Fireworks show
Garcia hits 2 of Sox’s 5 homers to make serious noise in 1st win of abbreviated season
If Fox Sports can insert simulated fans on their broadcasts and teams can pump fake crowd noise into ballparks, there must be a way to replicate a fireworks display at White Sox Park.
The fireworks tradition former Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck began in 1960 at old Comiskey Park was sorely missing from Saturday’s 10-3 victory over the Minnesota Twins. The Sox pounded five home runs, including two from Leury Garcia and one apiece from Edwin Encarnacion, Eloy Jimenez and James McCann.
The powerball display gave Dallas Keuchel a victory in his Sox debut and washed away the bitter aftertaste of Friday’s 10-5 opening-day loss.
The Sox tried to figure out a way to allow fireworks at the ballpark for the shortened season, but with limited personnel allowed at the park because of MLB’s health and safety protocols, it didn’t work out. It’s a shame a 60-year-old Sox tradition, one that changed the way baseball looked at entertainment, had to fall victim to the coronavirus pandemic.
You can’t blame the Sox, and you might even feel a bit sorry for Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. His rebuilding team’s lineup suddenly looks like the reincarnation of the South Side Hit Men, the 1977 club that won the hearts of Sox fans even though it could do nothing but hit home runs.
“The power is off the charts,” Keuchel said Saturday on a conference call. “I don’t think I’ve seen this much power from a lineup that I’ve been on, ever. I know the Twins set the record for home runs in a season last year, but we rival them. We’re just a lot younger.
“If we can have these young guys keep garnering that knowledge of the game … it’s going to push some of these guys to the next level.”
The next level, of course, is the postseason. Unlike the ’77 Hit Men, who floundered down the stretch, this team should keep getting better as the 60-game season wears on, especially when Keuchel gets stretched out and Carlos Rodon gets reacclimated to the rotation.
Keuchel responded the way the Sox needed Saturday after Lucas Giolito’s opening-day dud, mowing down a Twins lineup on an assortment of sliders and 77-mph changeups before being removed after 73 pitches in the sixth with two on and one out. He was charged with two runs when new setup man Steve Cishek served up a three-run home run to Nelson Cruz, but it was a beautiful start nevertheless.
The Twins have haunted the Sox since Ozzie Guillen nicknamed them “The Piranhas” back in the 2000s. Now they’re more like whale sharks, bigger and badder than ever. They won 101 games last season and set the majorleague record with 307 home runs, then went out and added Josh Donaldson to the lineup.
“That’s one of the best lineups any of us will see this year on this Zoom call,” Keuchel said. “They won the division for a reason last year, and we’re going to have to go through them.”
The Sox came into 2020 with a 55-78 record against the Twins over the last seven seasons, a trend that can’t continue if they hope to shed their cocoon and blossom.
That magnifies the importance of Sunday’s start by Reynaldo Lopez, who is coming off a subpar season but remains No. 3 in the rotation ahead of Dylan Cease and Rodon.
It’s very, very, very early, naturally, but an openingseries win over the Twins could pay big dividends down the road. After finishing 13th in the league with 182 home runs last year, the Sox added sluggers Encarnacion and Yasmani Grandal to the lineup while bringing up rookie Luis Robert. In other words, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
Manager Rick Renteria rested Grandal on Saturday, a move that immediately was met with derision on Twitter, where derision usually is king. Renteria explained it as a “day game after night game” thing, which would make more sense if the season were more than one day old. Instead of moving Grandal to DH, Renteria gave him the day off.
But the moves worked. McCann came through with three hits and two RBIs, and Encarnacion launched a mammoth homer on which left fielder Eddie Rosario didn’t bother to move an inch as the ball sailed over his head and clanked off the empty bleacher seats.
Case closed.
It’s a short season, but it’s going to be a long short season if fans are going to pick apart Renteria’s every lineup decision like it’s Game 7 of the World Series. It’s certainly nice the Sox finally have a team that can make fans this delirious, but maybe they should chill for a couple of weeks and let this team try to find itself.
Anyway, back to the fireworks conundrum. What’s the solution?
Personally, I like an idea former Yankees manager Casey Stengel came up with in the 1960s when New York came to town and the exploding scoreboard was still a controversial addition. Mary Frances Veeck, Bill’s wife, told the story that Stengel had a few Yankees players light sparklers in the dugout after home runs as an in-your-face to the Sox scoreboard.
I’m sure someone in the Sox’s stadium operations department could make a run over to Indiana and pick up a few cases of sparklers, though surely MLB would frown upon that.
If anyone has any ideas on how to replicate the fireworks display, let me know and I’ll forward them to Reinsdorf.
Until then, listen to the wisdom of Keuchel, who knows what it’s like to play for a winner.
“It’s going to be entertaining every day,” he said.
With or without the fireworks.