The White Sox haven’t exactly spent this season making all the right moves, but Sunday will be different because Sunday they will welcome a different guy back to Comiskey Park.
Carlton Fisk appreciates being remembered and is working hard on the other part, forgetting.
“I hope it will be a happy occasion and I think it will be,” he said Friday. “If you let yourself be bitter, it can tear you up. The wounds have healed, the scars remain, but, yes, I think it will be a good day.”
When Fisk’s No. 72 jersey is retired before their game against Cleveland, the Sox will effect closure of sorts on a bittersweet chapter of franchise history. He was a regal and professional presence, from the moment he left Boston and signed on with the new ownership here in 1981.
But Fisk is every bit as resolute as the Sox’s chairman, Jerry Reinsdorf, and when they parted in 1993, there was fire in the air. Chicago teams are infamous for untidy endings. See Dick Butkus and Bobby Hull.
The Cubs will salute Ryne Sandberg next Saturday, but they have “no plans” for him thereafter, and you can book it. Sandberg will go home to Arizona and the expansion Diamondbacks will hire him in some capacity next season.
Fisk belongs in baseball. As former teammate Scott Sanderson said, “It’s like having gold in your back yard and not mining it.” But Fisk, ever the deliberate soul, still forages his way through the mellowing process.
“I love the game as much as ever,” he said. “But I don’t want to be crushed again. Being crushed, that hurts.”
It wasn’t only the dismissal here, but the preambles. For a few years here, even before management called time, Fisk felt like he was on the outside looking in. Then, only months after enforced idleness, Sox players summoned him for a visit before a playoff game here against Toronto.
“Never made it to the clubhouse,” Fisk recalled. “I was escorted away by security. Shown the door, again. Haven’t been back there, until Sunday. And it will be a good day.”
Reinsdorf is not scheduled to speak, but this is his idea, and all it took was a stamp. Fisk wrote back and said, yes, thanks, I’ll be there.
“He deserves it, for what he meant to the White Sox,” Reinsdorf said. “And the fans want it too. As for this thing between him and me, well, if it exists, it’s on his side. I was the one who insisted that he be with us long enough to set the record. Most games as a catcher, lifetime.”
Fisk wore the major-league uniform with almost a religious sense of pride. He respected the game. It was his honor to play baseball, not baseball’s honor to have him. Whether that mind-set would fly through current polluted attitudes is debatable, but worth an attempt.
“Well, I’ve had one opportunity,” Fisk said. “The White Sox asked me to help out at spring training. Also, Tony La Russa had me down to St. Louis and it felt good, good to talk baseball. Haven’t been around many parks lately.”
Earlier this week, Fisk returned to Fenway Park, where he was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame. There, he reiterated his position on Cooperstown. When it happens, if it happens, he’s not sure whether he’ll wear a Boston or Chicago cap.
But first, Sunday.
“It will be emotional and I’m leaving a bunch of tickets,” Fisk said. “I devoted my life to baseball, worked hard and did well. What happens next, I don’t know. The game needs to be fortified, and I’d like to think I could help in some way. I want a challenge, but first I have to be asked. When I’m ready, I don’t know if anybody is ready for me.”
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A great mind awaits, and all it takes is a stamp.