With two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth inning a week ago Tuesday, Frank Thomas–who had been taking the night off–emerged from the dugout and stepped into the on-deck circle. The White Sox were down 5-2 to the Oakland Athletics, Dennis Eckersley was on the mound, and the game was all but over. Yet the fans went crazy, cheering, clapping, and shouting, and one could almost feel the tension in the air. It was reminiscent of the atmosphere right before an electrical storm hits. Didn’t these fans know the odds were greatly against Thomas even coming to the plate? Eckersley had already given up two hits and he wasn’t likely to give up another; he had walked the previous batter and wasn’t about to walk one more to allow Thomas a chance to hit. Didn’t they comprehend that even if Thomas did get up, the odds of him reaching base were only 50 percent, that the odds of him getting a hit were less than 40 percent, that the odds of him hitting a home run to–my god, best not think about it–win the game were much less than that? Didn’t they know that in the grand scheme of things it didn’t even matter whether the Sox won or lost this evening?
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A basketball fan expects his or her team to perform well and is disappointed when it doesn’t. After all, in a crucial moment a team ought to be able to put the ball in the hands of the proper player, and the coach ought to be able to create a play to give that player a decent shot at the basket–more than a 50-50 chance of success, one imagines. Yet in baseball even the best hitters fail in their task two-thirds of the time. Thomas, enjoying one of the greatest batting seasons anyone has ever seen in Chicago, has an on-base percentage of .500, meaning that the odds of him getting on base at all–by hit or by walk–are 50-50. So the mood, even in the critical moment of the game, is not one of expectation but of hope. Basketball fans are pessimists: they fear things won’t go the way they’re supposed to. Baseball fans are optimists: they believe that in spite of the odds their favorite player will come to the plate in a crucial moment and deliver a base hit when it counts. Cubs fans, of course, are sybaritic defeatists and a breed apart entirely.
Still, there is no sporting thrill in Chicago right now to equal that of Thomas stepping to the plate. It doesn’t matter whether it’s with two out and nobody on in the first inning, with a man on in the middle innings, or–in that rare convergence of circumstances–as the potential lead run with men on base in the ninth. A large part of the reason for the excitement surrounding a Thomas plate appearance is that he is such a thoughtful hitter. From batter to batter and from base to base, baseball strategy is fairly simple. Yet the intricacies of strategy in the battle between pitcher and hitter match anything in sport–right up to chess–and the depth of strategy is never more apparent than when Thomas is at the plate. He knows how to work the count to get the pitch he wants to hit. He isn’t reluctant to accept a walk–the main factor in his leading the American League in runs scored this season. Most of all, he refuses to swing at a bad pitch. He is the sternest test for a pitcher to face because he is both the most fearsome and the most intelligent hitter of his era.
Baseball is a mysterious sport. A team can have all the talent in the world and still suffer from a critical lapse from day to day–the situation the Sox found themselves in last week. All teams have their problems over the long season; the good teams keep their problems from becoming endemic. In the meantime, until the Sox right themselves each Thomas plate appearance is even more important than usual.
Looking back on his career as a whole, Sandberg seems a player from another era, a perfectionist who stood out against today’s prevailing atmosphere of merely adequate professionalism, but who–in the end–proved himself unsuited to the extra demands and pressures placed on today’s athletes. In another decade, he might have finished with 3,000 hits. In this one, he merely quit.
