Posted on 09/18/2007 12:38:36 PM PDT by rhema
There’s no better way to do it than the way Jim Thome did it Sunday afternoon.
It was Jim Thome Bobblehead Day at the ballpark formerly known as Comiskey Park to begin with. It was the otherwise sunken White Sox coming back from a 7-1 deficit with a four-run seventh and a two-run bomb (by Danny Richar) in the eighth against struggling Los Angeles Angels setup man Scot Shields to set it up.
And it was former longtime Angel attack dog Darin Erstad, now labouring for the club who manhandled them in the American League Championship Series two years ago, opening the bottom of the ninth with a base hit against Dustin Moseley to put a duck on the pond for Thome.
The slugging first baseman had been trying several days to get the milestone mash with his family in tow and, though he’s too nice to admit it, seemingly, he must have been thinking in the back of his mind that there was little enough quarter to be had in making it when it didn’t mean much.
It doesn’t mean a thing to the White Sox’s chances this season. Those chances dissipated long before Thome set himself up for the 3-2 service. But winning for pride still has its place and Thome nailed one tight shut when he drove that service over the left center field fence for career crunch number five hundred and the game, 9-7.
This wasn’t exactly the way the Angels expected the game to finish. They’d taken the early lead when Vladimir Guerrero—who’s going to be limited to designated hitting for awhile with that barking triceps keeping him from throwing—sent a 1-0 service from White Sox starter Mark Buehrle into the right field seats in the first. They’d padded it in the fourth when Juan Rivera—still retuning after missing most of the season with a broken foot—sent one out with Howie Kendrick aboard.
And they looked like they’d run away with it in the seventh when they really cranked up their classic Angelball ways—a double, a sacrifice, an intentional walk (to Vlad the Impaler, who else?), an RBI single, a bases-loading single to chase Buehrle, another RBI single, a fielding error, and a bases-loaded walk (to Mike Napoli).
But the White Sox got four back in the seventh with three straight singles and a one-out, three-run bomb before Richar abused Shields an inning later. And then came Thome in the bottom of the ninth, and all of a sudden the White Sox’s comeback qua comeback took second place to the manner and the man by which they did it.
He was merely the fourth fastest man to reach five hundred. The three ahead of him: Harmon Killebrew, Babe Ruth, and Mark McGwire. And nobody’s accused Thome yet of doing it with any kind of actual or alleged better living through chemistry.
“The bottom line is the stuff you just asked about, it’s part of what we’re dealing with today,” he told the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Greg Couch before the weekend set with the Angels. “It is unfortunate [for] the guys who worked very hard in the game. There’s always going to be this speculation. Some people will be suspicious of me. Some won’t.”
“Thome hasn’t been connected with steroids,” Couch wrote onward. “But we keep hearing about connections to steroids or hGH from players we had believed in. Rick Ankiel, the comeback kid, and Troy Glaus, the 2002 World Series MVP, were in the most recent group. And it gets awfully hard to believe in any milestone numbers.
”’That’s part of our game today,’ Thome said. ‘That’s part of it’.”
Yes, you do want to believe he’s beyond suspicion. So far, he seems to be precisely that. And Thome’s nothing if not honest about the hankering to reach the peaks when everyone’s pulling for you to do it and the hardship in doing it precisely then. “It’s tough to hit home runs when people want you to,” Thome said after Sunday’s game.
Like in the bottom of the ninth with the game tied, even if your team is so far out of the races they’d need telescopes and a GPS system to see the leaders. That’s when they need you to hit one. And maybe that’s a little easier than doing it when people merely want you to do it.
Sometimes.
P.S.—If class begets class, consider the fan who was fortunate enough to catch Thome’s milestone bomb: He handed the ball to Thome as soon as he could reach him. In return, Thome handed him one autographed bat, one autographed ball, two season tickets to the White Sox, and the guaranteed use of Thome’s personal suite for a game between the White Sox and the Cubs in 2008.
Said fan, a Texas accountant named Will Stewart, who likes to visit the ballparks when he’s traveling out of town, had no obvious use for White Sox season tickets—so he donated them to Family Champions, the charity Thome created.
As I’m from Austin, Texas, and not from the great city of Chicago and won’t be able to use the season tickets, I’ve asked to donate the season tickets to your charity for use. That’s the best thing I can think of to give back to the city of Chicago.
—Will Stewart to Jim Thome.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is class to class.
Said fan, a Texas accountant named Will Stewart, who likes to visit the ballparks when he’s traveling out of town, had no obvious use for White Sox season tickets—so he donated them to Family Champions, the charity Thome created.
As I’m from Austin, Texas, and not from the great city of Chicago and won’t be able to use the season tickets, I’ve asked to donate the season tickets to your charity for use. That’s the best thing I can think of to give back to the city of Chicago.
That is classy!
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