Konerko: Clubhouse strife not necessarily bad
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- If you're keeping score at home, let's do a quick recap.
The first-place White Sox have 30 victories after topping the Rays 5-1 Thursday night at Tropicana Field. They have 23 losses. And they've had quite a few controversies.
From manager Ozzie Guillen going off on umpire Phil Cuzzi, to Guillen going off on the Cubs, to the blow-up doll incident, to Orlando Cabrera phoning the official scorer during two different games to dispute error calls, the Sox' off-field house has been messy.
According to captain Paul Konerko, it's not a bad thing.
"I hate to bring up (2005), because looking back, we all know how that ended,'' Konerko said of the White Sox' World Series championship year. "But this team is very similar to that one in the sense that every day in the clubhouse, there was always some kind of beef going on. Yet, that team stayed focused, and this team is staying focused when the game starts.
"I don't know if there's something to that or not. I don't know if that's something you can draw up, 'Here's what we're going to do, bicker and win.' This team has some similarities like that where it's not boring in here, that's for sure.''
Last season, when the White Sox lost 90 games and finished 24 games behind the Cleveland Indians in the AL Central, boring was the operative word.
That hasn't been a problem this season.
"The way I look at it is, when there's silence and none of that (controversy), it probably means that people don't care about the other people, they don't care about anything,'' Konerko said. "They're just going through the motions.
"The fact that some of that exists in the clubhouse, it shows we care. It can get carried away, it can turn bad, but it's like brothers. You fight with your brothers. It's kind of like that.
"Like I said about the '05 team, the whole year it was like every day, different guys had different things going on, and we won the World Series. So go figure.''
As for having a problem with Cabrera, who seems to have a problem with Guillen, Konerko said the veteran shortstop has not been a distraction.
"Personally speaking, I haven't had any problems with Orlando,'' Konerko said. "He makes the plays in the field and he's a good player.''