White Sox put last week's brawl with Kansas City behind them
Ozzie Guillen was after the best kind of revenge Tuesday night against the Kansas City Royals, his team's beanball rivals from last week.
"Let's go out and score 17 runs and win the next three games," Guillen said before facing the Royals for the first time since the Aug. 3 brawl at Kauffman Stadium that resulted in four suspensions, including two games for Guillen.
The White Sox didn't get to 17 runs, but they did score 9 to spank the Royals 9-0.
Bad blood? Not on this night. The game was finished in 2 hours, 13 minutes thanks to Javier Vazquez's masterful work, and nobody even got close to being hit by a pitch.
"It's not about revenge, it's about winning games," White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said. "That stuff's overrated. The best revenge is to win the game."
There wasn't a hint of carry-over from the incident in Kansas City, which Royals catcher Miguel Olivo started when he charged the mound after getting hit by D.J. Carrasco.
Zack Greinke later drilled Nick Swisher in retaliation, which earned him a five-game suspension for what Major League Baseball ruled was a deliberate beaning.
"We need to focus on winning games, not guys trying to start fights," Pierzynski said. "It was an unfortunate incident with one guy overreacting that led to some other things.
"This series is too important to worry about little things like that. We don't want to get guys suspended or lose people for any length of time."
After splitting their four-game series with Boston and dropping out of first place in the AL Central, the White Sox looked at the series against a Royals team behind them in the standings as a must have.
"This series is huge - bigger than Boston," Guillen said.
The White Sox had lost four of the last five against the Royals before Tuesday's lopsided win and always seem to have a difficult time against them.
"This is a better ballclub than people think and that's what you worry about," Guillen said. "I played this game, and when you play the Boston Red Sox your level of play goes up. We've got to come to the ballpark every day ready to play."
Jim Thome said chasing Minnesota was much more important than worrying about if there would be any more problems with the Royals.
"We have too many things ahead we need to try to accomplish than to worry about a brawl or what happened," Thome said. "Winning is our main concern right now."
Guillen, often riled since the fight in Kansas City when asked about it, set a cool tone before the game, although he did reiterate that no team in the league could intimidate the White Sox.
"The only way to feel satisfied is to sweep them," Guillen said. "All the other stuff gets you in trouble."
Royals manager Trey Hillman reluctantly answered questions about the brawl before the game.
"Last week was last week," Hillman said. "It happened in a one-day shot, there were some emotions that got involved, the commissioner's office did what they needed to do and as far as I'm concerned it's over with. Really, it was over the next day for me."