Carlos Quentin was positively raking Monday afternoon. It was a sight to see.
All sinews and fast-twitch muscles, Quentin stood at home plate on this sunny October day, and bashed baseballs all over the outfield. The ball was flying off his bat, just as it did in this Summer of Reinvention, for both Quentin and the Chicago White Sox. But the sound of a ball meeting the sweet spot of a bat was just an elegy to the end of the White Sox's season. Quentin's appearance just a tease. He could only take batting practice. There are no more games to be played.
The Sox shuttered their season with a convincing 6-2 loss to Tampa Bay in the divisional series Monday evening. And there was really no doubt about it: The Rays were just a better team. Sometimes it is that simple
And baseball in Chicago hibernates for another year.
"I'll see you in spring training," manager Ozzie Guillen said loudly as he left his post-game press conference, adding. "I'm not going to Soxfest!" He closed with his favorite expletive. It was vintage Guillen.
There were few tears, if any, shed Monday night by a Sox team that never quit, even as it was running on fumes. This team didn't promise a World Series. There was no "curse" to break. No one is writing a book on this team. The epitaph of the 2008 White Sox? They lived on the edge and died with their spikes on.
After all, the Sox were playing with house money at the end, running the table in dramatic fashion just to make the playoffs. They did it without Quentin, their unlikely MVP, and steady third baseman Joe Crede, who will take his solid bat and surgically repaired back somewhere else next season as a free agent.
They were without the ageless Cuban, Jose Contreras, the only active baseball player who remembers playing for Batista. Those three absences, plus a deficit in the bullpen, prevented this team from making a serious run at another World Series. This team simply wasn't deep enough to overcome. It happens.
Quentin was the most visible loss, the only power bat still blessed with the gift of youth. When he hit, you watched. The intense Stanford Cardinal took himself out of the lineup as September dawned, accidentally slamming his wrist, instead of his fist, against his bat after a strikeout. He broke a bone and fissured a promising lineup. Crede was mostly out of the lineup after making his first All-Star team in what seemed to be a storybook comeback season. His White Sox tenure ended awkwardly.
When he last showed up at the Cell, as the regular season ended, Crede had a statue out front, but no locker inside. Crede cleaned out his locker in late September and the team removed his nameplate. His agent, Scott Boras, is no friend to Sox management, and Boras' machinations were not appreciated by Williams and Co. Crede will be missed, and it's a shame he didn't get a proper goodbye from the fans.
Some said the White Sox overachieved this season, but to me, that's a weak argument. Once they showed they could compete, all the preseason prognostications were rendered moot. The so-called heavy hitters in the AL Central, the Tigers and the Indians, foundered early, while the scrappy Twins were the Sox's only real competition.
General manager Kenny Williams made a lot of good moves, some downright epic, but he made some errors along the way too. He gave away too much for Nick Swisher, traded a fifth starter/bullpen arm in Nick Masset, who would've been valuable down the stretch, for a well-worn Ken Griffey Jr., a Hall of Famer years past his prime. Was a year of Orlando Cabrera worth losing another year of Jon Garland? Probably not.
But Williams will ultimately be remembered for what he did right. His trades for Gavin Floyd and John Danks before the 2007 season showed their value in 2008 and then some. The pair should be the guts of this rotation for years to come. As for this past off-season, Williams famously struck gold by signing infielder Alexei Ramirez, aka the Cuban Missile, for next to nothing, and trading a minor league first baseman for perennial target Quentin. It's not often you give up jack for MVP and Rookie of the Year candidates. Not many GMs could put that on their resume?
Ramirez was the best story of all. The wiry, slick-fielding 27-year-old infielder is still a mystery man, a rarity in a media-crazy town like Chicago. He doesn't speak English and is hesitant to speak about his past in Cuba, which he left last September, settling in the Dominican Republic with his wife before signing with the Sox last winter.
Much has been made of his slender frame, from which he managed to hit 21 home runs, including a rookie-record four grand slams. Ramirez's build might be attributed to the dearth of milk and other foodstuffs in Cuba after the Soviet Union collapsed. (This was referenced in an article on Cuban baseball in July's Vanity Fair.) Give him another year of proper nutrition, and those power numbers should continue to rise, befitting his former status as Cuba's home run champion.
It hasn't all been four-baggers and home plate mosh pits for the Sox this year. This wasn't the most cohesive clubhouse, and it was a far cry from the relative joy of the 2005 team. There were factions, rivalries and some mutual dislike. Guillen's style wore on some players.
Cabrera, brought in from Anaheim to be a leader, never jelled with his manager or most of his teammates. Javier Vazquez, the mercurial right-hander, turned into an albatross. Nick Swisher, the carefree, self-proclaimed "Dirty 30" team guy had a pretty miserable season, winding up playing behind resurgent retread DeWayne Wise. First baseman Paul Konerko had another one of his down years, pairing with DH Jim Thome and outfielder Jermaine Dye to form the nucleus of an aging, fossilizing middle of the order. Thome probably has one more year in his tank. Dye and Konerko are future DHs.
There were the usual distractions from a team that has thrived on chaos. Cabrera feuded with scorers. Ozzie feuded with Cabrera. Ozzie feuded with Jay Mariotti. Konerko feuded with Father Time. Swisher feuded with the Mendoza Line.
There was the infamous blowup over a blowup doll in Toronto, which was especially ironic, given that with all the "road beef" players acquire during a season, two mute rubber women caught them the most flak.
But perhaps the least reported storyline of this season is the most serious - the firing and federal investigation of Williams' friend, and rising front office star, David Wilder, who got busted for supposedly skimming bonus money from Latin prospects, defrauding players and the team. Wilder ended a promising baseball career, and now could be the centerpiece of the biggest baseball story of the off-season.
Several other teams have seen scouts and executives busted for similar crimes. Sources have told me this story could involve even more big-name baseball people down the road. Drugs are so three years ago. Buscones are the new black.
As we walked out of the Cell for the final time this year, closing out another Indian summer, a few reporters talked about what's next for this team. Who do you get rid of? For that matter, whom can you get rid of? Who do you bring in?
Last year, after a season in which nothing went right, things looked bleak for this franchise. Then in December, at Opryland of all places, Williams landed Quentin, his guy, and told reporters that the wheeling-and-dealing Tigers were just spinning their wheels to keep up with him. Everyone laughed, even Williams. Damn if he wasn't right on. He kept laughing all the way to October.
There's a lot of talent on this team and it should contend again. It's easy to say that now. Williams is never shy about making moves, but you wonder if he was too thankful for the contributions of some from the 2005 team, rewarding them with rich contracts and maybe too willing to let others go too soon. It's a tricky thing, chasing a season like that.
But as 2005 recedes further in the horizon, I wonder what 2009 will bring? First we must deal with winter. Spring will come soon enough.