Whoever put the curse on the White Sox made sure it was a good one. For the first month of the season the Sox not only played poorly on the field but were beset by bad weather, which dragged down attendance and afflicted them at home and on the road. From the first Chicago baseball games of the year, the pair of Cubs-Sox exhibitions before the season began, when the Sox were at Comiskey Park dark clouds gathered over the franchise, and when the Cubs returned to Wrigley Field the clouds parted, the skies cleared, and all was well with the world.
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Yet the Sox were swept in Cleveland, and the way they lost those four games was brutal. Wilson Alvarez and the bull pen blew a six-run lead in the opener. Then ace Alex Fernandez committed an eighth-inning error that gave the Tribe the game-winning run in a 2-1 pitchers’ duel. Then three Chicago errors led to four unearned runs in a 6-3 loss. And finally the Indians just plain whipped the Sox 7-4, to put Chicago nine games under .500 at 11-20 and 11 games out of first place. The Sox returned home last in the league in fielding, with eight more errors than the next-worst team in three fewer games. The pitchers had allowed the most walks in the league and were next to last in earned run average. And, while their hitting was respectable overall, the Sox had amassed the second-highest number of runners left on base.
The worst thing about the four-game sweep was that owner Jerry Reinsdorf had made the trip to Cleveland. There is no darker omen for a baseball manager than when the owner or general manager travels with the team. Upon their return, general manager Ron Schueler summoned Lamont, pitching coach Jackie Brown, and bull pen coach Rick Peterson to his Comiskey Park office and fired them all, replacing Lamont with third-base coach Terry Bevington and adding AAA pitching coach Don Cooper.
“You want to ask, do we have as much ability as last year?” he said. “I don’t know. But I know this. Last year we played with more talent. When you utilize your ability, that’s now talent. I think right now we have enough ability to win but we haven’t played with enough talent.
“Good game, I’ll never forget it,” Bevington said in his office, after taking care to hide a big bottle of beer behind his desk, out of the view of TV cameras. “I’ll remember a lot of things about that game.” He sounded like a kid in the backseat of a car as it crawls out of the stadium lot on the ride home.
