The incessant, unforgiving baseball season is one hell of a grind. Non-stop games. Non-stop travelling. Non-stop pressure. It needs a player with a strong mentality to survive a backbreaking 162-game campaign.
Sometimes, they snap. Or, in Chris Sale’s case, they get out a large pair of scissors and start cutting off shirt collars. The White Sox pitcher is a main starter in Chicago, but on a five-day rotation. He will appear around 30 times in a season.
That’s a whole lot of pent up aggression which came wildly to the fore last weekend – and the poor, innocent victims were special edition throwback shirts from 1976 aimed at bringing in some extra revenue.
Despite warning club bosses that the old school uniforms were too uncomfortable to play in, especially during hot weather, too collared and too loose (the Sox attempted a similar sales push last year), they were rolled out regardless.
Sale, bless him, didn’t want much. He requested the front office perhaps look at different styles, shirts which can be tucked smartly into their game trousers.
Yet no. Those in power opted for business over the comfort and happiness of their own players. You know, the guys who actually are the most important ones at a baseball club.
So Sale, rather than ranting and raving, did something else. He got cutting and carved himself out a five-day ban which cost him a cool $250,000 in wages, while copping another $12,700 bill for the destroyed shirts.
I've now heard twice today that the odds of Chris Sale getting traded are "less than 5 percent." White Sox seem more curious than serious
— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) July 31, 2016
Enough were destroyed to see the team wearing 1983 vintage instead. Was it an immature response from a professional who really should know better? Absolutely.
But did his madness raise a salient point about a glaring mistake by the White Sox hierarchy for not putting the interests of their players first? In the cut and thrust world of modern sport, the dollar signs which flash in executive’s eyes cloud judgement.
“My emotions, clearly, I pitch with a lot,” the unapologetic Sale said. “I’m a pretty competitive person. You just try to keep those in check maybe a little bit more — and use them, maybe not abuse them.
“There’s no doubt that my emotions have gotten me to this point. I don’t think I’d be the same person without them.”
His team-mates were fast to defend him.
“No offence to anybody that disagrees with him but unless you know what it’s like to be Chris Sale and to go out only 33 or 34 times a season, with the competitive nature he has — obviously what he did is not right, but if you’re going to make him go out like that, his mind’s not going to be on the game,” said infielder Tyler Saladino.
“Nobody would say, ‘We want a picture of Chris Sale with an untucked jersey.’”
Sale’s anger is understandable.
An ultra-competitive five-time All-Star, the 27 year-old unfortunately ranks as one of the best players never to have appeared in the postseason. That could change this time around with the White Sox mounting a credible challenge in the American League Central.
He does have previous: Last year following an on-field dust-up with the current champs from Kansas City, Sale went looking for some afters in the clubhouse.
Teammates, thankfully, broke it all up. And earlier this year following the furore and head scratching over Adam LaRoche’s shock retirement following the banning of bringing his son with him to games and training, Sale was at the head of the queue looking to slaughter club officials.
Though this and the recent cutting fury are both regrettable incidents, it gives a stark reminder of the mental aptitude required to stay alive in Major League Baseball.
“When the Adam LaRoche thing happened, everybody asked, ‘Who’s our leader?’ and I said, ‘There’s our guy right there,’” third baseman Todd Frazier said of Sale.
Just keep him away from the scissors.
