Rosy Outlook for White Sox and New Manager Gets Rosier

As his first game as a major league manager drew near, Gene Lamont was busy, flitting from television interview to interview, much in demand.

“I’m nervous, I guess,” he said during a brief respite on the Chicago White Sox bench at Anaheim Stadium. “Butterflies in my stomach.”

Lamont has been nervous--a good nervous, made mostly of eagerness--before the starts of other seasons and other games. He had the same feeling as a player, and as a minor league manager with Ft. Myers, Fla., and Jacksonville, Fla., and Omaha. He even recalls being nervous when he was a third base coach, as the Pittsburgh Pirates prepared for the seventh game of the National League playoffs last year.

But in all those moments and all those games, he might never have had less reason to be nervous than he did Tuesday night at Anaheim Stadium.

There he was, beginning his first season as a major league manager--with a team that finished second in the American League West the past two seasons, and then improved itself during the off-season.

“I know I’m fortunate,” said Lamont, 45. “I thought maybe I’d have to start with an expansion team, or possibly a rebuilding team. That would have been fine with me.”

Instead he has a team that already had first baseman Frank Thomas, third baseman Robin Ventura, outfielder Tim Raines, shortstop Ozzie Guillen and pitchers Jack McDowell and Bobby Thigpen.

Of course they lost Bo Jackson, who appeared in 23 games last year, to hip replacement surgery. But during the off-season the White Sox added second baseman Steve Sax and pitcher Kirk McCaskill. And in a March trade with the cross-town Cubs, they got one more piece, a right-handed power-hitter, George Bell, a former American League MVP.

“It must be nice,” Thomas acknowledged, smiling at his manager’s good fortune. “This team has a lot of potential.”

It will be nice for Thomas, too, to have these new players around him.

“We’ve improved a lot,” said Thomas, who went two for three with a home run and two walks in the White Sox’s 10-4 victory over the Angels. “The addition of Sax and Bell, those guys are proven hitters. There’s no more pressure on us--Robin and me--to carry the ballclub. We can go out and have a bad night and still win.”

Thomas likes the match between the White Sox and their new boss. Jeff Torborg left after last season to take over the New York Mets.

“(Lamont) is the perfect manager for this team because we’re not all young guys anymore,” Thomas said. “We’ve added veterans. He’s more of a laid-back, let-these-guys-play guy. He’ll take somebody to the side when he has to.”

Lamont might not have to very often. The down-side of being handed a talented team, of course, is the expectations.

“I guess there’s more pressure on me,” Lamont said. “If I thought we should win 70 games, I’d put pressure on myself to win 70. I’m not putting any numbers on how many we’re going to win. I like the team I’ve inherited.

“I think the major thing a manager has to do is make sure the guys are ready to play every day. Not 150 days, but 162. They’re not always going to be physically ready. There are going to be aches and pains, but mentally you have to be ready.”

They were ready on Tuesday, the first of 162. Fifteen minutes or so after the game, someone asked Lamont if he had remembered to get the game ball.

“I haven’t seen it yet,” Lamont said, just as someone stepped into his office to hand it to him.

“First major league win as skipper of the Chicago White Sox,” he read off the ball as he turned it over with the tips of his fingers. “Sounds like I’m dead. Sounds more like my obituary,” he said, cupping it tight.

Sounds like the beginning of something. “It’s something you wait for for a long time,” Lamont said. “Six years coaching, you kind of wonder if the day will ever come. I’m glad I got the opportunity. Especially with a team like this.”