A single heartbeat, Frank Thomas calls it, and if the White Sox need a slogan, it is better than most. Win the season opener on the road 9-2 and anything sounds good.
“We’re all smiling,” Thomas said, smiling.
All beginnings are new, but this one had at least a fourfold freshness: a new season, a new manager, a new shortstop and–this may be a stretch–a new Jaime Navarro.
Jerry Manuel is newer as a big-league manager than his picture on the wall of the visiting manager’s office in the Ballpark at Arlington, a place that is more like a borrowed pile of ballparks than any one, a little Yankee Stadium in center, a bit of Tiger Stadium in right, even a trace of the original Comiskey Park arches hiding in back under the bleachers.
Manuel is all ’70s hair and full beard in an Expos uniform, a man with the look of a rebel in his youth, not the man with an assortment of books on his desk with titles such as “The Essential Gandhi” and “The Power of Integrity.” On the desk also is an unopened bottle of champagne, chilled, a present from his old bosses in Florida, Jim Leyland and Dave Dombrowski.
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“It would have to be non-alcoholic for me to drink it,” Manuel said, “but I appreciate the thought.”
Manuel’s picture on the wall is an obvious enlargement of Manuel’s baseball card from his days as a Montreal second baseman.
Maybe if he wins another game, Manuel will get a more recent photo, but he is as of today the only undefeated manager in White Sox history.
“I’m excited and happy the way things turned out,” he said, sounding moderately excited and happy. “We are still a ways away.”
What comes next will come. That’s not the point. The point is that this always will be the place of Manuel’s first victory, of Mike Caruso’s first hit. First hits, like first kisses, first dates, are impossible to forget.
“My first hit was in Baltimore,” Robin Ventura said. “Off Ben McDonald. Fastball. One-and-one count.”
Caruso’s first hit came in the eighth inning, off Bobby Witt, a bouncer through the infield to right. The count was 0-1. As if Caruso won’t remember.
“Bobby Witt, right?” Caruso asked, just to make sure.
ESPN is showing highlights on the clubhouse big-screen TV as Caruso talks. There he is, larger on the screen than he is in life, diving to his left to take away a bases-loaded single from Kevin Elster.
Caruso stops talking and watches. He tosses the ball backhanded to Ray Durham at second to end the eighth inning.
“Sorry,” he said, not for the play, but for being distracted by his own heroics.
First highlights are worth keeping too.
“Maybe I’ll watch it again later,” Caruso said.
It was a day for all the Sox, not just Caruso and Manuel, but new catcher Charlie O’Brien, with three hits on the day and a run batted in, and relatively new right-fielder Magglio Ordonez with three hits as well.
“Just a continuation of what we were doing in the spring,” Thomas said.
Albert Belle started a seven-run rally in the fifth after Texas starter John Burkett was perfect through four innings. Belle had two hits in the inning. Ventura whacked a two-run homer and was inspiring in the field.
“Robin was superior,” Manuel said. “And someone told me I ain’t seen nothing yet. I can’t wait to see him play real good.”
And not letting any of this go to waste was Navarro, the pitcher who gave up more hits and more runs than any other in baseball last season. Though allowing a runner an inning, Navarro got through six without giving up a run.
“We all just go out and try to do our jobs,” Navarro said, refreshingly modest coming off an uncommon success.
A single heartbeat, Thomas calls it. Beginner’s luck? Whatever, it worked for one game.
Only 161 more to go.
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