By Ted Cox
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Sox remain one of the teams that have been most hurt by the 1994 baseball strike, one of the teams most in need of a public-relations boost and a new compact with the fans. Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf seems to recognize this; after the team’s woeful opening day performance at the turnstiles he staged a personal PR blitz, turning up everywhere on the radio dial from the Score, the all-sports station, with midday hosts Mike North and Dan Jiggetts, to the Sunday-morning discussion program At Issue with John Madigan on WBBM AM. Unfortunately for Reinsdorf, a higher public profile wasn’t likely to help anything. He is still widely blamed for the strike as one of the hawks among the owners, and quite frankly nothing he might say at this point will remove that impression.
Baseball fans are not stupid. They are also not the gullible, inattentive consumers Reinsdorf seems to think they are. For baseball fans, actions–on and off the field–will always speak louder than words; and the actions of Sox management continue to show a contempt for the fan base. At the new Comiskey Park there is now a revolving sign behind home plate–an ever-present reminder, both at the game and on television, that the team will stoop to almost anything to bring in a few extra dollars. Where the team on the field is concerned, the off-season saw ownership take a patchwork approach to mending a roster with gaping holes. General manager Ron Schueler did a generally savvy job of putting together a presentable squad, given the budget constraints forced on him by Reinsdorf. Yet that did nothing to alter the public perception that Schueler is little more than a bitter little shopkeeper and bean counter assigned to run the store while Reinsdorf is away. His act of firing manager Gene Lamont a year ago and then blaming it on excessive player salaries still sticks in the craw–of both fans and, we imagine, players.
Another new member of the Sox, pitcher Tapani, wasn’t able to make his expected start on opening day. He was a late scratch, and reliever Kirk McCaskill was assigned to replace him. McCaskill looked great for four innings but tired in the fifth, hitting the leadoff man and then allowing two hits and two runs. The Sox got them back in the bottom of the frame, when the first two men reached base with hits and Thomas lashed a great pitch, low and on the outside corner, down the first-base line for a two-run double. That was all the scoring the Sox would do, however, and one of their new generation of middle relievers, lefty Larry Thomas, gave up what turned out to be the winning run in the seventh.
