The Legend and the Fall
Behind
Thomas’ sentiment is an unambiguous message: Why should I take a bullet
for the men who fucked up my legacy? Indeed, if there is one player who
has been injured by the indefensible choices of PED users, it is Frank
Thomas.
In the mid-’90s, Thomas and Seattle’s Ken Griffey Jr.
were the kings of the sport, destined to rule well into the early
2000s. Yet within the ensuing couple of years, Thomas started to notice
something odd: More and more peers arrived at spring training sprouting
muscles atop muscles. Spindly middle infielders looked like Lou
Ferrigno. Speedy corner outfielders turned into 30-home run mashers.
One player chalked up his 20-pound weight gain to “vitamins.”
“I began thinking that guys were just outworking me,” Thomas says.
By
the time McGwire and Sosa were mesmerizing the nation with their 1998
home run battle, Thomas was an afterthought. Though he slugged 29 home
runs and drove in 109 runs for the ’98 Sox, he failed to place in the
top 20 of AL MVP voting, trailing four players, including winner Juan
Gonzalez, who are specifically cited in the Mitchell Report.
That indignity was nothing compared to two years later, when Thomas enjoyed the
best
season of his career (a .328 average, 43 home runs, 143 RBI), yet lost
out in the MVP voting to, of all people, Giambi. In an emotional press
conference, the A’s first baseman cried. “This has been nothing but a
fairy tale for me this year,” Giambi told the reporters.
It was all a lie.
“Am
I mad about that?” Thomas asks. “Well, I’m upset I didn’t win it that
year, but not because of the steroids. I’m upset because I was on a
team picked by many to finish fourth in the AL Central and we won the
division. That was as good as I’ve ever played, and I should have won.
I wasn’t happy about that.”
But what about the steroids?
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m naturally talented. I should beat guys
like [Giambi] even if they do use.”
Back on Top
At
age 40, Frank Thomas is, if not quite the slugger of yesteryear, still
pretty damn good. In 2005, when injuries limited him to 34 games, a
.219 average and 12 home runs, he was widely dismissed by the media as
a thoroughbred ready for the glue factory. This belief was only
heightened when the White Sox won the World Series with their iconic
slugger on the bench, then paid $3.5 million to buy out his contract.
With
teams showing little interest in an apparently aging, injured, moody
has-been, Thomas signed a one-year, $500,000 deal with the A’s.
Expectations were minimal, but Thomas exploded, posting 39 home runs
and 114 RBI and placing fourth in AL MVP voting.
Following the
remarkable comeback season, he was wooed by Toronto GM J. P. Ricciardi.
Thomas’ two-year, $18.2 million contract included a $9.12 million
signing bonus—the highest in team history. “You’re talking about one of
the greatest hitters the game has ever seen,” says Ricciardi,
explaining the Jays’ offer. “He still puts fear in opposing pitchers.”
Thomas
had a solid 2007 season with the Blue Jays, finishing with 26 home runs
and 95 RBI for a team that won 83 games and placed third in the AL
East. But perhaps more important, the man with the reputation for
sullenness actually became a clubhouse guru. “He’s just a big teddy
bear,” says Vernon Wells, Toronto’s star center fielder. “When Frank
talks baseball, people listen. He’ll help anybody.”
Though his
teddy bear status came into question last April, when he reportedly
grumbled about limited playing time and the Blue Jays decided to
release him, Thomas’ value was quickly reestablished when he was
snatched up four days later, again by the A’s. “Bottom line, it’s a
risk worth taking,” A’s GM Billy Beane told reporters. “We had a great
year from him [in 2006], and he was a great influence on the club. It
would be foolish not to consider it.”
If Thomas seems
calm—even indifferent—to those responsible for illegally inflating
their own numbers at the expense of his legacy, well, he sort of is.
Thomas possesses a perspective lacking in many of his peers, an outlook
dating back to his boyhood in Columbus, Georgia. It was Labor Day in
1977 when chubby little Frank, nine years old, noticed that Pamela, his
2½-year-old sister, kept standing up and falling down. “Quit kidding,”
he said to his favorite of six siblings. “Just stand up.”
Two
months later Pamela Thomas was dead of leukemia. “Death does something
to you,” says Thomas. “It’s been a long time, but it was an important
lesson about appreciating your life and living for each day. I think of
Pamela all the time. Still hurts.”
That pain resurfaced last
November when Joe Kennedy, a Blue Jays pitcher and one of Thomas’
closest friends, died suddenly from hypertensive heart disease at age
28. As soon as he heard the news, Thomas and his wife, Megan, flew to
Florida to be with Jami Kennedy, Joe’s widow. Over the ensuing weeks,
Thomas chartered a plane for the Kennedy family, stayed up nights with
Jami, and helped make the funeral arrangements. “He was amazing,” says
a friend of the family who requested anonymity. “Frank showed true
compassion and generosity when it was needed most.”
In a sense,
that’s also what he’s doing in baseball. It would be easy for Thomas to
slam Giambi, Sosa, and McGwire, to bitch and whine and insist he
deserves more respect than his ethically deprived cohorts. “But I’m not
going to do that,” he says. “Right now baseball needs to heal and move
on. Maybe some of these guys used because they needed money. Maybe they
thought it was OK. I don’t know. But I take pride in how I’ve handled
myself and how I’ve done things the right way.”
In fact, Frank
Thomas is the model for baseball’s rising drug-free sluggers—Ryan
Howard, Prince Fielder, David Wright. “Frank Thomas was the prototype
21st-century hitter before people even knew what the prototype would
look like,” says Steve Cannella, a longtime baseball writer. “He took
lots of pitches, got on base any way he could, and had an amazing eye.
Plus, he’s done it clean.” Perhaps, Frank Thomas’ legacy is stronger
today than ever. Perhaps, in the end, he is legendary.
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