Homer Race Isn’t All There Is in Baseball

Lance Johnson plays for the New York Yankees now, not the Chicago Cubs or White Sox anymore. But the other day, when the well-traveled outfielder contrasted the small-ball style the Yankees rode to three recent World Championships to the approach back in the Windy City, where Sammy Sosa of the Cubs is lavished with attention for every fence-busting cut he takes, Johnson sounded thrilled to be in New York. This is a baseball town that’s come to value players with speed and defense and the know-how to manufacture runs. Or take runs away.

“In Chicago,” Johnson said, “it was all about power.”

And as Sosa, who brought his home-run hitting act to New York this weekend against the Mets, is beginning to find out, his power-hitting exploits are no longer enough. His 129 home runs in the past two seasons haven’t protected his heart-tapping, Good Guy image from taking some dents when he’s acted badly. Right now, Sosa is hitting only .232 and, God help him, his past stats aren’t saving him from the drill-sergeant stare of new Cubs manager Don Baylor, a no-nonsense former star who ultimately decided Sosa and his 63 home runs last season weren’t as riveting as the Cubs’ lousy record of 67-95.

“You don’t put one guy before the team--that’s not going to happen,” Baylor said. “The Montreal Expos won one more game than the Chicago Cubs. They didn’t have a 66-home run hitter on their ballclub.”

Baylor especially didn’t cotton to Sosa’s customary late arrival in spring training. Especially when Sosa, who was hanging out in Las Vegas days before the Cubs reported, made a sudden case of the flu sound like he had contracted The Plague. First Sosa checked himself into a Vegas hospital for three hours of tests. Then he decided the best way to recuperate was to forgo a puddle-jumping flight to the Cubs’ spring training site in Mesa, Ariz. He traveled 10 hours instead to his home in the Dominican Republic--where he wasn’t too ill to film a commercial while he was AWOL.

Still, that all might’ve been forgotten if Baylor had stopped tweaking Sosa. Or if the Cubs’ veteran first baseman Mark Grace hadn’t dismissed Sosa’s excuse for being eight days late by saying, “We have doctors here.”

Baylor has set out to lay down the law for everybody on the team. And the Great Home Run Race of 1998 not withstanding, Sosa--perhaps to Sosa’s surprise--is being treated like just another guy. Instead of living off that title “The Man Who Saved Baseball” along with Mark McGwire--a sobriquet that Sosa parlayed into everything from deciding what music was blaring on the Cubs clubhouse stereo (salsa!) to hobnobbing with Hillary and Bill Clinton--Sosa has encountered a manager who refuses to cut him slack.

Honestly, it’s all a little refreshing to see. Not because Sosa is getting some comeuppance. The public Sammy is fun to watch. His joy his contagious.

Baylor’s approach is simply refreshing because this new national obsession with home runs sometimes overshadows everything else that’s great about baseball. And as the Mets and Yankees and Atlanta Braves have all proven, there’s no steady correlation between prodigious home-run hitting and who wins.

One well-timed homer is better than 10 meaningless solo shots. And a team with strong pitching or a day-in, day-out ability to coax a walk, move a runner to third on a hit to right, then score him with a sacrifice fly? Even better. How about a player who brazenly scores from second on an infield out? Or the vision of Mets rookie right fielder Melvin Mora--theretofore a nobody--throwing out a Braves baserunner at third during the playoffs last year when the Mets had to have it?

That’s what Lance Johnson was talking about. The Colorado Rockies, who play in baseball’s best launching pad, finally gave up on their Murderer’s Row and rebuilt to play small ball this year. McGwire’s St. Louis Cardinals are still looking for their first playoff berth with him. Though Sosa’s Cubs made the postseason in 1998, his league MVP year, they flamed out in the first round.

Sosa’s home-run total for that series? None.