Spring is a time of healing and rejuvenation, and for many of us baseball is its most soothing balm. Walking past Wrigley Field in the dead of winter can remind us that summer is inevitable, but too often the thought is lost because we’re hustling past the park looking at our feet; for the moment, Wrigley becomes nothing but a giant wind shield. Spring training, arriving just as a few days are giving us a glimpse of the warming to come, involves us not only as a symbol of spring, but also as a prod to reawaken long-dormant thought processes we fear we might have lost. There is a skill to looking at box scores that involves knowledge and imagination; the same is doubly true for “pitching lines”–those simple lists telling who pitched, who hit home runs, and what the score was by innings, which replace boxes in the newspapers for the relatively inconsequential games of spring training. When the season starts, the game in the flesh involves us totally in an awareness of the healing process, even on the rawest evening. Once again there is the crack of bat on ball, the strategy of the count, the tactics of the bull pen and the bench. This year, after bouts with two different kinds of flu and a spell on the graveyard shift, which left us feeling like a zombie, a member of the walking dead, baseball returned once again to work its medical magic. It was a fresh and welcome reminder that we are human after all.
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Unfortunately for the White Sox, the first few weeks of the season saw their hopes take a turn for the worse. Anyone watching the Sox on opening day, when they were on the road in California, must have been amazed at what a lineup they had suddenly managed to put together. Last year, everyone thought the Sox would have a potent offense, but the failure of rookie Lance Johnson, the poor season suffered by Dan Pasqua, the early loss of Carlton Fisk, and the later loss of Greg Walker left them struggling for runs as usual. This year, despite the continuing problems of Johnson (who returned to the minors), the Sox put together a lineup of fellows who could really bash the ball. The newly bespectacled Pasqua had had a terrific spring; Harold Baines was revitalized under the care of new hitting instructor Walt Hriniak; Walker–a very gloomy and speculative topic of conversation for most of the winter after he suffered a series of seizures last summer–was back and looked fully recovered; so was Fisk, and Ivan Calderon looked interested in playing. Ron Kittle was back home and on the bench. Steve Lyons, last year’s number-two hitter–and a pretty good one at that–was now forced into the lower third of the batting order by necessity. Eddie Williams, a promising right-handed swinger obtained from Cleveland to play third base, was hitting ninth. This was very suddenly a team that could hurt the opposition at any spot in the order.
This sort of weather also significantly weakens baseball’s healing effects. One fights it the way one fights a cold, and if one is fighting a cold one loses.
Comiskey Park was not so festive last Friday night, when, semirecovered from a stomach virus, we returned to the south side. The healing continued, however–for a moment, anyway. Jerry Reuss, the aged, crafty left-hander, was slated to pitch for the Sox, so Ken Griffey Jr., the Seattle Mariners’ phenom, was dropped from the starting lineup. We got a chance to see him at batting practice, however. He was all smiles and simple quips, a puppy with fully developed musculature. He complained about the cold, in a high-pitched voice, saying he wanted to make his stay in the cage “short and quick.” Manager Jim Lefebvre turned the phrase toward instruction–like an old college professor–saying, “Let’s see if you can be short and quick to the ball. Short and quick means waiting.” Griffey, however, jumped at everything, popped three straight pitches into the netting above, and Lefebvre began to chide him. “Hit the top of the cage. I can do that. That’s why I’m fucking managing. See if you can hit a ground ball. You know what a ground ball is?” He may not. Griffey skied everything, then ended his stay in the cage by lining a curve crisply into right field.
