“Tom Terrific” had his great moment w/ Chicago, no matter how some forget

Tom Seaver was one of the great ballplayers of the 1970s – a star pitcher whom some would call the best of the decade. And while he’s in the baseball Hall of Fame for his days with the New York Mets, we shouldn’t forget the stint he had with the Chicago White Sox.

Sox won't forget Seaver anytime soon

Seaver popped up back in the news this week when his family made an announcement that, at age 75, he has been diagnosed with dementia. He’s going to suffer the malady of memory loss in his old age – to the point where the Seaver family says he’s through with having a public life.

HE INTENDS TO live out his days at the vineyard he has operated in California, doing some work, but mostly trying to enjoy a retirement.

Yet thinking of Seaver brings back to mind the stint he did with the White Sox in the mid-1980s.

It was only by pure fluke, and Mets mismanagement, that he came to Chicago at all for the 1984 season. Under the rules that existed then, the Mets left Seaver unprotected on their roster – mostly figuring that at his late-30s age, no one would try to claim him.

But the White Sox had just won a division title in 1983 and came close to making a World Series appearance, and also had the fairly new ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn who were eager to try to stir up attention for the ball club.

HENCE, THE WHITE SOX made a claim to Seaver, and he wound up deciding to come to Chicago after all – leaving the Mets where he was considered something of a team legend.

The baseball logic of the move was that a veteran pitcher like Seaver could help put the White Sox over the top and make them champions. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Seaver in 1984 won 15 games – the most of any White Sox starter that season. But the rest of the team slumped to a 5^th place, 74-win, 88-loss record. The previous season’s Cy Young Award winner as best American League pitcher Lamarr Hoyt finished with a losing record, and eventually was traded away for future star shortstop Ozzie Guillen.

Seaver pitched for the White Sox through early 1986, and wound up winning 33 games during his time wearing the “license plate SOX” uniforms whose design the team still loves to pay homage to on Sundays.

On receiving end of Seaver achievement

AND WHILE SOME people like to go out of their way to minimize the fact that Seaver ever pitched in Chicago, one can’t ignore the fact that one of the highlights of his overall career came during those years.

I’m referring to Aug. 4, 1985 when Seaver pitched a complete game victory against the New York Yankees – which turned out to be the 300^th victory of his career. The shorthand statistic that verifies Seaver’s place as one of the best pitchers ever.

Perhaps it was only so appropriate that the White Sox played that game on the road at Yankee Stadium. Meaning so many of the Mets fans who had cheered Seaver on 
throughout his peak years got to see his great moment – and took to rooting for the White Sox to whomp the Yanks on their own home turf.

Throughout their baseball history, the White Sox have had more than their share of aging ballplayers who did a stint in a “Chicago” uniform. Take Steve Carlton – the man most often tossed up as challenging Seaver for “best pitcher” of the ‘70s.

IN 1986, CARLTON pitched for three teams, including the White Sox, for whom he won four of the nine victories he achieved that season, before the Sox let him go to.

His Hall of Fame moments outside of Sox

Carlton’s mediocrity bordering on forgettability in a White Sox uniform is more typical than that of the Seaver story – who has earned himself a place as possibly the best star ballplayer for another team to enhance Chicago.

Some, I’m sure, will argue it’s really Carlton Fisk – the one-time Boston Red Sox catcher who wound up playing for the White Sox through the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Who, by all coincidences, was the catcher in Seaver’s 300^th victory.

It’s a moment that will live on in baseball highlight videos, and perhaps that’s good. Because it’s not likely Seaver himself will be able to recall much of the great baseball moment, as the passage of time and the frailty of the human body takes its toll.

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A-Rod won’t don pale hose during his lengthy baseball career; Chicago won’t get a last chance to “boo” him

It’s a trend that our very own Chicago White Sox like to take on – aging star ballplayers who wind up finishing their careers on the South Side of Chicago with such unmemorable stints that most fans quickly forget they ever played here.

 

He'll never wear White Sox pinstripes

To the degree that I often wondered if Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees was destined to become yet another ballplayer in this category – somebody who’d wind up finishing his career getting in a few games playing for the White Sox.

IT MAY BE the big difference in character between the Chicago White Sox and the crosstown competition, the Chicago Cubs.

For the Cubs have a history of letting young ballplayers go who later wind up with other ball clubs having careers making them worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. – pitchers Bruce Sutter and Greg Maddux, just to name a couple.

While the White Sox wind up being the aging dumping ground of guys like Ken Griffey, Jr., who when he was inducted earlier this summer into the Hall of Fame and people were going on-and-on about the highlights of his professional career, no one was thinking about the 41 games he played for the White Sox in 2008.

Then again, with a .260 batting average and only 3 home runs while wearing the black and white with pinstripes of the Sox, there wasn’t much to remember.

 

Just a few ballplayers ...

JUST LIKE STEVE Carlton or Roberto Alomar – who got into the Hall of Fame despite their lack of heroics in Chicago. Or Tom Seaver, who is a Hall of Famer whom many people barely remember as a White Sox.

It would have totally been in the ball club’s character to acquire Rodriguez, whom the Yankees have been eager to dispose of because he’s NOT of the quality any more that will make him a candidate for Hall of Fame induction.

 

... whose athletic demise and  final paycheck ...

He could be just like Jose Canseco, the aging slugger from the 1980s and early 1990s who ended his playing days in the early 21^st Century by hitting the last 16 of his 462 career home runs in Chicago.

He got to end his major league playing days by finally getting to see a Comiskey Park fireworks display in celebration of his own home runs, instead of just hearing the echoing of “boos” from fans p-oed that a Sox pitcher threw another stinker of a pitch that wound up deposited into the outfield seats.

... came while wearing "white" sox

THIS HONESTLY WAS what I always expected the end of baseball would be for Alex Rodriguez – an unceremonious attempt to stretch out his career for a few more ball games. With the confused catter-calls coming from the stands – generations of Sox fans booing and heckling him for playing for the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers and Yankees being muted because his hits finally benefitted the White Sox.

Although the reason it won’t happen is because Rodriguez announced Sunday he won’t play anymore following the Yankees’ ballgame Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays. He’ll get to finish out this season and next in some sort of unspecified role as a consultant.

Even Jose Canseco got a final farewell in Chicago

But his horrific play (batting only .204 this season and he didn’t even play back on July 4-6 when the Yankees made their only visit to Chicago this season) meant there weren’t many hits to be had.

As it turns out, Rodriguez’ Chicago finale turned out to be the final weekend of July 2015 when the Yankees played a three-game series at U.S. Cellular Field. The crowd reaction literally was a mess of people wanting to tell dumb steroid jokes and taunts mixed with Yankees fans still wishing to celebrate him – and one girl sitting behind me in the outfield seats making a point of wishing Rodriguez a “Happy Birthday.”

IT WILL BE intriguing how Rodriguez – the guy who lost the 2013 season to a suspension because of steroid-use allegations – gets remembered. Because with 696 home runs (as of Sunday), it makes him one of the all-time greats – ahead of Willie Mays (660) and not far behind Yankees immortal Babe Rush (714).

Not everyone heckled Rodriguez in Chicago

And certainly better than legitimate White Sox Hall of Famer Frank Thomas (521) or “is he, or isn’t he, a fraud” Cubs star Sammy Sosa (609). But some are going to be too eager to taint the Rodriguez memory with steroids, just as they have done with Sosa and many other ballplayers of recent years.

It makes me reminisce of the ballplayers of my childhood era – guys such as one-time Sox slugger Dick Allen.

 

He who took a Most Valuable Player title while representing the South Side and was critical of artificial turf by saying, “If a cow can’t eat it, I won’t play on it.” You just don’t get ballplayers like that these days.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Maybe the White Sox will wind up having Ichiro Suzuki on their roster some time in the near future. The Miami Marlins outfielder clinched his position in baseball immortality by getting his 3,000th base hit (a triple Sunday off Colorado Rockies pitcher Chris Rusin) playing in the U.S. major leagues (he has another 1,200 or so hit from playing professionally in Japan). Which means he's now an aging ballplayer whose past his prime and whose best years (with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees) are most definitely in the past -- perfect for a stint at 35th and Bill Veeck Drive! For what it's worth, Suzuki made his only visit to Chicago this season last week when the Marlins lost three games to the Chicago Cubs, although the White Sox will be in Miami for a weekend series beginning Friday.

Who knew back then that early '80s White Sox had pair of Hall of Famers?

I recall the Chicago White Sox of the early 1980s as being some fairly dismal ball clubs – Bill Veeck might have been gone, but the new ownership of the team didn’t do much better on the field.

New White Sox Hall of Famer

One division title in 1983 (the first time a Chicago baseball team ever finished a season in first place in the era of playoffs), along with a lot of losing records.

BUT AFTER MONDAY, those teams area going to be remembered for the pair of people they had who are now members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Catcher Carlton Fisk, who came to the White Sox in 1981, has been in the Hall of Fame for many years now. But the veterans committee that considers non-players, along with giving ballplayers a second chance, on Monday put in team manager Tony LaRussa.

He’s actually one of three managers picked for the Hall of Fame based off their activities of the 1990s.

But all had been managing since the late 1970s – including LaRussa, who got his first major league managing job with the White Sox in the year that the disco-hating meatheads claimed they were making a political statement, of sorts, by tearing up the turf at Comiskey Park.

CHICAGO WOUND UP being the learning experience for LaRussa, who after leaving the White Sox in 1986 went on to managing jobs in Oakland and St. Louis – both of which resulted in him winning league championships and World Series titles.

Which is why I’m sure many people are going to think of the White Sox as the afterthought of his career. Although back in the early 1980s, it would have been regarded as a better bet that George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin of the New York Yankees would be picked for the Hall of Fame someday -- both were passed over on Monday.

Will he be joined by 'the Big Hurt?'

It could be argued that if not for Veeck and later Jerry Reinsdorf, there never would have been a LaRussa manager. He would have been just a journeyman ballplayer (whose career included one end-of-season stint with a mediocre Chicago Cubs team of the early 1970s) who wound up having to use that law degree he earned while younger in order to earn a living.

Did the White Sox spare us from yet another blowhard attorney? If so, that might well be a significant accomplishment by itself.

Chose Boston recognition for Hall

ALTHOUGH THE IDEA that those White Sox teams had two members who will now be regarded among fans as “baseball immortals” seems like such a stretch. It certainly wasn’t reflected on the playing field.

Especially not in 1984 when Hall of Fame members LaRussa and Fisk were joined by another future Hall of Famer – pitcher Tom Seaver. Big names for a lot of disappointment.

Then again, any fan of the Chicago Bulls of the mid-1980s (when Michael Jordan was surrounded by athletic dreck) ought to realize that a lone ballplayer isn’t enough to make up a team.

Consider that when the White Sox finally went on to win a league championship and World Series title in 2005, they did so with a team that many people think will wind up with NO Hall of Fame members other than Frank Thomas – whom we might learn next month will be elected to the Hall of Fame from the ranks of recently-retired ballplayers.

EVEN THEN, THOMAS was injured most of the season and didn’t play a single inning of playoff or World Series ball – Carl Everett was the “big bat” designated hitter that season.

Will 'Hawk' join the Hall someday?

So come July, White Sox fans will have something to celebrate in that a former manager is being immortalized. Even if it means that broadcaster Ken Harrelson will have to re-tell the stories of his one-year stint as a baseball general manager when he became the only person to ever fire LaRussa from a job.

Then again, it’s also possible some year that Harrelson will get the Ford Frick Award that the Hall of Fame gives out annually to broadcasters of excellence. Yet another White Sox Hall of Famer whose career somehow manages to exceed the overall level of performance on the playing field.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: For the record, Tony LaRussa got elected to the Hall of Fame on the same date that Gov. Pat Quinn proclaimed to be "Mike Ditka Day" in Illinois -- in honor of the fact that the Chicago Bears retired one-time coach Ditka's old uniform number 89 from his days as a player.

A-Rod to the White Sox? The concept is not completely out of the question

The New York Yankees have suffered a humiliation, and somebody must pay! Will the Chicago White Sox be the alleged beneficiary?

The ballclub that finished the regular season this year with the best record in the American League managed to get swept in four straight games of the final round of playoffs by the Detroit Tigers – which, we all know, is the ballclub that only made it to the playoffs because of the White Sox’ pathetic play in September.

THIS YEAR DEFINITELY won’t be a year where the American League puts up its best ballclub against the National League champion in the World Series that starts next week.

Which has Yankees fans seriously peeved! (Actually, the word that most accurately describes them is one much too vulgar to be published here). They’re looking for a person to take their abuse out on!

And it would seem that the fans and management want to blame Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez – who for the record-setting kind of contract he has is supposed to be “the man” who leads the team to championships.

Instead, he didn’t hit worth squat. In fact, his play was so bad that the final two games of the playoff round against Detroit, Rodriguez was sat on the bench.

WHICH APPARENTLY GAVE him time to engage in one of the old tricks of a ballplayer – tossing a ball at a babe in the stands, in hopes that under the guise of asking for an autograph, she’ll hand over her phone number.

Rodriguez seems to have been more interested in getting himself some blonde companionship for after the ballgame, rather than trying to focus on winning the ballgame itself.

Personally, I think it’s possible for a ballplayer to focus on winning while not completely ignoring his surroundings.

But the mood is ugly in New York these days (uglier than usual, I should say).

THERE ARE THOSE who want Rodriguez traded away. There has been speculation that he will wind up in his hometown of Miami; which makes me wonder how he would react playing for manager Ozzie Guillen.

But there also is speculation that other teams might be interested. On Friday, I saw one list of clubs that emphasized that someone of Rodriguez’ “stature” would have to play for a “big-market” ballclub. No Kansas City Royals for him.

And that list basically came down to the two Los Angeles-area teams (the Dodgers and the Angels) and our very own White Sox!

Personally, I’m inclined to think that the White Sox are the bottom team on any such list. I’m not sure I see it happening – even though current White Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis is likely to leave soon (he was only a one-season pickup to bolster the ballclub for a potential World Series that never happened).

THERE WILL BE a vacancy at that position. There would be room for Rodriguez on-the-field. Although I suspect the Yankees would have to agree to pay virtually all of what remains of Rodriguez’ contract for the notoriously-cheap White Sox to seriously think of pursuing him.

But we also have to admit that the White Sox have a history of picking up big-name veteran ballplayers whose best years are behind them. It’s like a stint on the South Side is a part of the path toward athletic retirement.

Wear the Olde English script “Sox” before trying to figure out what to do with the rest of one’s life.

Hall of Fame ballplayers such as Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton (and likely Hall of Fame member Ken Griffey, Jr.,) all had their stints in Chicago near the end of their careers.

HECK, LET’S NOT forget of such players as one-time relief ace Sparky Lyle (a Cy Young Award winner) or slugger Jose Canseco – who also have a bottom line of statistics in agate type indicating they played for “Chi-A” as their very last employer in Major League Baseball. I'm sure Sox fans with time on their hands can name dozens of other big-name ballplayers throughout the decades who finished up here.

In that context, it would make all the sense in the world for Alex Rodriguez to have a stint with the White Sox.

But then again, Rodriguez may well be capable of playing another couple of regular seasons in the major leagues. He probably isn’t completely washed up as a professional athlete. He’s just no longer the superstar that he once was with the Seattle Mariners (and whom the Yankees thought he would be for them).

Which probably means he’ll go to Los Angeles or Miami (where he lives during the off-season) and play for a bit.

THEN, HE’LL WIND up coming to Chicago to finish up in the black-and-white pinstriped uniforms that – from a distance – sort of look like Yankees uniforms.

So let me write a premature “Welcome to Chicago, Alex Rodriguez.” He’ll be here around 2015 and will get in a few final ballgames that will be considered an embarrassment to his career – while White Sox fans will speculate about how wonderful it would have been if he could have played for the ballclub a decade or so earlier.

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Seaver or Carlton?

Ken Griffey Jr. is now a member of the Chicago White Sox. But will the eventual member of baseball’s Hall of Fame have a Chicago stint that bears more resemblance to Tom Seaver or Steve Carlton?

Both of those men were among the top pitchers in the National League back in the 1970s, and both finished up their playing careers with stints with the White Sox. Griffey was once arguably the best ballplayer in the game back in the 1990s, and he will now spend a part of the end of his playing career on the South Side.

BOTH SEAVER AND Carlton got into the Hall of Fame, and no one who thinks of those men at their best will give any thought to their time in Chicago.

Yet Seaver was still a competent pitcher for the White Sox, and he actually managed to achieve his statistical goal of a 300th victory on Aug. 4, 1985 while wearing a Chicago uniform (but pitching against the Yankees in New York – the city where he had his greatest days with the cross-town Mets).

Carlton merely pitched for part of one season (1986), the year he bounced from his longtime baseball home in Philadelphia to the San Francisco Giants to Chicago, where he won 4 games, lost 3 and had a 3.69 earned run average for a forgettable fifth place ball club.

I’ll be content if Griffey can provide a little aura to a contending White Sox team whose veteran bat (first baseman Paul Konerko) can’t seem to hit a thing these days. I don’t expect a repeat of anything Griffey was capable of doing back in his days with the Seattle Mariners.

BESIDES, GRIFFEY’S DAYS in Chicago will be limited.

My understanding is he gets bought out of the rest of his contract, so the White Sox are giving up two middling minor league prospects for two months worth of a veteran whose best days are behind him.

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