr let out a plainly audible sigh, and it was as if we all suddenly felt a little bit better, a little more comfortable in the car. From far away, from way back, we were there. And not only were we not in the city, we weren’t even surrounded by the comforts of home.
