White Sox captain was at his best when we could relate to him the least
Reading through the umpteen Paul Konerko retrospectives published by media, fans and the White Sox, there's one theme repeated more than most:
doing the dirty work nobody sees, a blue-collar guy Sox fans respected most for his effort
an everyman who blended into the fabric of a city's sporting consciousness
That effort, and the decision to always pursue it with the White Sox, is part of what defined Konerko here
Konerko's work ethic is a model to follow.
This is very much true. Watching Paul Konerko play baseball was watching somebody go to work. The meticulous preparation, the routines, the emphasis on the long view -- he put that on display every day as the most professional of professional ballplayers.
The flip side of treating and presenting baseball as never-ending work is that, well, sometimes your job just sucks. And when Konerko's day or week sucked, he didn't or couldn't make a sustained effort to hide it.
These Eeyore tendencies really confused me as a fan and an observer, because while I could empathize with occupational torment, I didn't think I should be able to so easily. Sure, it can be entertaining at times -- Conor Gillaspie is practically Konerko Koncentrate in this respect -- but the body language didn't seem befitting of a captain. Konerko was never one to rally people. He led by example, but the example we could see often didn't look like one that was worth following. That's what I would look like. I shouldn't be the captain of your local nine.
I understood his importance to the franchise -- leading the White Sox to their first World Series in 88 years can't be overblown -- but as the buzz wore off and multiple configurations of White Sox teams failed to rediscover the magic, I wondered whether his particular brand of excellence should have been put on a pedestal. If it looked like hell for him, how would lesser players cope?
(Gordon Beckham, who emulated Konerko from his stand-up ways to the way he stood in the box, fed this narrative when he stopped being able to feed himself.)
That's why I'm thankful that Konerko experienced a renaissance from 2010 through the first half of 2012 because it helped me understand what people around the Sox universally admired about Konerko without the conflicting concern that it oppressed him.
During that time frame, Konerko hit .311/.393/.546 with two consecutive 30-homer, 100-RBI seasons as offensive levels around the league sank. Instead of riding into a gentle twilight of his career, he transformed into more hitting machine than man.
Drill him in the face? That just made him angry.
Everybody remembers that one (and Hawk Harrelson made it a better moment with, "Take that, Pavano!"). But I haven't seen anybody mention a physical feat that impressed me more.
In June of 2011, Konerko underwent a wrist procedure to dislodge a floating bone fragment in his wrist. Konerko called it a chronic issue that occasionally locked up, and he battled that and other nagging injuries (thumb, back, quad) during previous seasons.
But in previous seasons, he couldn't mask the pain at times, whether in his numbers or his uncomfortable reactions to bad contact. In 2011, however, even his own body couldn't undermine him.
Oh, it tried. On May 7, he left the game early because that wrist acted up on him. The next day, Konerko returned to the lineup and went 5-for-5.
At the end of that month, Konerko strung together a five-game hitting streak, going 10-for-18 with three doubles and two homers. He finished off a masterpiece on June 1 with a homer off Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon.
The next day, doctors went inside his wrist to dislodge the fragment, which necessitated a brief absence from the lineup.
‘‘It’s sore from people pulling and grabbing and sticking needles in you,’’ Konerko said. ‘‘It should be better for the long run.’’
He missed two games, but when he returned to the lineup, he went 2-for-4 with two doubles and a walk against Detroit. The next day, Konerko went 1-for-3 with a homer and a walk. The day after, 2-for-3 with a homer and a walk.
Konerko ended up stringing a 13-game hitting streak with these numbers: 23-for-50, six homers, six doubles, six walks, five strikeouts, and one surgery with "people pulling and grabbing and sticking needles in you" in the middle of it all.
(An 0-for-3 night against the Twins spoiled that run, but Konerko bounced back with a six-game hitting streak, which contained a five-game homer streak.)
Konerko wasn't done suffering. Later in the year, Andrew Miller drilled him on the knee with a 95-mph fastball.
Like the Pavano beanball, this HBP couldn't knock him out of the game, either. That one had some lasting repercussions, including proof that Konerko could in fact run slower. But even with one wheel, he managed to hit .291/.397/.448 over the last two months, and he could still avenge pitcher-on-hitter crime despite the diminished power. After Sox-plunking chump Josh Judy broke Brent Lillibridge's hand to load the bases, Konerko unloaded them with his 10th (and final?) grand slam.
Age eventually caught up with Konerko, and with it came the return of Eeyore. Even the steeliest resolve wouldn't have changed much about a 99-loss season, though, so the unremarkable end to his career doesn't change what I thought about the 2½-year window that preceded it.
That 2½-year window did alter my appreciation of Konerko, because while I've watched his various 2005 heroics hundreds of times, I couldn't detect any kind of carryover. The "C" was new, but otherwise, Konerko with a ring was just like Konerko without it. That's great if you were enamored with the South Side blue-collar lunchpail workmanlike grindertude of it all, but it still meant that "Be Like Paulie" was nearly as much of a curse as it was a credo.
But over 15 baseball months starting in 2010, Konerko finally produced and carried himself like the absolute, undeniable, irrefutable, unbeatable, out-and-out badass that his work ethic and track record warranted. Remove from the running his outstretched arms and clenched fists after slamming Chad Qualls and catching the final out, and that's what leaves the biggest impression on me. He spent so many years battling mental and physical anguish that he deserved to be that good and that indestructable. I couldn't relate to any of it, and that only made me enjoy it more.
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