Thome welcomes fresh start

[RME JICO]

White Sox' Thome welcomes fresh start

 

By PAUL HAGEN

[email protected]

 

TUCSON, Ariz. - In the major leagues, a thrown baseball can swerve, curve, drop or hop at speeds approaching 100 mph. If you can make solid contact with any regularity, it might be natural to believe that you can also handle anything that life throws at you just as easily.

 

Jim Thome knows that isn't true. Not after he lost his mother to cancer. Not after he suffered back and elbow injuries that caused Phillies fans to go from exalting him to calling for Ryan Howard to play every day. Not after he was traded to the White Sox.

 

And not after, in what might have been the final indignity, he even took some shots from a peer. Frank Thomas, allowed to depart by the White Sox as a free agent after two injury-filled seasons, took aim after signing with Oakland.

 

"If I'm healthy, they'll be shaking their heads next year," Thomas said. "I felt I had been in the organization for so long I'd get the benefit of the doubt instead of bringing in somebody else. Maybe what they wanted was a big lefthanded hitter. It wasn't a better hitter, I'm going to tell you that right now."

 

And: "I'm shocked they brought in [Thome], who was more injured than I was last year. I don't know where they went with that or what the logic was behind that.

 

And: "I love Jim. Jim's a good friend. But the bottom line is he's never done anything I haven't done on the baseball field."

 

Anybody who knows Thome understands that he's not the type to return fire. He prefers to let his actions speak for him. So, on a sparkling Arizona morning recently, he was on a back field at the White Sox training complex taking live batting practice.

 

On that day, he launched several offerings over the distant fence. Once Cactus League play started it was a different story. Hobbled by a strained left hamstring, he got off to a slow start. He got hot recently with three two-homer games in the last week, and is now batting .388.

 

That injury caused manager Ozzie Guillen to rethink his plan to use Thome at first base once or twice a week to give Paul Konerko a rest. Thome is now considered a full-time designated hitter, with Ross Gload backing up at first.

 

The trade represents a new beginning for Thome, a chance to put all the tumult of the past year behind him in the league and division where he spent his entire career before leaving the Indians to sign that 6-year, $85 million free-agent deal with the Phillies in December 2002.

 

He hit 89 homers his first two seasons, passing the 400 milestone in the process. Nobody could have envisioned how quickly it would all change.

 

Now, at age 35, he's making a fresh start.

 

"You're going to hear things," he said, sitting in front of his locker after the workout. "As a man and as a baseball player, when you play the game a long time you're going to hear positives and you're going to hear negatives.

 

"I try not to let a lot of little things bother me because, you know, losing your mother is big. Having people make comments about you or what type of player you are, I try not to get wrapped up in that because I know what kind of player I am when I'm healthy."

 

Still, he admits that he's been stung. "It hurts because you want in return what you give back. And that's not always the case," he said. "But that's life. That's what you learn. You know who's in your corner. It can't always be easy. Life doesn't flow like that. Baseball doesn't flow like that."

 

In the end, he said, he has just one regret: that he didn't help the Phillies make it to the playoffs.

 

"The thing that upset me the most is that as good as our club was a year ago, I couldn't be a part of that. That's why I went there. That's what I went there to accomplish," he said.

 

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/14229427.htm