Jim Thome, the White Sox’ newly acquired slugger, moved along the right-field stands of Arizona’s Tucson Electric Park signing autographs. A product of Peoria, Thome is well-known to Sox fans from his days as a persistent nemesis with the Cleveland Indians, and he wore a big smile as the fans welcomed him. About 20 minutes before the Saint Patrick’s Day spring-training game was to start–it would be played with green bases, though the Sox stuck with their basic black jerseys this year instead of green pinstripes–he moved over to the right-field line to stretch and swing a bat. The fans further down the stands looked crestfallen, but they perked up when Jermaine Dye emerged to run a few sprints next to Thome. Juan Uribe joined them, playfully poking at Dye as the fans cheered, and as each additional player emerged–Joe Crede, battery mates A.J. Pierzynski and Mark Buehrle, who were headed for the bullpen, and last but certainly not least Paul Konerko, saluted as el capitan by one nearby fan–the crowd hooted and hollered and called out their names. “They’re folk heroes now,” said a woman down the aisle, and indeed they are.
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Each of those players but Thome invites memories of some feat from last year’s championship season: Dye as the World Series’s most valuable player, Uribe with his dive into the stands and final-out play of the clinching game, Crede with his game-winning smash in the Championship Series after Pierzynski stole first, Buerhle with his stellar pitching from opening day on, and Konerko with his World Series grand slam. The Sox are basking this spring in the afterglow of their first world championship in 88 years, and why shouldn’t they? They don’t swagger so much as saunter at their own pace, the better to soak up adulation like the Arizona sun.
Spring training has a reputation for frivolity, but few of the Sox fans appeared nonchalant. These were the ones with the aficion–not to mention the time and money–to make the trip to Arizona. When Buehrle uncharacteristically walked a man in the first inning and went 2-0 to the next batter, one leather-lunged guy in the back of the grandstand yelled, “C’mon Buehrle, what’s wrong?” Later, he earned some laughs when he belted out, “We are the champions,” but as he kept exhorting the players by name a fan behind me groaned, “Yack, yack, yack.”
Yet once the game began, the Sox played it intensely. The bench was up on the dugout railing to examine new Sox pitcher, Javier Vazquez, who’d just returned to camp after playing for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic. He gave up a first-inning homer to the Cubs’ Aramis Ramirez, but the Sox got it right back and more when their first four players to bat all got hits and scored, thanks to a three-run homer by Crede. He’d earned a reputation last year as a big-game player, and he lived up to it in this bragging-rights game by going four for four and driving in four runs.
