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Sale hopes to keep focus on winning
- Updated: July 26, 2016
CHICAGO — Chris Sale doesn’t want to be traded — and doesn’t believe he will be — in the wake of Saturday night’s pregame outburst that resulted in him being scratched from his start that evening and then suspended five games by the White Sox.
“I want to win a championship in Chicago. That’s been my goal from Day 1,” Sale told MLB.com Monday afternoon during a 30-minute interview, his first public comments since Saturday. “It has never changed. I only get more passionate about it because I know that it’s not easy winning a championship. There’s a lot that goes into it.
“Our main focus should be winning. I know that every single player comes in ready to win every day. I can’t speak on anybody else. … I don’t think I would be traded. I don’t know for sure. I don’t know what they are thinking now or what’s going on.”
For Sale, the core issue wasn’t the uniforms themselves, although he did have issues with them, but putting business interests ahead of winning.
“Nothing else matters really,” Sale said, in a calm and composed but still passionate manner. “People don’t talk about the guys who get paid the most. They talk about the guys with the rings and teams that won the rings. Our guys in this clubhouse deserve, in every single game, the best opportunity to go achieve that goal of winning a championship. That’s why we are all here. Nothing else matters.”
The issue, for Sale, began in Spring Training when the players were fitted for the special jerseys, which in 2015 were too large and therefore uncomfortable to play in. Sale said that players were not fans of this jersey overall, and he said then that if the jerseys fell on his day to pitch, he didn’t want to wear them, in part because he never had pitched in an untucked jersey in his life.
On the night before Sale’s Saturday start, he was advised that the ’76 throwbacks were set for his start and Sale asked the clubhouse manager for a different uniform, then expressing the sentiment to pitching coach Don Cooper. Sale was in favor of the ’83 …
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