Lincicome: In hiring Grifol, White Sox do the wrong thing again

By Bernie Lincicome

Daily Herald sports columnist

It has been reliably reported that the White Sox have hired the bench coach of a last-place baseball team to replace a World Series winning Hall of Fame manager who was suspected of simply staying alive too long.

This is just the sort of nonsense that passes as a business model for the so-called "South Siders" and is to be believed at risk for the occasionally interested.

If the Sox aren't hiring antiques, they are polishing ciphers with the same cheery optimism that disguises that they know what they are doing.

So goodbye Tony La Russa and all the best to you, old pal, and hello - wait, it is in my notes somewhere - yes, hello to Pedro Grifol, baggage free and reputation pending.

Grifol was found sitting there in the Kansas City dugout, the answer all along, among his credentials a playing stint with the Brewster Whitecaps of the Cape Cod League, but never with any actual major league clubs.

He was unseen to all but the keenest of eyes and the shrewdest of minds, both belonging - again, taken on faith - to White Sox general manager Rick Hahn, eager to do the job he is supposed to do.

"He (Grifol) knocked our socks off," said Hahn, pun intended I suppose.

The fact that he is 52 and not 78 is a feature of importance, not youthful, but not prone to dugout naps nor confusion about ghost runners or given to two-strike intentional walks.

Grifol's several other attributes for the job of a major league manager (one his own employers did not give him) condemn La Russa, conceived promises canceling chronicled failures.

He is a "modern baseball thinker." This would mean that La Russa was not, when, of course, a substantial bestseller was written about how modern a baseball mind La Russa has, he being the very model of a modern baseball general, thank you Gilbert or Sullivan.

Grifol's communication skills are superior, so we are told and a key to his hire, nevermind that in a decade with the Royals the awareness of his existence never raised an eyebrow and his shifting duties never impressed anyone in Kansas City enough to give him the job the White Sox gushed to be doing.

"Communication is one of the biggest parts of my leadership," Grifol said, and we have only his word for both, the communicating, and the leadership.

He has "high energy," Hahn says.

Well, there I guess I can't argue. La Russa tended to pace himself. But whether striding along the dugout or shouting at players or trotting to the mound to take out a pitcher is better than leaning, arms folded, against the dugout wall, results are still all that matter.

Being "detail-oriented" may be vital, maybe not. Baseball is not that complicated. Detail-oriented people I have known tend to be nuisances and pains in the behind.

And this brings me to what I see as the crucial item in Hahn's endorsement of the hire that will cost or keep him his job. A happy clubhouse, a "commitment to building an inclusive and cohesive clubhouse."

Implied, of course, is that La Russa allowed the place to turn into a toddler's free-for-all. Maybe so. But a happy clubhouse is a bonus and a myth, a condition that comes with winning, not a reason for it.

Billy Martin, the fractious repeat manager of the Yankees, once defined the key to being a good baseball manager is keeping the five guys who hate you away from the five who are undecided.

It has never really mattered who manages the White Sox, a team largely presumed to be unmanageable as, in fact, are all modern baseball teams with players who are burdened by wealth and self-regard.

For every Al Lopez, there have been too many Terry Bevingtons, for every Tony La Russa, endless and unlamented Jeff Torborgs and for each Ozzie Guillen, there was and still is an Ozzie Guillen, while somewhere remaining unemployed there are a couple of Joes - Maddon and Girardi - unfortunately too credentialed and too available for the White Sox.

So I suppose it should be of no surprise that the White Sox have done the wrong thing again, defying good sense and reason, fingers crossed and resume padded.