The White Sox saved their best game of the season for their last night at home before the All-Star break. Coming off three straight two-to-one series victories–the home-and-home meetings with the Cubs sandwiched around a series in Minnesota–they were now trying to complete a three-game sweep of the Twins, their archrivals in the AL Central, at White Sox Park. The Twins scored two in the first on a home run by Torii Hunter–a foul-pole shot disputed by Sox manager Jerry Manuel, who got himself tossed out of the game–and added two more in the third off Sox starter Dan Wright. But then the resurgent Frank Thomas, once again showing form worthy of the nickname “Big Hurt,” got the Sox comeback started in the bottom of the inning with a two-out, two-run homer following a walk to Jose Valentin. The Sox tied the game in the next frame on a two-run homer by Brian Daubach, the left-swinging first baseman who has usurped the slumping Paul Konerko, and went ahead in the fifth on a two-out double by Magglio Ordonez that again scored Valentin.
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Manuel’s Sox have never shown much of a killer instinct, however, and this night was looking like no exception. Reliever Rick White allowed a leadoff double to Bobby Kielty in the seventh, and lefty specialist Damaso Marte couldn’t keep him from scoring, allowing Hunter’s two-out single. The score remained deadlocked at five into extra innings, and Sox bullpen-ace-by-default Billy Koch gave up the apparent game-winning run in the top of the 11th when Luis Rivas tripled over the head of newly acquired center fielder Carl Everett and scored on a hit by the pesky Kielty. In the bottom half, needing a run to tie, Everett and Carlos Lee hit easy outfield flies, and then Konerko was summoned from the bench to bat for Daubach against Eddie Guardado. Mired in a season-long slump, Konerko responded with a game-tying homer, looking for one brief moment like the confident basher of years past. The not quite 20,000 fans in attendance greeted him with the familiar chant of “Paulie! Paulie!” when he took the field in the 12th. The Sox won it in the bottom half. With two out and a man on, Thomas fell behind 0-2; but starting with a long foul that curved down the left-field line, he kept spoiling good pitches and taking close ones in working the count full. Then he dropped the bat with a swish on a low pitch and sent it soaring up and out, true to course this time, into the left-field seats. Konerko, Thomas, Valentin, Ordonez–all the Sox stars had a role in the victory–and the winning run was scored by the newly acquired Roberto Alomar, who’d walked ahead of Thomas.
After salvaging a pair of wins in Cleveland, the Sox staggered home to hit the All-Star break at 45-49, seven games behind the Royals. It was small solace that they’d passed the Twins, who remained on the canvas after the Sox put them there.
In the end, however, slow and steady won the race. The Anaheim Angels’ Garret Anderson advanced to shave Pujols in the final round, 9-8. But it all seemed so insignificant, while the seasons of the Sox and Cubs lay out there somewhere, wounded. And as the baseballs soared into the stands–unaccompanied on this evening by any fireworks–I heard the echoes of skyrockets that had mattered flickering in the memory like faded love.
