No word on Bell; new fifth starter catches eye By Jason Kendall FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, March 24, 2002 BRADENTON, Fla. — Before I get started on this week's column, I want the fans to know I'm not going to say anything about the Derek Bell "Operation Shutdown" stuff. Fans might want to know my opinion on the subject, but I really don't know all of the particulars, so I don't think it's appropriate to say anything about it. I just found out that Josh Fogg is going to be our fifth starter. He and Sean Lowe were competing for the job, and both pitchers have been complete professionals this spring. I know Sean is probably disappointed for not winning the job, but he's going to be a great addition to our team out of the bullpen. Either choice would have been a good one. All I can say is Josh Fogg is going to be a good one. One of our coaches, Tommy Sandt, told me about a week ago that Josh reminds him of Doug Drabek. I don't want to put any pressure on Josh, and I hope he doesn't read this, but that's what Tommy said. I've been watching Josh, and they are very similar pitchers, just by how they go through their actions. I never played with Doug on the Pirates, but I was fortunate enough to play against him and watch him pitch in spring training. One thing about Josh is that he throws strikes. He has four different pitches. He's not afraid to throw them at any time in the count, and he's not scared on the mound. Sean is the same type of pitcher, and for that matter, so is Kip Wells. I'm happy that all three pitchers we got from the Chicago White Sox are going to be on our team, or at least the way it looks now. If you look back on the trade, it looks like a pretty good one. We will be much better with them on the team. I know it's fun to catch those three guys. I really like the way this team is coming together. We still have some cuts to make, but the team is starting to shape up. With one week left in camp, everybody is itching to get out of here. We've just got to suck it up for the next seven days and get through it. This also was a week when the team finally had a collective day off, we played a night game. I got ejected from another game, and we had a visit from union chief Don Fehr. On our off day, I went fishing with Tommy, Brian Giles and Jeff Banister. The trip was put together by Mike LaValliere, who brought along John Smiley and a tour guide. Let me tell you, we didn't catch a darn thing. We would have been better off going to one of the three rivers in Pittsburgh to fish. From the way Spanky talked, we were going to catch 150 fish. We caught one. We let Spanky have it because he was the one who set it up. Still, it was nice to get away and relax for one day and not think about baseball. The next day, we had a night game, our first since a split-squad doubleheader. We lost to the Yankees, but it was nice to break up the schedule with a night game. In the regular season, you like to break things up with a day game, but it's the opposite down here. We also start the season with seven consecutive day games, so it was nice to get acclimated for the night conditions down here. We have another night game against the Yankees this week, too, which will help us get prepared for the season. The next day I got ejected by Marvin Hudson for arguing a called third strike. I was wrong for arguing with him. He's down here working on things just like the players are. It was a heat of the battle thing. I talked to Marvin, and we're on good terms again. That day also marked our annual visit by the players' union representatives. It was an interesting meeting, but a lot of people still have no idea what is going to happen. They told us to prepare for the worst. We hope that's just a last resort type of thing and that the season isn't interrupted. A work stoppage wouldn't benefit anybody, the players, the owners and especially the fans. Our job is to play baseball, and I hope we can play baseball all the way through October.