GLENDALE, Ariz. — Good humor is a fine thing in a manager, especially a manager of a team that’s going to lose so many games, there will be times one bad day, one bad week, one bad month just kind of blends into the next.
First-time skipper Will Venable comes across as someone who might have the right disposition for the 2025 slog on which the White Sox are preparing to embark. He is serious and calm, projecting a certain solidness that will be required as one of the most undermanned Sox teams in memory keeps swinging out of the deep rough while the rest of baseball is already on the green. He is warm and friendly, seemingly a guy who’d be slow to snap and, say, beat a prickly pear cactus to death with a 7-iron.
Ah, but the 42-year-old Ivy Leaguer has a sense of humor, too, dry like the desert heat folks in these parts are always going on about.
“We survived Day 1,” was Venable’s initial summation of the opening of Sox spring training on Wednesday at Camelback Ranch.
Hey, it’s a start.
But Venable also is the guy who, as a Padres veteran, once called a team meeting early on in spring training and told an entire clubhouse in no uncertain terms that it was time to stop screwing around. Legend has it they listened.
And he was a coach on a World Series-winning Rangers team who had the juice to confront any player and address a problem when Hall of Fame-bound manager Bruce Bochy didn’t have the time, the energy or the inclination, which was the case often enough with Bochy — who called Venable his “safety valve” — in his late 60s.
“He just has a great way about him with people, a calmness about him,” Bochy told the Sun-Times after the Sox hired Venable. “When things aren’t done right, he’ll let you know. He’s honest and straightforward. … Will [is] always on top of everything.”
Venable also worked under former Cubs manager David Ross, who called him a “great communicator and people person.”
The endorsements are there. The interest from other big-league teams was there, too.
Pedro Grifol, the last manager the Sox hired, wasn’t exactly fighting off suitors. Did the Sox ever ask themselves why the Royals hired somebody else’s bench coach — Matt Quatraro, then of the Rays — rather than their own bench coach, Grifol? The Sox hired Tony La Russa long after any other team would have. Rick Renteria was the result of essentially a non-search for a new manager. Robin Ventura had no experience when he received a managerial appointment from the Sox despite the fact he wasn’t even angling for the job.
The list of managers since Ozzie Guillen makes one wonder if the Sox have been the worst team in baseball in this department over the last decade and a half. Come to think of it, do we even have to wonder at all?
Unlike Grifol, who often seemed to put on an act, Venable is more natural. Grifol came out swinging with big talk about instilling discipline and playing the game the right way and becoming a winning manager as if by destiny, but the proof was in the pudding — it was all talk. Grifol entered his first spring training with a put-on confidence and proceeded to have the whole thing go to hell on his watch.
Venable is so much less guarded.
“Today, as I try to find my way and figure out what I need to be doing and where I need to be, it’s definitely different,” he admitted.
What impact does he believe he’ll have?
“To be honest, I’ll continue to learn that,” he said. “For me today, I think it’s just creating a positive environment for these guys to come to every day, as well as structure and support to help them do the things they need to do individually. We know there’s going to be a lot going on in the season, but to stay positive and make sure these guys are coming into a place every day where they can feel comfortable and be themselves, that’s a big part of my job.”
Those sentiments might not make anyone want to run through a brick wall. But the Sox need to learn how to walk around the wall or climb the wall before they’ll be able to charge through one.
In previous jobs, Venable set the schedules for spring days like these. Important work, keeping the trains running on time, but his responsibilities have become greater.
On Day 1, he was tinkering with a schedule before it hit him that he should get his rear end outside and interact with the players instead. So that’s what the good humor man did. He got on with the show.