Sox only hope to build on this transition year

The White Sox embarked on a critical road trip Monday but accomplished quite a bit this season regardless of the outcome.

This is a transition season for the Sox rather than a rebuilding season. The difference is subtle but significant.

A team starts all over when it rebuilds, which the Sox did a couple of times under club chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.

Remember the late 1980s when the Sox traded nearly all their veterans for prospects, lost a lot of games and proceeded to select Jack McDowell, Robin Ventura, Frank Thomas and Alex Fernandez high in consecutive drafts?

That was a rebuilding.

The Sox could have initiated that again a couple of years ago but instead re-signed vets like Jermaine Dye, Mark Buehrle.

This season the Sox added youngsters such as Gordon Beckham, Chris Getz and Jayson Nix to the veterans.

That's a transition.

The Sox are enjoying a bonus by contending in the American League Central at barely over .500 because the rest of the division is mediocre.

The biggest benefit, though, is that Beckham, Getz and Nix have been able to watch the way accomplished professionals like Dye, Buehrle, Jim Thome and Paul Konerko go about their business.

"If they don't learn from those guys, they're wasting their time," said Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, one of the few vets who survived the '80s purge. "Those (veterans) don't let the (youngsters) get away with (stuff)."

That's a lot different from a rebuilding year in which kids police kids as they all feel their way around the big leagues.

Getz said it wasn't so much "important" as "fortunate" to have Konerko, Thome and Dye around as examples.

"They accomplished so much in this game," Getz added. "They've seen it all, done it all. Being on a team that's competing like this - there's no better way to come up (to the majors). We're lucky to be the guys the (Sox) chose to break in with those guys."

When Guillen arrived in Chicago in 1985 he went through the learning process his young players are experiencing now.

Guillen had outstanding baseball instincts even as a rookie but still learned from the likes of Carlton Fisk, Harold Baines and Greg Walker.

"They made me play better," Guillen recalled.

Now Beckham, Getz and Nix are today's Guillen and Dye, Thome and Konerko are today's Fisk, Baines and Walker.

"It's absolutely huge for us," Beckham said. "They're great guys and great players who help us tremendously."

So there must be specifics that the younger players pick up from the older players, right? Well, yes and no.

"They all go about their business in their own way," Beckham said. "But the thing is they're always calm. They don't get upset too easily. Harnessing emotions is what separates a good player."

Getz, an aspiring leadoff hitter, singled out Sox leadoff hitter Scott Podsednik.

"If he wasn't here," Getz said, "I wouldn't be able to make some of the adjustments I've had to make."

Players passing down the game from generation to generation is a tradition in baseball.

The rite of passage has been easier for the younger Sox because this is a transition year rather than a rebuilding.

mimrem@dailyherald.com