Robin Ventura’s injury was gruesome enough to merit a viewer-discretion warning, but White Sox fans should know the most dispassionate observers did not blink an eye.
The team remains a solid contender among experts entrusted with establishing odds and ends.
“Their lineup is still strong,” William “Roxy” Roxborough, president of Las Vegas Sports Consultants, was saying Monday. “It’s not like a star pitcher going down. For instance, if Tony Gwynn were hurt and replaced by a guy who bats .250, that’s a loss of maybe one hit a game. Not that much.”
Roxy’s firm has lowered the over/under on Sox victories from 90 to 88. But otherwise, they hold at 4-1 to claim the American League pennant, behind Cleveland (5-2) and Seattle (7-2), and an 8-1 proposition to win the 1997 World Series.
“Plus,” said Roxborough, “Ventura didn’t go down in July. All indications are he’ll be back for the stretch run.”
As usual, our pal Roxy makes sense. True, Ventura bears the most famous leg cast this side of the White House, the difference being that President Clinton’s mishap didn’t occur in the line of duty, happened during the wee hours and was neither televised to Boston nor rewound by ESPN.
But Ventura’s misfortune, like the president’s, invites paralysis through analysis. What good is a compound fracture without a conspiracy theory or a frantic search for the smoking gun? Never mind that baseball, exhibition or otherwise, is not played in a bubble.
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There was this notion that Ventura, already nursing a strawberry on his right thigh, somehow compensated for the owwie while attempting to score in the fourth inning Friday night at Sarasota, Fla. Even Terry Bevington, the omniscient Sox manager, thought he detected an awkward slide at home. Two, in fact. Ventura looked tentative hitting the dirt at second base moments earlier.
But Ventura politely dismissed the idea. He said his spikes simply caught in the dirt before the plate, there was no give upon impact, and to his horror, the ankle he planted soon was pointing thisaway instead of thataway.
Should Doug Rader, the third base coach, have waved in Ventura on a lousy single to left? Should the game have been played after daylong rain, though the infield was covered? Should the Sox, drawing so-so crowds for their lame-duck spring in Sarasota, have ignored the large advance sale for Friday night’s date against the popular Red Sox?
Again, stuff happens. Sox fans can only hope the prognosis of three to four months for their 29-year-old star doesn’t reek of typical preseason optimism. Moises Alou, now with Florida, incurred a similar freak injury with Montreal in mid-September 1993 and by mid-March 1994 still was tiptoeing through the Grapefruit League.
Whatever, the Sox seem to have an able replacement in Chris Snopek. He’s no Ventura, but he’s no Dave Magadan either. The Cubs, waiting for the next Ron Santo or Bill Madlock, would have welcomed Snopek a year ago, when the Sox couldn’t find him a place to play. Now, third base is his by emergency, and the better he does, the less need for Tony Phillips, who committed 19 errors there in 88 games for the ’95 Angels.
Ventura is the quiet leader of a team once criticized as passive. Typically, amidst the Frank Thomas-Albert Belle fanfare, Ventura must break bones to get due notice. His mates, already donning “RV” on their caps, are a diverse gang indeed. There’s no law that they can’t arise in his honor.
Besides, he will be around the locker room before too long to rehabilitate and, if necessary, referee.