There is always a Chicago angle. This has been a bittersweet series for Sandy Alomar, 54 next week. He played for Eddie Stanky on the White Sox in the late 1960s and for the last seven years he has been a roving minor-league infield coach for the Cubs.
He is also baseball’s Father of the Year. His two sons, Sandy Jr. and Roberto, are opponents in the American League pennant playoffs.
“I root for both of them,” he said here Monday night. “I hope they both do well. But I know only one can win. At least one of them will be in the World Series.”
Sandy Jr., 31, is 2 1/2 years older and a late bloomer. He is Cleveland’s All-Star catcher and has been the Indians’ batting hero all season. He had a 30-game hitting streak during the regular season, second longest by a catcher ever, hit a game-winning home run in the All-Star Game and has continued to lead the Indians in their surprising postseason success.
In the Indians’ first nine playoff games, Sandy Jr. drove in nine runs, hit three home runs and delivered the winning hit again Sunday with a solid ninth-inning single that lifted Cleveland to a 2-1 victory. The victory gave the Indians a 3-1 edge over the Orioles in this best-of-seven playoff for the AL flag.
But he didn’t have his magic wand in Monday’s fifth game. He was hitless in five trips as Baltimore rebounded with a 4-2 victory. The triumph enabled the Orioles to stay alive. The sixth game and seventh, if necessary, will be played in Baltimore on Wednesday and Thursday.
The senior Alomar, who is “proud of both my sons,” always makes it a point to mention his daughter, Sandia, 32, the oldest of his three children.
“She was the critic in the family,” Alomar said. “She watched her brothers play and would tell them what they were doing wrong.”
Alomar admits there was a time when he was critical of Sandy Jr.
Unlike Robbie, who never wanted to be anything else, Sandy Jr. wasn’t certain he wanted a career in baseball. He stopped playing ball when he was 12 and didn’t return until three or four years later.
“He wanted to be a motor-biker,” Alomar recalled. “He competed in dirt races. Before that he wanted to be a pilot. A friend of ours, a doctor, had a Cessna. He took Sandy up with him and would let him take the controls.
“He liked to take risks, do dangerous things. He was very big on tae kwon do and karate. When he went back to baseball, he decided he would be a catcher because that was the most dangerous position.”
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The two brothers fought like any two kids.
“The only time Sandy got mad at Robbie was when Robbie was 6 or 7,” the father recalled. “He was very stubborn. If the manager didn’t bat him leadoff, Robbie would take his equipment and go home. Those were the times Sandy got mad at him.”
They played on the same Little League teams in Puerto Rico and were big-league teammates with the San Diego Padres during part of the 1989 season. The elder Alomar was able to keep a close watch. He, too, was with the Padres as a coach. Sandy Jr. was traded to Cleveland in the winter of ’89. Roberto went to Toronto a year later.
Until this year, Roberto was the family star. A perennial All-Star, he had a .302 lifetime batting average for nine seasons. Sandy, in this same span, was often out with injuries and appeared in only 617 games, half as many as Roberto.
Sandy, who has had surgery on both knees, batted .324 this season, a career high.
“The big difference is Sandy hasn’t been hurt the last two years,” said Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove. “When he’s healthy there isn’t a better catcher in the American League.”
As for papa Alomar, he was a light-hitting infielder (.245), strong defensively but with only occasional power: 13 home runs, an average of one for each of his big-league seasons. He was with the White Sox from 1967 through ’69. He joined the Cubs before the ’91 season and has been in their organization ever since.
Whatever happens here, Alomar is grateful. “I’m the .500 Father of the Year,” he said.