Former Sosa coach: Sad time for baseball

It's a cumbersome contradiction, the relationship between hitting coach and star pupil.

At the ballpark, they are as married as two people can be, spending every minute together, living and dying with each triumph and tragedy, inseparable to the point of knowing what the other will say next.

Away from baseball, they are often complete strangers, one rich and famous beyond imagination, the other invisible at the corner tavern.

It was that way for Jeff Pentland and Sammy Sosa, who spent a baseball eternity together from 1997-2002, a time that will live in steroid infamy.

"As a coach, you have tunnel vision," said Pentland, now a hitting instructor with the Dodgers, who defeated the White Sox 5-2 Tuesday night on the South Side. "You spend 99 percent of your time coming up with a way to win a game or make a player better.

"That's pretty much the focus of everything you do. We're usually the last ones to know what our players are doing away from the game."

While it seems impossible to the rest of us who could see what Sosa was doing, Pentland says he never suspected Sosa was on steroids because the thought never occurred to him.

"Honestly, I worked so hard with him that all I ever thought about was his swing," Pentland said. "I found out about it like a lot of people did, seeing the news (crawl) across the bottom of the TV screen.

"It's not good for baseball. It's a sad time for baseball. I've been in the game my whole life, like a lot of guys you see around here.

"I've poured my heart and soul into the game, and I hate to see this news all the time. It makes me sick, but you see it coming out all the time and I'm not surprised anymore.

"It's bad, but the good thing is they're cleaning it up."

While we'll never know how many more homers Sosa hit because of the juice, we do know he would have hit a lot fewer without the changes Pentland made in Sosa's swing following the 1997 season.

"Sammy had a rare combination of strength and quickness, but he wanted to hit every ball 700 feet," Pentland laughed. "I tried to convince him a home run at 350 feet counted just as much.

"We slowed him down so he could see the ball better, and gave him softer hands. I gave him tapes of players who used that front-foot timing device, and we had long conversations about it.

"We got him looking to drive the ball the opposite way, and once he started doing that it changed everything for him.

"He worked very hard, and I look at those years as a special time for us."

Now, Pentland is forced to see the reality of what Sosa has done, and he doesn't like what he sees.

"This isn't good for the game and it hurts the game that some of us have put our lives into," said the 62-year-old Pentland. "But this is America and we make choices. We have the freedom to make those choices, and that's what I love about this country.

"Of course, it also means that sometimes people make bad choices."

Yet, as Pentland celebrates 40 years since he made his debut in professional baseball, he continues to fight the good fight.

"The reward is players get better, and a lot of them are names you wouldn't think a lot about," Pentland said. "They're guys like Bill Mueller and Tony Graffanino and Willie Bloomquist.

"A lot of guys like them got better, and I take as much pleasure in seeing them have big-league careers as I do a guy like Sammy."

Today, perhaps, even more so.

Holding firm

White Sox GM Kenny Williams says he has no intention of blowing his team up and starting over, despite speculation to the contrary.

"People can talk all they want about breaking things up, but this team is going to have to show me they don't want it," Williams said. "They're really gonna have to show me they don't want to win this division.

"I don't see that. I think we're going to be a better team in the second half."

Out to pasture

Country Joe West was a mediocre umpire 20 years ago, and he's gotten worse every year since, so it's tough to blame Ozzie Guillen for dropping his lineup card on home plate after West displayed his tough-guy routine and ejected Guillen on Tuesday night.

Guillen was questioning a call that went against Matt Thornton, which technically is against the rules, but most umpires - who don't have a mammoth ego - allow managers and pitching coaches to have their say from the dugout as long as they don't make a show of it.

Guillen calmly asked where the pitch was, West asked if he was talking to him, and when Guillen said he was, Julius Caesar tossed him.

Best save

Gordon Beckham's diving stop to end the first that saved a run for John Danks.

Best move

Danks ducking a bat that slipped out of the hands of Orlando Hudson.

Best pitch

The ceremonial toss by Olympic champ Jackie Joyner Kersee.

And finally -

Ozzie Guillen, on getting thrown out by Joe West: "That's the weakest call of my career."

brozner@dailyherald.com