The Bandleader

The present White Sox manager, Gene Lamont, says it's probably best just to leave McDowell in the game—but not only because that saves Lamont grief. "Jack's shown he can get a lot of big outs," he says. "There are guys you tend to leave in longer. Jack's one of them." Whether by force of personality or pitching grit, McDowell has led the American League in complete games the last two seasons (15 in 1991 and 13 in '92), and through Sunday he was tied for second this year, with six.

For McDowell, challenging hitters is only half the fun of baseball. From his first contract negotiations, after he was selected in the top round of the 1987 draft (in '84 he turned down an offer from the Boston Red Sox in favor of a Stanford scholarship for a number of reasons, among them: Stanford buses were nicer than minor league buses), McDowell has been a testy employee. He held out for a proper bonus ($175,000), refused to buy into Chicago's pay-per-performance contract schedule and went to arbitration the two times he was eligible. Last year he complained about the result—even though he won.

McDowell suspected from the get-go that he would come out ahead if he opted for one-year contracts instead of signing one of Chicago's seemingly more generous multiyear offers, which guarantee increases based on performance if the player agrees to give away his first year of free agency. His reasoning: "Anytime an organization is so adamant about something like that, you know it can't be in the players' best interests."

After having meager raises imposed on him his first three seasons, when baseball's rules do not permit a player to go to arbitration, he jumped from $175,000 in 1991 to $1.6 million in '92 (despite losing his arbitration hearing) to $4 million this year. The White Sox are glad for him to have the money. As general manager Ron Schueler says, "The way he's pitched, he deserves the money he's gotten." But McDowell, who is not called Black Jack for nothing, sees the windfall as a strain on Chicago's budget, a harbinger of the end of his White Sox career, especially with free agency coming his way after the '94 season. "I'm pretty sure I'll be traded in the next two years," he says.

Too bad. Because McDowell likes Chicago. And more than that, he actually likes baseball, although his best memories are of playing the game before he had to sign a contract. (Stanford made two trips to the College World Series in McDowell's three years there, with Jack pitching and winning the championship game the second time, in '87.) "I know I'd miss it," he says, "but it's just not the same as it was."

His bitter relationship with the White Sox goes back to '89, when he spent the entire season in the minors. The year before, McDowell had gone 5-10 with a 3.97 ERA in his first full season in the majors. "And I'm thinking I had a spot on the ['89] team—especially on that team," he says of a club that eventually finished 69-92. "I mean, who was there?" But a poor spring training and injuries doomed McDowell to a season at Triple A Vancouver, where he did some soul-searching and penned some of his more poisonous lyrics after Chicago reneged on an August call-up.

Since then McDowell has never missed an opportunity to raise doubts about management's intentions. "If there's something controversial to say," Schueler says with a sigh, "Jack will say it." McDowell has voiced disappointment over Chicago's decision to spend money on a health risk like Bo Jackson while seemingly not being willing to spend it on anybody else. Last winter, when he should have been reveling in his new contract, McDowell blasted the White Sox for not spending the money necessary to land an additional established pitcher.

But this season, at least for the moment, McDowell has decided to get out of the blasting-management business. "It's not my job anymore," he says. "There's stuff going on, like with this new major league TV contract, stuff that should be written about. Things that aren't fair. And nobody else is saying anything. Am I the only idiot out there?"

Just think what McDowell would be like if he had time to brood. As it is, every waking hour away from the ballpark is spent either in his basement, where he has installed recording equipment, or in a studio. For much of the off-season he was buried in recording studios in Chicago and Los Angeles except for a quick Hawaiian honeymoon with Meridith. As of now, he's more likely to win that Cy Young than a Grammy. But each pastime gets equal commitment.

"Am I happier doing one or the other? I'm happiest doing both," he says. "There's no reason the careers can't coexist. The stuff I do, the style I write in, my talent level—I'm not going to have any monster huge audience in music and have to make a decision: Am I going to pitch for the White Sox or am I going to sell 10 million albums and do an arena tour? I don't think so."