posted on Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:43 PM
by
Jim
Big Frank dunk tank
Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy. A day after talking about how Paul Konerko can do with words what Frank Thomas never could, the Big Hurt goes and airs his grievances on his way to Oakland.
And the Chicago media can’t get enough of it.
Take your pick from the large number of scribes who are looking down their noses at Big Frank:
And there are probably a few more I’m missing.
Let’s get this out of the way. Yes, Frank was dead wrong to even mention Jim Thome’s name. It’s never a good idea to call out another player by name first of all, plus Frank doesn’t have a great argument going for him when it comes to current worth. There are simply too many health problems to overlook.
If he stopped at “They were probably looking for a big left-handed bat,” he would’ve been correct. Everything else he said was questionable at best, and petty at worst, and overall it’s another case where he needs to put his foot in his mouth.
Of course, the Chicago media can’t let Thomas’ own words tarnish his reputation – they have to speculate about his worth to the team performance-wise as well, using the ever tricky and unreliable concept of “chemistry” and his supposed adverse effect on it as the gospel truth.
Here’s what they’re missing – if Frank Thomas didn’t play at all last year, the Sox probably would not have made it to the playoffs to begin with, much less win the World Series. Between the Big Hurt’s DL stints, the team went 29-14 (.674 winning percentage) – outside of them, the Sox went 70-49 (.588).
Of course, the Chicago media prefaced Thomas’ May return saying he would pose chemistry problems, that he would disrupt the lineups, that he would demand playing time when there wasn’t enough to go around.
Not that they had anything to go on – Frank said he just wanted to be part of the team, that he’s never been around an atmosphere like that, that he just wanted to help however he could. But since Frank was saying it, nobody believed it.
But that never happened. Frank didn’t sink the team; instead, he sparked it to the best offensive stretch it had all season. The guy he was “stealing” at-bats from, Carl Everett, never hit better than when Thomas was on the team, because he didn’t have to play every day against pitchers who could eat him alive. Frank wasn’t demanding at-bats – Ozzie gave them to him, and given how hard Frank hit the ball, he deserved every one of them.
That 29-14 record included two five-game winning streaks and one eight-game winning streak. Thomas never disrupted any momentum – he added to it. When he played his first game of the season, the Sox held a four-game lead in the AL Central. By the time he played his last game, they owned an 11-game lead. And by the way they nearly collapsed in September, they needed every game Frank gave them.
Contrary to popular belief, the Sox didn’t win that many games because Frank Thomas smiled more (even though he does have a nice one). They won that many games because he hit the bejeezus out of the ball when he made contact, the other players contributed, and his team had a fully functioning and healthy pitching staff.
When Ozzie Guillen is defending Frank -- and he has been -- you know that the media’s perception of his worth to the team is off. But that won’t stop them from throwing stones.
The underlying point of what Thomas said was not about Thome being a lesser ballplayer – it was about Thomas wanting to play his entire career in Chicago, and if that couldn’t happen, he at least wanted Kenny Williams to be more straightforward with him about it. He at least deserved a physical from the team so he could’ve proved his worth to other teams earlier in the offseason.
Frank just can’t win, even when he’s saying the right things, even when he’s declaring his wishes to play in Chicago for his whole career. Only Frank could be beaten up for something players are automatically lauded for.
And it will most likely affect his Hall of Fame career, even though media-friendliness has lead those writers so far astray in the past. Kirby Puckett had an easy time getting in because he was a tubby ball of joy, except his private life was marred with domestic abuse incidents and illegitimate children. Sammy Sosa was glad to bring out the dog-and-pony show to any reporter who would watch it – now he just looks like a gigantic phony who is widely suspected of juicing.
As far as we know, Frank hasn’t committed any crimes, he hasn’t been a detriment to any team he’s played for, and he hasn’t cheated – he just hasn’t said the right things many times in his career. And I’m willing to wager that reporters have been offended far more often to his teammates.
He should be remembered for being the greatest offensive force in White Sox history and the dominant right-handed hitter of the 1990s. His comments were unfortunate, and he should regret them, but they shouldn’t define him. Too often he tried to just let his bat do the talking, and the media wouldn’t let him.