Making great use of 'great opportunity'
The look on Nick Swisher's face was almost as precious as Timmy Podrasky's.
Together they represented everything right about sports.
Sunday was one of the days at Comiskey Park this season when White Sox players are required to sign autographs for young fans. The Sox arrived at their designated stations at 11 a.m., two hours before a 6-1 victory over Baltimore would begin.
"It's a great opportunity," Swisher said. "Any time you can have that effect on people, that's what I'm all about."
Remember, Saturday night's Sox-Orioles game -- the back end of a day-night doubleheader that started at noon -- lasted nearly 3½ hours.
By baseball standards Sunday was an inconveniently sleepy turnaround, the dreaded day game after a night game. This normally would be a morning to rest the bones until game time.
But at 11 a.m. the Sox were called to the field to fulfill an obligation to sign autographs on anything any youngster handed them.
Each player sat or stood at the foot of an aisle. Parents lined up their kids and walked them down the steps toward their favorites.
Not surprisingly the longest line -- stretching from the lower concourse down to just off the Sox' dugout -- was for Joe Crede.
Again not surprisingly the next longest line was for Mark Buehrle just outside the opposite end of the dugout.
Crede and Buehrle have been here to become popular. They played key roles on the Sox' 2005 World Series championship team that is commemorated with a statue on the plaza near the Gate 4 entrance.
Swisher? He has been a Sox player for 24 games, yet his autograph line was nearly as long as those for Crede and Buehrle.
So there Swisher was, way down toward the left-field corner, a 215-pound sugar cube of energy high-fiving and picture posing and signature signing for his admirers.
Then a tap came on his left shoulder about halfway through the session. Swisher swung around, took a look and broke out in that big smile.
"How ya doin', buddy?" he said. "You doin' all right?"
Timmy Podrasky's smile matched Swisher's for what seemed like mile for mile in width.
This Swisher fan likely forgot he was in a wheelchair. That'll happen when in the morning someone meets a baseball player he watched hit a home run on TV the night before.
In a way they were made for each other. On the side of Timmy Podrasky's wheelchair is a decal that reads, "Crash tested." Nick Swisher should have one of those on the side of his butt, the way he plays full-contact baseball.
"Timmy loves baseball," said his father, Tim Podrasky of Oak Lawn. "It's baseball, baseball, baseball."
When Timmy was about the size of a catcher's mitt he caught chicken pox. That led to a couple of diseases the spelling of which could clinch a victory in Scrabble. Then he suffered a couple of strokes. Now he has MS.
Yet Timmy was smiling along with the others lined up for autographs from Nick Swisher, Joe Crede, Mark Buehrle and the rest of the White Sox.
"That's the whole point, to be professional," Swisher said. "You don't only have the ability to do this, but the duty."
Just hearing that from an athlete can put a smile across your face nearly as wide as Timmy Podrasky's.