Yesterday Javier Vazquez threw eight innings of shutout ball at lifeless Kansas City, combining on a shutout with Adam Russell. Today Mark Buehrle was on the bump, throwing seven shutout innings at listless KC, teaming up with Octavio Dotel & Bobby Jenks for the shutout.
It was drizzling on the southside of Chicago as Buehrle threw a first pitch strike to Michael Aviles at 7:11 PM, eight more pitches, and it was the White Sox turn to bat. OC bounced one into the hole between short and third, rather than eating the baseball, SS Tony Pena, Jr. airmailed a souvenir to a lucky fan behind firstbase, sending Cabrera to 2nd, something you shouldn’t be doing, especially if your batting average is forty points below the Mendoza Line. With it raining Ozzie Guillen decided to have A.J. Pierzynski bunt Orlando to third in order to get a quick run on the board. Jermaine Dye quickly obliged, lining an RBI double to center. Ken Griffey, Jr. bounced an RBI single past the firstbaseman following a Jim Thome fly to left and a Paul Konerko walk, Dye scored on a nice slide, reaching out with his hand to touch home as he slid by.
That was all Buehrle needed, but the White Sox did tack on a couple more runs for good measure. One insurance run came in the 5th inning when Juan Uribe lined a 3-2 fastball for a leadoff single, hustling all the he made it to 3rd on a Chris Getz single to left, Uribe managed to get back to third on a hard hit ball to thirdbaseman Alex Gordon, Getz moving up on the groundout, and then Juan scored on an A.J. grounder to SS. Paulie was the only man that was going to deny Bobby Jenks a save. Big Bad Bobby Jenks was warming up when Konerko lined an eighth inning RBI single to put the Sox up 4-0. There was an obnoxious Cub fan (is there any other kind?) riding Konerko, while wearing a Sox hat, but he had a Cubbie hat in his hand.
Before the game Kenny Williams signed 1st round draft choice Gordon Beckham to a deal, then the kid got to throw out the first pitch. Beckham will report to Class A Kannapolis on Thursday. Can’t wait for Gordon to get to the big leagues, maybe then he can become a member of that future infield I talked about yesterday. There were family members of Chris Getz in the house, as the rookie secondbaseman got his first start of his major league career, they were wearing #39 Getz teeshirts, and went wild when he was introduced.
love to hear more about that “future infield”, buddy.
great article.