"It's all predetermined anyway. So who cares?"

[Linnwood]

In Team Building, White Sox Take Good From the Bad

October 11, 2005

By Lee Jenkins

 

CHICAGO, Oct. 10 - Don Cooper watched one of his favorite old movies this weekend, a famous story about a group of troublemaking boys turned good. Cooper was trying to get away from baseball for a couple of hours, but as he studied the film, he realized that he was still looking at the Chicago White Sox.

 

"We're just like 'Boys Town,' " said Cooper, the Chicago pitching coach. "We believe there's no such thing as a bad boy."

 

If Chicago Manager Ozzie Guillen is Father Flanagan, then catcher A. J. Pierzynski has to be Whitey Marsh, one of his most challenging students. For all the players on the White Sox who were rejected elsewhere and accepted here, none was rejected so publicly and accepted so thoroughly as Pierzynski.

 

He is beloved in Chicago for the same reason he is hated almost everywhere else. Known for barking at opposing hitters in the middle of plate appearances, elbowing them on their way up the first-base line and stepping on their bats instead of picking them up, Pierzynski has done little to change. The main difference is that he has found coaches and teammates who fully appreciate his efforts. "You play with him and you realize that it's all part of his fire," the backup catcher Chris Widger said. "You take the good with the bad."

 

Pierzynski comes across like a baseball equivalent of Bill Laimbeer, the former Detroit Pistons standout who agitated his way to the top. Pierzynski will gesture to the crowd in visiting cities. He will run to the mound to celebrate outs in the middle of games. Sometimes, when Pierzynski gets back to the dugout, Widger asks him if he understands the line of etiquette he may have crossed. "He won't know what he just did," Widger said.

 

Pierzynski can seem hyperactive and aloof, often in the same day. When teammates approached him before the playoffs and asked how to deal with their anxiety, Pierzynski says he told them: "It's all predetermined anyway. So who cares?"

 

During meetings at the mound, Pierzynski says he listens "only half the time." He plays most games with a slight smirk, shrugging his shoulders and rolling his eyes at any call he does not like. "I don't have a very good poker face," he said.

 

His every emotion will be on display starting Tuesday, when Pierzynski catches José Contreras in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series against the Angels. After Pierzynski hit two home runs in Game 1 of the division series last week, he endured the requisite on-field interview with ESPN. The next day, the ESPN reporter said to him, "You're so mean to me." It was assumed she was joking, but with Pierzynski, one can never be sure.

 

Because Pierzynski has irritated many umpires and opponents, he depends on the loyalty of his teammates. That's part of the reason he was so upset last year, when he was playing for San Francisco and some Giants anonymously told reporters that he was a divisive force. A clubhouse meeting was called. One player said that Pierzynski would not stop a card game to review hitters with starting pitcher Brett Tomko. The Giants, who are able to get along with Barry Bonds, released Pierzynski in the winter.

 

What followed was the kind of job interview usually required for a recent college graduate, not a former All-Star. Pierzynski said he spent about 10 hours talking on the phone with Ken Williams, the White Sox general manager. "I had to do a lot of explaining my side of the story," Pierzynski said. "It was almost like I was talking him into it."

 

Williams also acquired Contreras, Bobby Jenks and Carl Everett, so Pierzynski was just another chance worth taking. Contreras was exiled by the Yankees, Jenks by the Angels and Everett by a handful of major league teams. The White Sox would rehabilitate Pierzynski much the way Father Flanagan might have suggested, surrounding him with his peers.

 

Pierzynski first tested the White Sox in spring training, when they played the Giants and he offered $100 to anyone who hit a home run off Tomko. Since then, he has resisted placing any bounties. "We keep him in control," Guillen said. "Once in a while you've got to make him come down."

 

Pierzynski pays Guillen the highest compliment, saying he is the kind of manager who can shut up his players. When Pierzynski played in Minnesota, he regularly requested meetings with his manager, Tom Kelly. In 2000, the Twins demoted Pierzynski to Class AA to get his attention. When he returned the next year, it was suggested that opposing pitchers were trying to throw at him, perhaps because of old grudges.

 

Pierzynski became the snarling face of the Twins, young, brash and highly talented. He is the rare catcher who bats left-handed. He stands 6 feet 3 inches and he shares a pedigree with the former Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski. Both were born in Bridgehampton, N.Y., Yastrzemski the son of a potato farmer and Pierzynski the son of a contractor. Pierzynski's grandfather played on a team that used Yastrzemski as a bat boy. After Pierzynski's parents moved to Orlando, Fla. - Disney World presented myriad opportunities for a contractor - he followed Johnny Damon at Dr. Phillips High School. "He was a pistol," the Dr. Phillips coach, Mike Barefoot, said. "He'd say things to batters to get under their skin. He'd say things to teammates to get them going. But you've got to appreciate A. J. because it's all about winning."

 

Often described as a vocal player, Pierzynski is suddenly being called a vocal leader in the White Sox clubhouse. Starting pitcher Mark Buehrle estimates that he has shaken off Pierzynski's sign only once this season, and even then, he made sure to apologize.

 

"You never know what someone will say about me," Pierzynski said. "But I think I've done pretty good this year at staying out of trouble."

 

He has earned his way out of Boys Town. Only now, he probably wouldn't want to leave.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/sports/baseball/11sox.html

[YASNY]

That's good stuff! A. J. became one of my favorites very early in the season.