The pennant race began unusually early this summer, which is only fitting for the craziest, juiciest, most hectic, most heroic (read homeric), and potentially most absurd baseball season in memory. Last weekend the Cleveland Indians came to Comiskey Park percentage points ahead of the White Sox in the American League Central Division. It was only the first series after the all-star break, but already the games would prompt charges of watered-down base paths, doctored baseballs, and corked bats. In the most unusual event of a highly unusual weekend, the bat in question was stolen from the umpires who had confiscated it, replaced with a surrogate, and then mysteriously returned (or was it?).
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That was the question that presented itself when we arrived at Comiskey last Sunday. The place was already buzzing with speculation over the missing allegedly corked bat. Yet there were Jerry Reinsdorf and Ozzie Guillen outside the locker room haggling over the negotiations between the players and the owners. Just to bring everyone up to speed, the owners recently presented the players with a new contract proposal, one that would roll back many of the gains the players have made over the last two decades. (For instance, the players not only would be asked to take a pay cut if injured and placed on the disabled list, in effect they also would pay the premiums on the insurance policies that would benefit the owners in case of such injuries.) It took the owners about 18 months to present that contract to the players, but now Reinsdorf was bemoaning the players’ failure to respond in the few weeks since. The players, in fact, have responded by threatening to strike in order to prevent the owners from instituting the contract by fiat, which they can do if they declare the talks at an impasse. Reinsdorf knew all this, of course, but was trying to seem reasonable. “There’s got to be a deal somewhere,” he said. Guillen was uncharacteristically (and ominously) silent.
Some 24 hours later, the bat–or a bat, anyway–was mysteriously returned to the umpires. Was it Belle’s bat? Did it contain cork? Neither question had been answered at the end of the weekend. If found guilty of using a corked bat, Belle–Cleveland’s clean-up hitter–could be suspended for a week or more. Chicago general manager Ron Schueler was trying to put up a sporting front by the time Sunday rolled around, saying it was all in the hands of the league office, but he also made it clear that there was a definite assumption of guilt. “Obviously, somebody thought he was guilty, or they wouldn’t have bothered going through with that,” he said.
While the Sox went through a rather apathetic batting practice Sunday morning–most of the starters begged out–the Indians lined up in the dugout early to watch the Sox, in the threatening manner of their namesakes on a ridge in a movie western. They couldn’t get on the field soon enough. This attitude is what one expects from kids like Lofton and Baerga, but it has rejuvenated veterans like Murray, Martinez, and Jack Morris.
Lamont was treating Bere with kid gloves. When Bere, who’d lost the all-star game the previous Tuesday, got wild in the sixth, Lamont went to the bull pen, bringing in former Cleveland pitcher Dennis Cook. That’s when the Indians’ manager, Mike Hargrove, accused Cook of doctoring the baseball. The umpires went to the mound, examined Cook’s glove and cap, and pronounced him clean. Cook got even for the damage done his reputation by pitching two and one-third innings of solid relief, to set up Roberto Hernandez for the save in the ninth.
