Sox relieve chill with a dose of heat
With apologies to Katy Perry, she's got nothing on Ozzie Guillen, who's hoping his "Hot N Cold" White Sox can catch fire again.
The White Sox manager was singing the same tune Sunday night, and he wasn't talking about going from the 90 degrees of Tampa to the frigid rain and cold winds of Chicago.
"I got to laugh when you talk about my baseball team right now. There's a lot of hot and cold," Guillen said, noting the Sox' 5-3 win over the Rays on the South Side. "When we're cold, we lose five or six games in a row, and then we turn around the next day and get hot and we just roll, like it's nothing.
"We won one game, so maybe that'll happen again."
The Sox were red-hot Sunday compared to their glacial play at Tropicana Field, but getting out of the dome and back into the comforts of home, with its accompanying elements, served them well.
So did a raucous home crowd, which helped propel the slowest team in the league to 3 stolen bases and several manufactured runs.
Dewayne Wise's theft with two outs in the third was huge, leading to the tying run, and it was almost comical in the fourth when the Sox loaded the bases with nobody out.
Comical, because the men on base were the fleet-footed Jim Thome, Paul Konerko and Junior Griffey, all of whom tagged on a single flyball, and then eventually scored to give the Sox a 4-1 lead.
"To be honest I thought Griffey cheated," said Guillen, who hates station-to-station baseball. "I never thought he went back to the bag.
"That's good, smart baserunning. That was a big play and got everyone in the dugout excited to see those guys play the game the way it should be played."
John Danks did the heavy lifting, following up his brilliant performance in the tiebreaker over Minnesota with another gem Sunday, staving off his club's elimination for the second straight start.
"This guy's a good pitcher, very good," said Rays manager Joe Maddon. "From when I first saw him until the latter part of the season, I thought he made tremendous improvements.
"He has weapons to get out lefties, and sometimes I think he's even tougher on righties."
Whether the Sox can win the next two depends largely on whether Danks' tag-team partner, Gavin Floyd, shows up today and how much he's got left in the tank, but Guillen believes he needed only 1 win to turn his team around.
Or, as Katy Perry screams, "You're yes then you're no; you're in then you're out; you're up then you're down; you're wrong when it's right."
The Sox are definitely on that roller coaster.
"It's been that way all year, but I think we relax when we get to this spot and we play better," Guillen said.
"I think we have a great chance because we play good when we don't have any choice."
If that's true, the White Sox are definitely in the right spot.
Quentin ready
The Sox have barely survived without Carlos Quentin, but if they advance to the next round, the injured slugger says he'll be ready to go.
"I felt great hitting today," Quentin said. "I'm really close. I'm there if we can get to the (ALCS)."
Biggest inning
After the Sox picked up 3 runs to take a 4-1 lead, John Danks slammed the door in the fifth with a three-up, three-down inning on 10 pitches.
"It's always my goal after we score to make it as quick an inning as possible and get us back in the dugout," Danks said.
"Fortunately, I was able to make pitches."
Sox starters have not done a good job lately of shutting down the opposition after a big Sox inning.
"One thing about John Danks: He hangs around with the right guy," said Ozzie Guillen.
"He hangs around with Mark Buehrle and he picks his brain. This kid's got a chance to be a heck of a pitcher."
Biggest pitch
With the Sox up 5-3 in the seventh and the tying run at the plate, Octavio Dotel froze Evan Longoria with a 2-2 fastball right down the pipe.
"I'm not gonna lie to you. That surprised me," Dotel said. "He's a great hitter, so he must have just guessed wrong."
Biggest hit
A.J. Pierzynski's two-out single off Matt Garza that tied the game at 1-1 in the second seemed to relax the Sox and put the Rays on notice that the South Siders weren't going quietly.
"He hung me a slider, curveball, whatever it was," Pierzynski said. "I hit it up the middle. Got lucky. Garza's good. He is really good."
The quote
Junior Griffey, on his time with the Sox: "It's been a lot of fun and I'd like it to last a couple more weeks. What's the point of playing if you don't enjoy it? When it's not fun, I'll go home for good."
Can you elaborate?
Ozzie Guillen, on whether he feels bad for Cubs fans: "No."
And finally -
Matt Thornton, on his run-in with Willy Aybar along the first-base line in the eighth inning, after which the two exchanged kind words: "That's just a baseball play. That's nothing. Now, if it was A.J. (Pierzynski), it's a whole different story."