Danks roughed up, but Sox mount comeback ... only to lose in 11th

The White Sox and Tigers played the Olive Garden bread-and-salad game Sunday night at U.S. Cellular Field -- never ending, all 11 innings and 4 hours and 13 minutes of it.

The Tigers put what was left of 25,417 paid and an ESPN national audience out of its tedium when Gerald Laird singled home the go-ahead run and Austin Jackson doubled home an insurance tally in the top of the 11th for a 9-7 win. It discounted a Sox 4-run rally in the ninth that tied it. But leaving 21 on base was the real reason for this loss.

It didn't seem to matter when the Sox were cruising behind John Danks with a 3-1 lead into the seventh. But the pitching blew up that inning and again in the 11th just as the hitting was quieted more often than not whenever runners got into scoring position.

It culminated in the 11th, when, after the first two Sox batters reached base, they couldn't bring them home. Daniel Schlereth got a force play and then fanned Manny Ramirez on a curve with the bases loaded - looking - to end the marathon.

White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen called this game, this homestand, "very disappointing."

"I think the guys gave everything they had," Guillen said, refusing to call it a letdown after being swept by the first-place Twins during the week. "We prepare for everything one day at a time. We lost almost every game late in the game. That's the reason this homestand was very bad."

Guillen recognized the lack of hitting with runners in scoring postion hurt.

"We got big hits. We were one hit away to win. We played very hard. At the end of the day," he added, "It's how many wins you have," not how many hits.

Outside of that, it's all part of what's called playing out the string. Which means just a handful of games left (no matter how many innings they take) at a time you're all but eliminated from playoff contention. It doesn't feel good.

And while Guillen called this 2010 team the one he's most proud of in his seven seasons managing here, there were beaten soundly by Minnesota last week and played like a team that's out of contention against the patchwork Detroit Tigers.

Ozzie's looking hard at his players now during the somewhat meaningless stretch run, and not just the ones on contract years. He's been preaching since the Minnesota debacle that he wants to see hustle, focus and desire out of everyone; veteran stars, rookies and journeymen, or he doesn't want them around.

John Danks on the mound, Alexei Ramirez and Juan Pierre on the bases and Alex Rios at the plate set out Sunday night at U.S. Cellular to heed their manager's call. Danks was efficient for six innings. If he'd held on to win his 14th, it would've been just the tonic the Sox needed to propel them out to the West Coast to start a road trip tonight in Oakland.

Despite the Sox best efforts, Detroit put up a 6-spot in the seventh for a 7-3 lead before the Sox tied it 7-7 on some inefficient Detroit relief pitching and some clutch hitting in a ninth-inning rally that propelled the game into extra frames.

After tying it on two walks, a hit-batsman and a wild pitch courtesy of Detroit's injury-ravaged bullpen, the Sox had another chance to win it in the 10th when Carlos Quentin reached on an error, Detroit's third. But Juan Pierre lined out with Quentin at third to end the inning, increasing the Sox total to 18 left on in 10 innings.

Against Jeremy Bonderman in the first, however, Pierre, the American League stolen-base leader, and Alexei Ramirez, Guillen's trusty No. 2 hitter, got the Sox rolling by reaching base quickly and easily. Rios (3 hits and an RBI), the prospective AL comeback player of the year, lined a hit that plated Pierre. Ramirez neatly avoided Laird's tag on A.J. Pierzynski's foul popout, which sent Detroit third baseman Brandon Inge sprawling over the tarpaulin before making a remarkably accurate throw to the plate.

Danks didn't seem to need much else. While the Sox were battering Bonderman early, Danks was looking like the pitcher the Sox always expect him to be, keeping the Tigers off stride and the Sox ahead through six innings.

Defensively, Carlos Quentin helped him out. The rightfielder was jammed against the wall when he came down with Casper Well's long flyball with two out and two on in the fourth, after Sox-killer Scott Sizemore lead off the inning with a barely fence-clearing solo home run to left to cut the lead in half. And Brett Morel continued his stellar play at the hot corner, flashing his brilliance when he barehanded speedy Austin Jackson in the sixth.

Wells came back and tied the game in the seventh, hitting a bullet of a homer into the leftfield corner. Laird would later knock a double into the same area and put the Tigers ahead in a game which the White Sox appeared to be cruising to a win at last.

In what turned out to be a seemingly decisive seventh inning, Danks went from a no-hitter through 5.2 innings to standing to be the tattooed loser. The bullpen wasn't much help again as J.J. Putz surrendered a 2-run double to pinchhitter Will Rhymes that put the Tigers ahead and put Danks (6.1, 7 ER, 3BB, 4K) on the hook for the loss

But while the Sox played and hit better (in the same game) than they have in a week, they still squandered too many chances against the very shaky Bonderman, who came in with a 8-9 record and a 5.04 ERA and looked every bit of it. Even as they put 2 runs up in the first and 1 more in the sixth, they left two on in each of the first six innings and one more in the seventh, the continuation of a homestand-long trend that lasted down to the final out Sunday night.