White Sox Unravel Witt : Angel Ace Was Rolling Along in Opener When Suddenly the Wheels Fell Off

Perfection obediently followed Angel starter Mike Witt deep into the fifth inning of Monday’s game against the Chicago White Sox. Fourteen batters. Fourteen outs. Simple.

Then up stepped White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk, the 40-year-old icon who struck out in the second inning and looked bad doing it. Now, with two out in the fifth, Fisk swung at a Witt fastball, connecting just slightly above his fists. The ball rose high in the air, slicing first toward the left-field foul line and then, inexplicably, back toward fair territory.

Johnny Ray, playing his first major league game in left, rushed toward the blooper only to see the ball plop softly on the wet Comiskey Park grass, just inches shy of his outstretched glove.

Watching in amazement was Angel catcher Bob Boone.

“I’ve never seen a ball do what Fisk’s ball did,” said Boone, a veteran of 1,920 games. “It was hooking foul all the way. Then it came back, way back. It came back 4 or 5 feet. It was going to be 6-feet foul and it hooked back 5-feet fair. It did an S.”

It did more than that. For starters, it ended Witt’s half-game courtship with history. Had he accomplished the unlikely, that is, not allow a single baserunner, Witt would have become the first major leaguer to pitch two perfect games.

Next to vanish was the Angel lead. Witt began the inning with a 2-0 advantage and left it trailing, 3-2. Fisk’s double was followed by Dan Pasqua’s run-scoring broken-bat single and a two-run home run by Kenny Williams. Two innings later, the White Sox disposed of Witt and extended their lead to 8-4 before settling on an 8-5 opening day victory.

The end of perfection, Witt said he could live with. Being pulled in the seventh after allowing just four hits, was slightly harder to take.

“I didn’t know I was out until I turned around (and saw Manager Cookie Rojas),” Witt said. “I was thinking double play with (Dan) Pasqua, and I was thinking double play with Williams coming up. I felt good enough, I thought, to possibly finish that inning. But again, I’m not the manager, I’m not the one calling the shots. Maybe he saw something that he didn’t like. He probably didn’t like the fact that I gave up a base hit and a walk.”

If you’re Witt, do you cringe or shrug? He allowed just four hits. Then again, he gave up the upper-deck home run to Williams and later struggled in the seventh, providing a faint reminder of earlier days when Witt would unravel without warning.

But this was different, said Witt . . . and Boone . . . and pitching coach Marcel Lachemann. This was Witt at his finest and, in a way, his unluckiest.

“There’s not much you can do,” Witt said. “The guy gets fisted and the ball lands in. You try to go and get the next guy out. You can’t worry if a guy might have caught it or if a guy might have broken the wrong way. It’s a base hit. That’s life.”

But could Ray have caught the ball? To this, Witt paused and calmly said: “I want to answer this in a way where you can’t write it wrong. I threw a good pitch and (Fisk) hit a good pitch. That’s my answer.”

Boone wasn’t much for the unravel theory, either. “They got four hits and three of them were broken-bat jammers.”

Said Lachemann: “(Witt) made 96 pitches . . . 3 bad ones and only 1 hurt him.”

Lachemann referred to Williams’ home run, but Rojas said he thought Fisk’s blooper may have done more than simply end a chance at a perfect game. At the time, Witt was an out away from being back in the Angel dugout with his 2-0 lead intact. Instead, he had to deal with the sight of Ray lunging desperately at the shallow popup.

“I’m sure it (bothered Witt),” Rojas said. “It bothered all of us. I’m sure he’s got to be ticked off. That was the third out of the inning. Instead, they get two runs against us. He made the right pitch and he jammed him. Of course, it’s got to bother him.”

Stuck somewhere in the middle of all this was Ray. He tried, to be sure. But he was unfamiliar with Comiskey Park and its afternoon winds, unsure of his footing on the soggy turf and positioned too deep in left to easily reach Fisk’s strange hit. He could have caught it, he said--perhaps should have caught it.

“A double, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “I don’t really know what happened. All I know is that I missed it.”

So Ray missed a curious double. Witt missed his chance at major league history. And the Angels missed an opportunity to milk a win out of Rojas’ managerial debut.