White Sox groomed for success

This is how it changes when you're the defending world champions.

''I've gone to 100 players in the last six years and told them, 'Get a haircut,' " White Sox general manager Kenny Williams said with a laugh the other day. ''All of a sudden, it's news.

''I'm a little disappointed. I told our guys, 'I thought you guys had enough humor to come to the ballpark wearing wigs or something.' Hey, A.J. [Pierzynski] told me I needed a haircut. So today I went and got a haircut."

This is what passes for controversy these days on a ball club that has won seven straight, 11 of its last 12, and if anything, with the addition of strongman Jim Thome and pitcher Javier Vazquez, looks stronger than the team that swept the Astros in the World Series.

More controversy? How about Williams's edict to ace lefthander Mark Buehrle that he knock off his antics on the tarp during rain delays or face a fine?

''This was the third time," Williams said of Buehrle's aquatic adventures last Sunday. ''I told him, 'Look, that's not the best hobby you can choose.' It's like he didn't think I was serious.

''I said, 'I'm going to fine you unless you tell me this is it. I'm going to hit you hard.' Next day I told him, 'I don't want your money, I want your [promise].' I said, 'Besides, your technique is horrible.'

''There was a three-picture sequence in the Tribune. First picture, he could have blown out his knee. Second picture, his body is perpendicular but his shoulders and hands are straight to the ground. He could have blown out both shoulders.

''Let's fast-forward. I told him, 'If something happens, you're an idiot and I'm an idiot for letting you do it. Both of us will have let down a whole clubhouse of guys trying to grind their way through the season and they need you. Do you get it now?'

''Yeah, he got it. We've got such good people, we don't have arguments."

What they have is a GM, and a manager, Ozzie Guillen, who won't say anything about a player unless they've already said it to that player's face. Were the White Sox concerned that young closer Bobby Jenks appeared overweight when he showed up in camp?

''You mean, when you see your closer come through the door fat and out of shape, and then he's not throwing well?" Williams said. ''Yeah, there's concern, but then you see the last three or four times out the same guy who closed out the World Series for us."

The White Sox' rotation, which established its bona fides when it ran off four complete games against the Angels in the ALCS, may actually have improved with the addition of Vazquez, throwing the way he did when he was in Montreal.

Vazquez followed a combined one-hitter started by Jose Contreras by taking a no-hitter into the seventh against the Royals, who got a hit when Doug Mientkiewicz beat out a roller down the line.

Contreras, the object of a celebrated cloak-and-dagger bidding war between the Yankees and Red Sox, is 11-1 with a 1.89 ERA in 14 starts since last Aug. 1.

''I don't know if that would have been the case in either Boston or New York," Williams said. ''I think the microscope might have been a little too hot at that particular time in his life. There were a lot of things going on in his life, and neither one may have been the best environment for Jose. But he's comfortable here, and there is no bigger microscope than the World Series, and he handled that."

Thome, who hit his ninth home run last night and appears fully recovered from the back and elbow injuries that plagued him in Philadelphia, has given the White Sox another middle-of-the-lineup slugger to complement Paul Konerko, who elected to re-sign with Chicago after the Angels and Orioles put on the full-court press.

''A lot of people thought the biggest question was our bullpen," Williams said. ''But we replaced Jose Vizcaino, who helped us win a World Series, with Brandon McCarthy, and not taking anything away from Jose, we think that's an upgrade. And Matt Thornton, two years ago our pitching coach [Don Cooper] said he could get him to throw strikes. He's thrown nothing but strikes and he hasn't given up a hard-hit ball yet. He gives us three lefties in the pen, and one who throws 95-98 miles an hour.

''And we think Dustin Hermanson can come back [from back problems]. And when he does, we'll only need him once every three days."

Williams knows that greater issues than haircuts will arise over the course of a season. But for now, he likes the way the Sox look, neatly trimmed and stacked wherever he looks.

Shades of Schiraldi?

While the Roger Clemens comparisons have come fast and furious for rookie Jonathan Papelbon, you could make the case that a more apt analogy would be Calvin Schiraldi, another rookie who dominated coming out of the pen in 1986.

Called up in July by general manager Lou Gorman, Schiraldi ran off 12 saves and 4 wins with a 1.41 ERA in 25 appearances, and even after his disastrous blown save in Game 4 of the ALCS against the Angels, he saved Game 5, finished off Game 7, and saved Game 1 of the World Series against the Mets. It all came apart for him, of course, in Games 6 and 7 of the Series, but for a time he was every bit as celebrated in this town as Papelbon.

Former Sox reliever Bob Stanley, now in his third season as pitching coach for the Giants' Double A affiliate, the Connecticut Defenders in Norwich (his team leads the Eastern League in staff ERA), doesn't buy the Papelbon/Schiraldi comparisons.

''I think Papelbon's got better stuff than Schiraldi," said Stanley. ''His fastball has got real late life. Schiraldi's was kind of straight. I think he's a lot better than Schiraldi. For a young kid coming into that role, it's not easy, especially in Boston, and he's done a great job. Hopefully, he'll survive the whole year, because he's a power pitcher and he's not used to it."

Schiraldi ''went down the tubes," Stanley said, after the Series debacle. ''I don't think he was ever the same," he said. ''You've got to be able to roll with the punches. Watching Papelbon, I think he can do that. He's got a lot of confidence in himself."

Gorman drafted Schiraldi ahead of Clemens when he was still with the Mets, and notes that it was Schiraldi, not Clemens, who was ace of that University of Texas team on which they both starred.

''There was something in Schiraldi's makeup," Gorman said, ''that kept him from being as great as he should have been. Roger Clemens had a burning desire to be good. He was driven. Schiraldi didn't seem to have that. To me, Papelbon looks like he has a chance to be a great pitcher. He has the poise, the intensity, the makeup, and the stuff."

Casey won't be at the bat for a while

Derrek Lee's injury, while of great concern to the Cubs, may not rank as the one with the most lasting ramifications in the league. While Lee may be out at least two months after a collision with Rafael Furcal of the Dodgers, the silver lining is that the bones he fractured are just above the wrist instead of in the wrist itself, which should facilitate healing and a full recovery.

But Will Carroll, who closely follows medical issues for Baseball Prospectus, raises serious questions about Pittsburgh's Sean Casey, who sustained a broken back when he was inadvertently struck by the elbow of John Mabry of the Cubs while stretching for a throw. Casey remains in considerable pain.

''Casey has fractures in two vertebrae of his lower back, in the transverse process," Carroll writes. ''While the exact location isn't known publicly, there's not one better location for this problem than another. The problem is one of pain and structural integrity, not just for getting him back on the field, but for allowing him to live a normal life after baseball.

''Casey and the Bucs may be hoping for him back in eight weeks -- and it's possible -- but conservative treatment of spinal injuries is key."

Etc.

Most unusual baseball book to cross my desk this spring is ''Bury My Heart at Cooperstown: Salacious, Sad and Surreal Deaths in the History of Baseball." One of the authors, Frank Russo, runs a website, ''TheDeadballEra.com," dedicated to deceased ballplayers; that's definitely worth a visit. It will tell you, for example, the name of all the ballplayers buried in Massachusetts, from Harry Agganis to Tony C, Jesse Burkett and Mike ''King" Kelly, Jumpin' Joe Dugan and Joe Cronin, among others. Written with Gene Racz of the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, N.J., the book chronicles death but in doing so brings to life some of the more unusual characters who have populated the game.

What's the connection between Derrek Lee and Hee Seop Choi, who is currently on a rehab assignment for Triple A Pawtucket and is expected to be optioned to the PawSox? Back in November 2003, they were traded for each other, Lee going to the Cubs and Choi to the Marlins, who later dealt him to the Dodgers. When Lee got off to a slow start with the Cubs, fans chanted Choi's name. No more. ''We're not going to sit here and tell you we were so smart that we'd be predicting batting titles and high-level MVP votes before the end of his first contract," general manager Jim Hendry said of Lee, who won the NL batting title last season with a .335 average. ''But we thought we had a human being and an athlete who was capable of taking off and, obviously, he did."

Former Red Sox prospect Hanley Ramirez, who never hit more than eight home runs in any season in the minor leagues, hit two in a game last week against the Reds, inspiring predictions of many more from the Marlins' budding superstar, Miguel Cabrera. ''He could be like a [Alfonso] Soriano-kind of leadoff hitter with that type of power," Cabrera said. ''But I also think he'll end up becoming a No. 3, 4, or 5 hitter. He can hit for average or power." Ramirez believes he's already a different hitter than he was last season in Double A Portland. ''I think my swing is better than last year," he said. ''This year, it's short and quick. Last year, it was horrible."

Giants outfielder Steve Finley, 41, is three home runs short of becoming the fifth player in major league history with 300 homers and 300 stolen bases. The others are Barry Bonds (708 homers, 508 stolen bases), Willie Mays (660, 338), Andre Dawson (436, 314), and Bobby Bonds (332, 461).

Hope did not take long to die in Kansas City, where the Royals became the 44th team in history to lose 11 or more of their first 13 games. Of those 44, only four finished with a winning record, including the Bobby Thomson Giants of '51 and the Red Sox of '96, though the Sox' poor start cost manager Kevin Kennedy his job. The Royals' victory last night ended an 11-game losing streak, which included all nine games of a trip to New York, Tampa Bay, and Chicago. They've lost 100 or more games in three of the last four seasons, have had losing Aprils in 16 of the last 17 springs, and 10 times in that span have been at least 10 games out of first place by Memorial Day. The club is nearly 200 games under .500 since Allard Baird became GM in 2000, which makes him the most likely guy to go, though no one is fooled by owner David Glass's feeble attempt to apply a Band-Aid to a team he's run into the ground by allowing Baird to sign a handful of veterans (Doug Mientkiewicz, Scott Elarton, Reggie Sanders, Mark Grudzielanek) this winter.

Who thinks of these things? Evidently my old friend Bill Arnold does, because in his syndicated column, he tracks down an expert in bobblehead lore, one David Hallstrom, who informs us that Huston Street of the A's, the sixth reliever ever to pitch on his Bobblehead Day, is the first to blow a save. Three outs away from a 3-1 win over the Rangers, Street gave up four runs and five hits to take the loss. Street recovered, however, to record a save in the A's next game.

Dodgers manager Grady Little, on why he doesn't rely exclusively on stats to make a judgment: ''Those stats show you a whole lot. But it's like that woman on the beach in a bikini. It shows you a lot, but it doesn't show you everything. I'll never be accused of taking the human element out of it."

My neighbor Pete, who has an autographed photo of Bob Zupcic, gives a big thumbs-up to the new DVD, ''Red Sox vs. Yankees, The Ultimate Rivalry," which is in stores already and serves as a great appetizer to Johnny Damon's arrival here on May Day. ''There is a framed copy of an October 2004 New York Post hanging in Cornwall's, a popular pregame Sox fan hangout in Kenmore Square," Pete notes. ''The paper's headline mourns, 'The Choke's On Us.' " Any New Englander whose heart warms at such a memento will find it blazing while viewing this DVD, a video scrapbook of the long and often heated battles between two great and storied franchises. There's also this wrinkle: You can select either Yankee manager Joe Torre or Sox manager Terry Francona as narrator. The DVD also includes a half-dozen extras, highlighted by the 1986 Roger Clemens 20-strikeout performance and Clemens's 4,000th K in '03.

Material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.