VIEWS: Soriano breaks out of slump to become hero

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CHICAGO – Gripping their beverages and leaning perilously over the rail in the upper deck, two fans dressed in white and black pinstriped jerseys howled toward home plate in the eighth inning Thursday.

The jeers were not original. There are only so many times a fan should be able to taunt a professional athlete with the age-old “overrated” jab. But they weren’t irrelevant, especially because the athlete the White Sox fans were taunting was the disappointing Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano. Soriano was crouched over home plate batting against Sox reliever Scott Linebrink with no outs and pinch-hitter Micah Hoffpauir on first. 

Soriano said after the game that he didn’t hear the jeers – that they weren’t what finally pulled the multi-million dollar player out of his offensive slump.

But if Soriano, the man who entered that eighth inning on Thursday 0-for-15 in the finale of the Cubs-Sox series at Wrigley Field, didn’t hear anything, he dug down deep inside himself to become the hero he’s been advertised as all these years. The Cubs won in a wild, come-from-behind 6-5 victory, and Soriano became the win’s poster child, singling in the eighth to start the Cubs’ offense and knocking a single into right field in the bottom of the ninth that scored the game-winning run.

Maybe Lou Piniella’s warning on Wednesday that changes to the Cubs’ lineup were on the horizon – changes that could have relegated Soriano to the bench – woke Soriano’s slumbering bat.

Maybe it was knowing his teammates needed a win like Thursday’s more than anything, not just because of the Cubs’ opponent but because of all the facets of the game with which the Cubs have struggled this season.

Maybe Soriano didn’t hear anything, didn’t think of anything or anyone, at all.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter.

All that matters is the drought is over for now. And Cubs fans, once again, are in love.

They completely forgot Soriano’s 0-for-15 statistic. They forgot his two fly outs and the groundout against Sox starter Gavin Floyd. They forgot that before the eighth-inning single, the only real positive for Soriano in this series was a highlight reel-worthy catch of a Scott Podsednik fly ball along the left-field wall in foul territory in the top of the seventh inning.

If fans didn’t love Soriano for breaking out of his slump in the eighth, they absolutely adored him when he drove in the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth, driving in Reed Johnson with a single to right field.

Suddenly Soriano, who Cubs fans were beginning to hate, was back in the fold. Wrigleyville is a fickle community – Cubs fans fall in and out of love with players all the time. But Soriano had been walking the line between tolerance and downright disgust.

Now he is back on the path toward lovable with the Lovable Losers’ fans.

“The monkey is out now,” Soriano said after the game. “I get to come back tomorrow with new energy. I felt like the world was on my back, but not anymore.”

The Cubs definitely needed a win like Thursday’s. They dropped the first game of the series to the Sox, 4-1, and were close to dropping the second, trailing 5-1 in the bottom of the eighth before the Cubs posted four runs – three on a home run from Derrek Lee and the other courtesy of a solo shot from Geovany Soto – to tie the score.

Soriano, too, needed Thursday. He had been feeling the pressure that goes along with a drought, but brushed it off as pressure to deliver every day offensively and defensively.

But it’s unlikely he didn’t sense the severity of his situation. Soriano had to start hitting. Fast.

“I’ve been struggling lately,” he said. “To be in the lineup every day, that’s what’s most important to me.”

History suggests Soriano will hit consistently for awhile. He tends to get hits in bunches, or not at all.
At least for now, Soriano is back in Wrigleyville’s good graces, out of the shadows doubt tends to cast.

Some still might call him overrated and, in some ways, he still has to prove that he isn’t. But Soriano had a chance to shine Thursday in a season that has, for him, been pretty dark, and Cubs fans had a reason to love him again.

“Truthfully, he’s too talented to be in the valley as big as he’s been in,” Piniella said. “… He’s been in a gorge.”

At least for now, Soriano is back on a peak. 

• Maureen Lynch is a sportswriter for the Northwest Herald. Write to her at mlynch@nwherald.com.