Comiskey Park is in the midst of a renaissance in this its final season. The White Sox are winning, and the fans are back–both to an extent that no one expected. Two weeks ago, the Oakland Athletics came to town, and when the Sox won the first game of a four-game series they closed to within a game of the first-place A’s. The rest of the series saw crowds of 40,000 stream into Comiskey, including the largest crowd since opening day 1984, that occasion meant to celebrate the division title of the year before and the championships soon to come.
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The weather was threatening, but by the time we stepped off the train at 35th Street the clouds were beginning to scatter. We arrived for the tail end of Walt Hriniak’s nightly hitting class, but as the Sox took batting practice the slap of bat on ball wasn’t echoing quite as we remembered it: there was too much noise in the park, too many fans in the stands absorbing the echo. The sun came out and cast the right-field upper deck in a delightful glow, so that a Little League team marching in single file across the far reaches of the stadium took on the aspect of a mountain-climbing expedition searching for a virgin spot to encamp. Looking around the ballpark, we found that even its cheaper, cost-cutting elements (the Old Roman, Charles Comiskey, took the inexpensive road even when it came to building the park to be named after him) have a character: the unadorned girders that frame the ballpark at the edge of the upper deck, and the odd angle–like the crooks of one’s arms–where the seat rows meet down the rightand left-field sides, a consequence of cutting comers when the outfield stands were added during the Ruthian boom years of the 20s. As the sun went down and the game began, the puffy clouds above turned pink like cotton candy.
On this night, about 20,000 were in the stands–a good Tuesday crowd–but only a handful got the joke when the Angels’ Luis Polonia–who was caught with an underage girl in his hotel room last season in Milwaukee–came to the plate. Organist Nancy Faust played “You’re Sixteen” one at bat, then “I Fought the Law” the next.
What was most impressive about the White Sox the night we saw them is the most difficult element to explain. Even while losing, 5-3, they were intent, alert; the players, on defense, leaned forward with the pitch, and the base runners were eager for a sign to go. Everyone, even sluggers like Ivan Calderon, was trying to bunt for base hits, sending the other team’s infield defense into spasms. Three times, starter Melido Perez ended an inning with a strikeout–twice with men in scoring position–and each time he responded with that trademark half-raising of the arms, the same gesture a bird of prey makes over a victim.
The Sox, it seems, are looking better all the time, against all forms of competition.
