{"id":239,"date":"2007-06-26T00:07:28","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T05:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/?p=239"},"modified":"2008-10-31T18:28:43","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T23:28:43","slug":"five-hundos-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/239\/five-hundos-eve","title":{"rendered":"Five-Hundo&#8217;s Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the big guy knocks on the door of the big 5-0-0, many Sox fans are sharing their Frank Thomas story. <\/p>\n<p>This is mine.<\/p>\n<p>In 1991, near the height of my baseball card obsession, the Sox had a promising rookie first baseman out of Auburn University. Not only could the guy could hit with the kind of power and might the South Side hadn&#8217;t seen since the glory days of Ivan Calderon, the guy could also draw walks and ten-pitch at-bats from even titans of the day like Dave Stewart and Jack Morris.<\/p>\n<p>He was going to be something special. We all knew this. He was going to do great things for the franchise. And he did. But I, like a lot of guys my age, don&#8217;t remember him murdering AL pitching in 1993, or flirting with a Triple Crown in the 1994 that could&#8217;ve been, or being robbed of a third MVP award by an admitted steroid enthusiast in 2000.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/frank.jpg\" alt=\"1991 Upper Deck Frank Thomas rookie card\" title=\"1991 Upper Deck Frank Thomas rookie card\" width=\"200\" height=\"284\" class=\"right size-medium wp-image-240\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/frank.jpg 200w, http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/frank-105x150.jpg 105w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>No, what always did and always will make me smile is that the new face of the franchise was giving someone the finger on his rookie card while a younger, slimmer Sammy Sosa was grinning away in the background, laughing at a joke no one else got.<\/p>\n<p>I hope the symbolism &#8211; about the Sox and Cubs, about the two mightiest sluggers this city has ever seen, about the following decade&#8217;s worth of home runs &#8211; isn&#8217;t lost on anyone. I can&#8217;t say Frank was ever my favorite player, but you have to respect a guy who&#8217;s done what he has, in the era he did it, without any outside chemical help. Knock &#8216;em dead, big man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifteen years of Chicago baseball as defined by one sliver of laminated photo paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[175,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sox35th.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}