How refreshing, if true, that the surrender of the White Sox was in response to White Sox fans. It was, of course, for money and for spite and for the unvarnished hell of it.
Nothing noble there, nothing honorable.
Fire a team because the fans don’t like it? Fire the players instead of the manager? These are revolutionary concepts, and baseball is to revolution what a cold is to Kleenex.
“The fans don’t like this team,” Frank Thomas said into some camera or another, an echo of Jerry Reinsdorf and of Ron Schueler. The company line has a hook, and the biggest fish was at the end of it.
This is what the fans want, to start over, to give up, to put new bodies in familiar costumes. Listen to the fans.
Now this is revolutionary. The Sox want to collect a buck and pass it at the same time.
Given half a chance, an occasional wink and three victories out of five and fans will lavish more devotion than any team can stand.
Not only do these Sox have to be five games above .500, which they actually were, but they have to be loved, which they are not. Even by each other.
Affection is not fatal, nor even usual.
The last time the fans filled up Comiskey Park, that bunch was much more gloomy and unlikable than this one, from Jack McDowell to Bo Jackson to George Bell.
And their manager, while not as outright absurd as this one, was about as warm as unthawed fish sticks.
Is Albert Belle still on this team? Of course, he is. If hostility is in the equation, Belle is on a bus back to Shreveport or wherever he may still have a friend.
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Does Terry Bevington still manage? Funny, he never did before.
Had Reinsdorf listened to the fans, Bevington would be a blip on the radar, headed off to whatever weird world exported him.
No, Bevington instead was retained and reassured, in defiance of common knowledge and common sense, handed a $54 million enterprise to guide to glory, which is the kind of judgment that would give Ralph Kramden the space shuttle.
Thomas? Is there a less cherished great player in baseball than Thomas?
This is a man whose public temperament comes not from instinct or any genuine talent for being familiar, but from calculation, a selfish responsibility, like personal hygiene.
Reinsdorf and Schueler? Try snuggling up to a warden and his watch dog.
There have been lovable Sox teams, the last one with Ron Kittle and Greg Luzinski and LaMarr Hoyt and the young Mr. Baines. But try to get next to Carlton Fisk or Tom Seaver and you would be treated like a stalker.
Connections to any sports team are made, not of present splendor but of past glory. Affection may be renewable, but memory is more reliable.
Any Sox owner more beloved than Bill Veeck? None.
Does Reinsdorf measure up? Like a sneer to a belly laugh.
Yet public scorn is not reason enough for Reinsdorf to fire himself.
Why is Tony Phillips gone? Because he was a clubhouse annoyance. Why is Harold Baines gone? Because he was easy to kiss off.
Why say goodbye to Wilson Alvarez and Roberto Hernandez? Better to slap the hand that feeds you now than have it bitten off next season.
There is no reason to have a flawed Jaime Navarro if some consideration had been given to a perfectly fine Alex Fernandez, as likable a player as there is this side of Ozzie Guillen.
Why fire Gene Lamont? He may be a bit of a chalk outline, but he was always baseball sound and reliably responsible. Lance Johnson. Joey Cora. Warren Newson. Scott Radinsky. Tim Raines. All pleasant enough. All gone.
Do Sox fans not like this team?
I have to agree that Sox fans like the one that is no longer here much better.