
Sox answer Guillen with thumpingBy TIMOTHY WOLFMEYER - Shaw NewspapersCHICAGO - Ozzie Guillen doesn't enjoy calling out his team, but more often than not, the White Sox play well after he goes on one of his rants. So, with that in mind, will he rail on his players more often? “No ... I don't want to get a heart attack just to win the game,” the Sox manager joked. A night after Guillen lost (his mind), the Sox won, 10-2, against Texas. The victory snapped a short, but troubling, three-game skid. “There was a lot of concern,” Guillen said after the win. “With a three-game losing streak, the way other teams were playing, a lot of people were panicking. [Tuesday] ... you saw why we're in first place.” Starter Mark Buehrle, pitching on three days' rest, scattered a run and six hits over 7 1/3 innings, and Alexei Ramirez (grand slam) and Nick Swisher hit homers as the Sox rolled to their first win by five or more runs in a month. Swisher's three-run shot keyed a four-run fourth - the Sox (56-43) matched that total in the seventh, when Ramirez cleared the bases with the first grand slam of his career. Guillen seemed pleased after the win. After all, isn't this what he meant when, on Monday night, he said, “It's time for people to start stepping up?” “I think all those guys out there, they believe, or at least they should believe, the talent we have and how good we can play,” Guillen said. “I believe in what I have - my coaching staff, [general manager Ken Williams], we believe in what we have. “That's why sometimes ... I'm not going to say [I'm] disappointed, but sometimes it's like, ‘Wow, what's going on here?' ” Guillen called Tuesday's win “huge.” Maybe not in terms of the division race - though, with the win, they did gain a game on second-place Minnesota - but in terms of showing consistency. Before the game, Guillen cried out for just that. “Every team goes inconsistent ... we seem to go through it ever other week,” he said. “Inconsistency, I don't know. I can't say that because obviously, we're not going to win 100 [games], but it seems like we've had a chance to win more games than we've won right now. That's it. I don't think about inconsistency because they're in first place and we have to respect that. “But it seems, as a coaching side, we should have more wins. We have a chance to win more games - that's why I said we have a chance to step it up, have a real good winning streak and hopefully we can look back [at] people.” On Tuesday, no one was more consistent than Buehrle. The southpaw, pitching with a heavy heart - his paternal grandfather died this weekend - worked out of jams in the first and second, then retired 15 of 16 over the middle innings. He took a shutout into the eighth before allowing a leadoff homer to Texas' Chris Davis. “Buehrle's going to go out there and do what he's supposed to every day. I don't have any doubt of that,” Guillen said. Buehrle said for the most part, he was able to keep his emotions in check. “Once the game started, the emotions were kind of left behind,” he said. “They'll pick back up the next couple of days, I'm sure.” He left the game to a standing ovation. “I had a feeling why the crowd was going crazy,” he said. |
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