In the end, it was all a matter of timing.
Like da Vinci and Shakespeare, Einstein and Galileo and Mozart and Lennon, the 2000 White Sox are well ahead of their time.
Instead of taking baby steps, improving by small increments as the general manager’s blueprint suggested, a group of young men who didn’t know any better decided to try their luck at the triple jump. They gathered together in Tucson in mid-February with a faint hope of contending, gathered steam in June with a near-perfect road swing through Cleveland and New York and rolled toward the finish line with a decidedly South Side swagger.
Befuddling the experts from the start of spring, the Sox clinched their first title since 1993 Sunday when Kansas City defeated the Cleveland Indians 9-0 just before the Sox lost 6-5 at Minnesota. Their division title ends the Indians’ five-year reign atop the American League Central, only one season after they finished 21 1/2 games behind the Indians.
Taking the lead from Jerry Manuel, their low-key manager who speaks in a whisper yet is always heard, the White Sox began to exude a quiet confidence somewhere along the road, projecting an attitude that carries a warning label.
“Do not underestimate.”
They defied the doubters all season and arrived at their destination Sunday, at least a year ahead of schedule.
Were those tears in Manuel’s eyes, or was it just the champagne dripping from his hair?
“There were a couple times on the bench where you get a little emotional,” Manuel said. “Your emotions don’t know where you’re going, and I got kind of choked up. But it wasn’t a sad thing, it was kind of rejoicing to the fact that the guys have played so hard and they’ve given me every ounce of effort and energy that I could ask of them.
“It was an emotional experience. I didn’t go too far off with that, but it was good to feel that way because that’s been my whole thing–to be able to move men to a level where they don’t think they can compete. You think they can, and then they were able to do it. That was exciting.”
In only his third year, Manuel molded a young team in his own image and sat back and watched it grow in front of his sometimes disbelieving eyes. The mano a mano shouting match between the devout Christian manager and his star-crossed star set the tone in Tucson. With Frank Thomas’ head screwed on right again, and with a surprisingly lethal lineup surrounding him, the Sox were off and running.
To many of the main characters in this strange Sox saga, the shocking success of 2000 is sweet vindication, no matter what’s in store in the playoffs.
Vindication for Thomas, the two-time MVP who was purported to be washed up at 31, his one-way ticket to Cooperstown unceremoniously canceled and his image in tatters after two years of fighting with the world.
Vindication for Jerry Reinsdorf, the two-team chairman of the board accused of plotting a premature surrender in ’97, waving the proverbial white flag to cut his losses and start over with a payroll of mostly anonymous, inexperienced and inexpensive workers.
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Vindication for Ron Schueler, the general manager and architect whose moves were questioned and criticized during almost every phase of the rebuilding process.
Vindication for diehard Sox fans, the ones who stuck with their team during the dark days of the late ’90s, when Chicago became “all-Sammy, all-the-time,” and Comiskey Park became a virtual ghost town.
The 2000 Sox won back the hearts of thousands of Sox fans, helping improve attendance at Comiskey by more than 510,000, the second-highest increase in the American League. Yet seldom has a team’s fan base been more controversial than the team itself. The endless debate over why the Sox weren’t getting enough love from Chicago has been a story that won’t go away.
Can Chicago become a Sox town if the town continues to suffer from a franchise malaise?
“I don’t know if the whole town can be made over,” first baseman Paul Konerko said. “A person who wants to go to a ballgame in Chicago, he’s probably heading to Wrigley Field, because Wrigley is Wrigley. It’s a great place, one of the unique places in baseball, so it’s tough to compete with that. But with the players we have here and the attitude that’s in this clubhouse right now, I don’t see why we can’t own this town.”
Former White Sox manager Tony La Russa knew Sox fans better than most, growing accustomed to their wide-ranging mood swings during their first big whiff of success in 24 years, the “Winning Ugly” Sox of ’83.
“They get very passionate,” said La Russa, who now manages the St. Louis Cardinals. “They get upset, and they’re very impatient sometimes. But when you have them on your side, man . . . I’ll tell you, it’s exciting and it’s a force.”
That “force” began disappearing after the great strike of ’94, the work stoppage Reinsdorf allegedly played a hand in prolonging as one of the leaders of the “hawks” within the owners’ ranks. A team Sox fans believed was the one saw its dream season canceled in midstream, a “Na Na, Hey, Hey . . . Goodbye” from baseball that many took hard.
Meanwhile, Cleveland rocked. The Indians won the division by 30 games in ’95, by 14 1/2 games in ’96, by six games in ’97, by nine games in ’98 and by 21 1/2 games last year. The Indians were considered such a lock last spring that Las Vegas oddsmakers lumped the Sox in with the rest of the division rivals. The “field” was 7-1, and not even Schueler believed the Sox would percolate as quickly as they did.
“In spring training, we made guys from the staff write down our predictions for [Sox] wins,” Schueler said. “If I’m not mistaken, I had 84 down. I thought we would be eight or 10 games below .500 the first half, looking at the tough schedule we had. Then I thought we would mature and play better in the second half.
“A few people raised their eyes at me for saying we’re going to be better than .500, but I thought we would be two or three games over. [Special adviser] Ed Brinkman, who’s usually a low grader, surprised me. He went with 86 [victories]. A couple of others said 78 or 79 and then one guy, J.J. [Lally], our video editor, said 95. I had to ask him, `What are you drinking?'”
Even after the Sox proved to be the real deal, they had to continue proving themselves over and over again. Manuel once addressed the large legion of doubters in his own understated way.
“We’re always `too this’ or `too that,'” he said.
Some players complained that local reporters spent too much time looking for flaws while ignoring the team’s strengths, in effect calling a Rolls-Royce a junker because of a couple of scratches on the bumper.
The Sox surely are lacking in age, experience, healthy starters and Gold Glove fielders, but one common denominator connects everyone in the clubhouse. They believe in each other and they play for each other.
“Since the beginning of the year, we’ve taken the doubters as a challenge,” shortstop Jose Valentin said. “Every time we take the field, we feel like we can beat anybody. When you play almost perfect, beating Cleveland and New York like we did, beating all the best teams like we did, it makes you believe in yourselves. Not too many people have given us credit, so we take that as a challenge.”
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The 2000 Sox came together during an April 22 brawl with the Tigers, causing the suspensions of seven Sox players and Manuel. Once the suspensions were served, the team began its upward ascent on Jeff Abbott’s two-run, game-winning home run against Minnesota on May 13. The Sox went 26-8 over the next five weeks, capped by a 7-0 trip through Cleveland and New York. For all intents and purposes, the race was over.
Injuries to starting pitchers James Baldwin and Cal Eldred, stalwarts on the mound during the first half, led to a parade of raw pitching prospects who fast-forwarded their way through the system and onto the roster of the team with the best record in baseball.
Schueler once again was strapped to the hot seat, criticized for not acquiring a veteran starter for the stretch drive. By hook or crook, the 2000 Sox cruised home anyway, stunning the experts and proving once again that the old axiom still rings true.
Timing is everything.