Baseball / Ross Newhan : Fregosi Finds It Hard to Patch Up the Holes in White Sox

The Chicago White Sox have managed to puncture the bubble of euphoria that Jim Fregosi experienced when he returned to the major league managerial ranks.

The White Sox were shut out for 18 innings, got only 1 extra-base hit among 29 hits and scored 4 runs in a recent four-game span. That prompted Fregosi to call a clubhouse meeting in which he accused some of his players of quitting.

What he may have wanted to say but couldn’t was that some of them should quit.

After Harold Baines, Ozzie Guillen and Greg Walker, what’s left?

This is a bad team that is getting strange direction from a front office that makes a verbal commitment to youth, then signs George Foster and Steve Carlton. This is a team that has two owners, Eddie Einhorn and Jerry Reinsdorf, who were once compared to Abbott and Costello by New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner and who are now operating a monthly player shuttle to Yankee Stadium.

Ken Harrelson, the flamboyant vice president, has kept the club in the headlines but not in victories. There was nothing Fregosi could do that predecessor Tony LaRussa hadn’t tried. Since July 7, the White Sox have a 19-28 record, worst in the American League.

July 7? That was when LaRussa took over the Oakland A’s. The A’s are 27-18 since.

Only the Detroit Tigers, 29-20, and the Angels, 28-19, have comparable records in that span, which adds a little salt to the White Sox wounds.

Said LaRussa, reflecting on his treatment in Chicago during his final weeks there: “I have some negative feelings about some of the people over there and I don’t want good things to happen. But, and this is a big but, I’m only interested in the Oakland A’s. That’s important to say.”

Adding to Fregosi’s woes has been the whining response of Carlton Fisk to his benching. The White Sox want to take a late-season look at rookie catcher Ray Kerkovice.

Fisk, 38, was hitting .215, but still said:

“It’s tough when you work hard all your career and you’re winding down to the golden days and people make them smell.”

Is the speculation accurate? Will Reggie Jackson end his career in Oakland next year?

Bet on it.

The A’s have next year’s All-Star game. They plan to market the 1987 season around it. Incorporating Reggie’s last hurrah would seem to be an advertising man’s dream.

Plus, when Jackson retires, the A’s reportedly relish the idea of him buying in as a minority owner and supplying his media magnetism.

Have they already had informal discussions on that part of it? You can bet on that, too.

Pitching in San Diego Tuesday night, the New York Mets’ Sid Fernandez took a 10-1 lead into the seventh inning, then permitted five runs and gave way to Jesse Orosco, who preserved an 11-6 victory.

Fernandez, despite his 15-4 record, has been struggling in the second half. Tuesday’s game marked the 61st time in 66 major league starts that he failed to go nine innings. The Mets think that a 24-year-old pitcher of Fernandez’s strength and ability should be able to complete what he starts. They are concerned now about his waist line, just as the Dodgers were before they traded him.

“He has gained too much weight this season,” Manager Davey Johnson said. “We’re going to have to talk to him about it. The trainer tells me he’s put on 10 to 15 pounds.

“I mean, this was a nice night and he should have been able to complete the game. He could miss a few meals.”

Citing Bill Doran’s contributions in the areas of speed, defense and intangibles, Atlanta Manager Chuck Tanner says the Houston second baseman should win the National League’s most-valuable-player award.

“You look at the stat sheet and you don’t see what he does,” Tanner said. “The Mets would still be there without Carter, but the Astros wouldn’t be there without Doran.”

In the final weeks of his and his team’s disappointing summer, Dan Quisenberry has regained his customary role as Kansas City’s late-inning stopper.

Said Quiz: “At least now I feel like I’m part of the team again instead of a piece of furniture.”

There are several factors behind the surge of the Toronto Blue Jays, but the most reliable has been the remarkable relief pitching of rookie Mark Eichorn and veteran Tom Henke.

Since the All-Star game, Eichorn is 5-3 with 3 saves, and Henke is 2-0 with 5 saves.

Overall:

--Eichorn has set a Toronto record for wins by a rookie. He is 11-4 with 7 saves and a 1.66 earned-run average. He is unscored on in his last 9 appearances, a span of 23 innings in which he has 20 strikeouts and only 2 walks.

--Henke has set a Toronto record for saves with 19, and he saved both halves of a doubleheader sweep in Cleveland last Wednesday. He is 8-3 and unscored on in 11 of his last 13 appearances, a span of 22 innings in which he has 27 strikeouts and only 5 walks.

The St. Louis Cardinals, whose 1985 pennant is now a memory, have scored three runs or fewer in 78 games. “Not much margin for error is there?” Manager Whitey Herzog said.

Herzog had hoped to bring some life to a lost season by turning Vince Coleman loose in a bid to break Lou Brock’s National League record of 118 stolen bases in a season. But that, too, has foundered. The Cardinal catalyst is in a batting slump, having had 6 hits in his last 45 at-bats. He has 87 steals and a .247 batting average.

“I don’t think he’s going to hit enough to break the record,” Herzog said, adding that Coleman tends to hit more fly balls than he should.

“If he’d hit four ground balls a night, I know he’d hit .270,” Herzog said. “If he’d hit one line drive and three ground balls, I know he’d hit .300.”

If misery loves company, Herzog has it in Baltimore Manager Earl Weaver.

The Orioles have a 4-15 mark since drawing to within 2 1/2 games of Boston Aug. 6.

Weaver has used nine different leadoff men in a bid to prime an offense that has scored three runs or fewer in 52 games and one run or less in 22.

“It all boils down to the fact that we’re not as good as we think we are,” Weaver said. “If we were, our record would be better.

“I mean, I don’t even know where our next win is coming from or how we’ll go about getting it.”

Weaver’s frustration can be characterized by the events of Thursday night, when the Orioles lost a doubleheader in Oakland with Don Aase, who leads the major leagues in saves, drawing the loss in both games.

Add Orioles: Despite the contention of agent Ron Shapiro that his client had acted out of frustration and had no real desire to leave, the word is that Eddie Murray still wants to be traded, that he remains unhappy over the recent criticism by owner Edward Bennett Williams, over the booing of fans in an injury-marred season and over the club’s response to his hamstring pull of midsummer.

At one point, the Orioles reportedly insisted that Murray slide six times to prove he was ready to play again. He refused.

Murray would like to play for either the Angels or Dodgers. But Wally Joyner stands in his way in Anaheim, and his own five-year, $12.7-million contract starting next year would seem to preclude the possibility of a deal with the Dodgers.

Former President Richard Nixon encountered Billy Martin at a Yankee Stadium game last Tuesday and said: “How are you, Billy? I always liked you as a manager. When are you coming back?”

Replied Martin: “When you do.”

Going nowhere again with his veteran and seemingly washed-out lineup, Chicago Cub President Dallas Green was asked why he hadn’t called up some of the organization’s younger players.

“Our farm teams are winning on practically every level,” Green said. “I want the players coming up here with the taste of victory on their mouths. I don’t want them observing this.”

That fine young pitching staff of the Milwaukee Brewers, a staff that would be a threat in the West Division, continues to lead the American League in team earned-run average at 3.86. Nine of the 10 Milwaukee pitchers weren’t with the team last year. The 10th, Ted Higuera, was a rookie.

“We’re the friends of the friendless,” relief pitcher Dan Plesac said. “Besides Mark Clear, no one has any idea of who we are or where we’ve been or where we played before we got here.”

Plesac and Clear, incidentally, have a combined 7-1 record with 10 saves and a 1.60 ERA.

Sparky Anderson, on why he didn’t participate in Detroit’s recent old-timers’ game: “I couldn’t play when I played.”

The box score on last Sunday’s Oakland victory over New York showed catcher Mickey Tettleton with one official at-bat, two runs scored, one hit and five RBIs. How did Tettleton, a .196 hitter at the time, drive in the five runs on one hit?

He got one RBI when he was walked on five pitches by Rod Scurry with the bases loaded. He got another when he was walked on four pitches by Brian Fisher with the bases loaded. He then got three when he homered off Fisher.

“That was unbelievable,” Tettleton said.