Dunn contributes to Sox' 9-4 win in a big way

Given his choice of questions, Ozzie Guillen probably would rather expound on middle son Oney's Twitter account than the daily Adam Dunn inquisition.

It has become so tedious for the White Sox' manager that he even approached the struggling slugger with a plea.

“I just said, ‘Can you please have a good day, then I don't have to answer all the questions about you,'” Guillen said. “‘Please have a good day so (hitting coach) Greg Walker doesn't have to drink a bottle of wine under your name to forget about your bad night.'”

Not that's what you call a pep talk, Ozzie style.

And, who knows, maybe it worked.

After being benched the past two games with a .176 batting average (lowest in the American League) and 80 strikeouts (highest in the AL), Dunn was back in the lineup in Thursday night's 9-4 victory over the awful Athletics at U.S. Cellular Field, and he finally took a step in the right direction.

After being hit in the foot by Trevor Cahill during his first at-bat, Dunn came to the plate in the third inning and launched an opposite-field, 2-run homer to left on the first pitch from the Oakland ace.

Maybe, just maybe, it's a sign of things to come.

“Felt good,” Dunn said after hitting his sixth home of the season and his first at the Cell since May 1. “After having two days off, I was pretty eager to get back there, get in there and actually contribute.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, Dunn has been taking extra hitting for the past two weeks. But during the downtime Wednesday, he broke out some videotape from his days of being one of the most dangerous power hitters in baseball.

Dunn said he didn't necessarily go to the video vault to get help with his swing.

“That was more to kind of just remember how to do it, kind of a feel thing,” Dunn said. “I don't know if there's any correlation to what happened, but I felt pretty good.”

Dunn has consistently said he has felt good at the plate this season. With that in mind, maybe Thursday was yet another false start.

Then again, maybe not.

“I think he'll end the season with his 40 home runs like he usually has,” said Sox starter Mark Buehrle, who got the win after allowing 3 runs on 7 hits in 7 innings. “But obviously we need him to get going to get where we need to get going to.”

Alex Rios also has struggled, but the center fielder looked a little more like his old self as well Thursday while going 2-for-5.

There has been no shortage of talk focusing on the need for Dunn and Rios to either produce or kill the White Sox' postseason hopes.

“I think we can be pretty good,” Dunn said. “We haven't been clicking on all cylinders all year. Hopefully this is kind of a start of something cool.”

sgregor@dailyherald.com