WE ARE AFTER 100 WINS!

Fucking unbelievable game.

I didn’t get to go to any of the 2005 payoff games. This is easily the best Sox game I’ve ever been to.

The crowd was unbelievable. Every pitch Danks threw they were in it and shouting. The last 2 innings were standing.

The Griffey play: I thought to myself “no way, too deep.” And then he makes the perfect peg and AJ a spectacular pay at the plate – shades of 2004 but in reverse!

The Thome home run: Knew it was gone off the bat. The crowd erupted into pandemonium. A fucking bomb. Thome = so unclutch.

The Anderson catch: joyous, fucking unbelievable pandemonium.

My personal highlight – waving the Twins bullpen goodbye as they made the long slow walk to the golf course.

11 more, baby!

Let’s just win!

Watched the game at Shinnick’s. Great crowd. The bartender put on a helmet and was dancing on the bar afterwards. Also dropped by Jimbo’s, Schaller’s, and Mitchell’s. I could barely sleep last night I was so nervous. This really took a load off my chest after last week’s games. Go SOX!

nasty Danks, the peg, the tag, Thomer…but also OC going in the hole, torquing his body to get the throw off to first. This guy has been great for us. A great rental. Onward!

which turned out to be just enough.

awesome.

Thankfully I’m not hurting, tons of water and advil before I went to sleep (key)

Joe Sheehan (7:06:56 PM PT): After the Cuddyer double: 15 batters, 47 pitches. They earned this loss…Gardy’s decision to let Thome face a righty in a tied game was a mistake, but it’s the Twins hitters who take the most blame.

Danks looked fantastic, and the Sox played good defense, and—shocking—won with a homer.

I’m sure nothing I type wasn’t covered in the game or recap threads, so excuse the lardiness since I don’t have time now to go through them.

1. General Soreness deserves a new nickname after managing a 2-hopper from 250 feet or so. I propose “Ancient Mariner” as the honorific. The throw was soooo nice to see!

2. But it wouldn’t have meant a thing without AJ’s game-saving tag. Beautiful also was his head-fake on the previous pitch. Talk about being in the game!

3. Jim* pointed out the great camerawork showing Ozzie telling his outfield to move shallower just before BA’s beauty. Once again, I doubt we’ll see any mention of that in the papers, but it was key. As was the BoyCrush catch of course!

4. Big hairy balls indeed. Danks, Gavin, Burls… holy crap! I wouldn’t be surprised to see Javy strap on a pair too. Fingers crossed…

5. Serenity now.

Thank you White Sox!

for Danks, for Linebrink, etc. and for evey other move for which you were criticized here and everywhere, thanks Kenny! Just 11 more wins.

Lots of zeroes on the scoreboard. I kept thinking, shit, the game is almost over! Danks, Thome, Jenks, Griffey, AJ, BA, all the rest… What a great game! That’s what playoff baseball is all about!

Just look at what this team had to overcome: Konerko hurt. Q throws away MVP and the HR title. Contreras’s foot falls off. Crede’s back fails for good. Linebrink leaves the 8th inning to the likes of Mike MacDougal for months and months. Swisher hangs on to his job for many weeks longer than justified. Griffey picked up and put in center field, for god’s sake. Konerko hurt again. Add it up and you STILL take the division!

White Sox, you rule. RULE!

Sox in five vs Rays
Sox in six vs Bosox
Sox in seven vs CUBS

…baseball cancelled thereafter.

This season is their finest work. KW had all the reasons in the world to blow this team up and go young after last year’s debacle, but he played his hunch and kept the core together for one more crack at it. This team was going to see it’s share of injuries, and he had just enough pieces available to hold it all together.

And Ozzie really made huge strides this year, he’s a totally different manager now than he was when he first started. How he and Coop maneuvered this team into the playoffs with the pitching in total shambles is a miracle.

Well done guys, well done. Wasn’t very pretty at times but it worked …NOW LET’S WIN 11 MORE GAMES!

Better believe it I’m wearing it tomorrow! And really, if there’s some Boston novelty that comes to mind, you let me know.
Thanks!
OSFIB

but let’s be honest. they’re not going to do anything in them. they’re a one-dimensional softball team that can’t adapt their approach. not like those minnesota twins, that’s for sure. normally an aggressive, contact hitting team, they were faced last night with john danks, who was pitching on short rest and was eating them alive with his cut fastball. confronted with such a pitcher and team and away from their dome, they immediately changed their approach to a more patient one in order to get danks’ pitch count up (and thus get into the soft underbelly of the white sox, their bullpen) and also draw some walks to get some baserunners. what a team. i can see how they won the world series.

is that a legit D stat? Because Alexei does very well in it.

the last 2 nights in victory. Goldman Sachs lining up to lend Cheat money for expansion into Europe/Asia. One catch – greater compliance/screening. Now will be unable to refer to Alexei as “Che” or talk about politics.

Twins ace ACT exam

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-talk-actoct01,0,1853797.story

at least they’ll get into college.

I hope the boys didn’t celebrate too late into the night because it’s time to get some work done.

It’s strange to think this the morning after they scored one run, but I feel like our offense is starting to break out of the funk of the past few weeks. Slugger Jim’s obviously got his homerun swing still intact, Slugger Jermaine seems to be looking better at the plate, Slugger Ken has been clutch, and Slugger Paulie is trying to redefine how people remember his season. It would be great if OCab continues to knock the ball around the field and Wise starts doing that too.

At this point I have no idea what to expect from the pitching. Vazquez is a headcase (thanks for picking that up in Contreras’s absence…), Denks NEVER PITCHES PAST THE SIXTH (*ahem), Floyd only grew pubes last month, and even thinking about the bullpen is a shotgun blast in the face.

I suppose this series will be billed as young and scrappy vs. veteran mashers and we’ll hear unending stories about Tampa Rays history. But for us, it’s about proving we deserve to be in the Playoffs. Go Sox!

When they interviewed Ozzie and everybody was throwing sunflower seeds at him (5th inning I think).

Anyone got an Advil?

Only teams without a vote from the “experts”. Now this makes me optimistic.

Click the link for the full article and data, but here’s the conclusion:

Many people call the baseball playoffs a "crapshoot" including Braves skipper Bobby Cox. A’s GM Billy Beane was quoted in Moneyball as saying: "My (expletive) doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is (expletive) luck." The historical data presented in this article absolutely supports those sentiments. Considering that 51% of all playoff series are won by the lesser team indicates that it might as well be a coin flip. The MLB playoffs are indeed a crapshoot. Good luck to the Angels, the Cubs and all the playoff teams…with emphasis on LUCK.

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2008/09/why_the_angels.php

glad to be here.

From whitesox.com:

CHICAGO — Tickets for the Chicago White Sox Division Series games against the Tampa Bay Rays were made available through an online pre-sale and lottery for season ticket holders and whitesox.com registered users which took place through Major League Baseball on September 23rd and 24th.

Stubhub.com, here I come.

 Stats vs Rays (a likely 1st round opponent)

Mark B
3 starts
19 2/3 IP 25 h, 4.58 era 0-1

Vazquez
3 starts
20 1/3 IP 16h, 3.54 era 1-2

Danks
3 starts
19 1/3 IP 16h, 1.86 era 2-1

I’m thinking Wise or Clayton Richard, with Nessie or DJ Carrasco as alternatives. It’s too bad Octavio Dotel’s page isn’t open, although that one probably would be much too high of a price.

Gavin Floyd (4.75) is the weak link in the Sox rotation. He’s prone to homeruns and compared to the other starters, walks. His stuff includes a 91 fastball, 85 slider, 79 curve and 82 change. If he gets the start it would likely mean the Rays are down, but perhaps not for long.

plenty of more informed people than me have said it all about the game itself.

That Blackout thing, everyone in black, it looked fucking amazing to me, and the atmosphere was something else. I could feel it here watching, never seen that before in a baseball game, reminded me of what it used to be like at Elland Road on a Saturday Afternoon. I bet there were fans of other clubs all over your country secretly thinking ‘I wish we could do something like that’.
 That kind of feeling must help the players, to have that many bodies rooting for you ( I sometimes experience this when I walk past the local University Women’s Halls). Watching the game was like taking a big black virtual Viagra tablet for me.

The coverage I thought was ace, I had been led to believe that that Harold bloke was a bonehead, but he really seemed to know his shit, and did it all with a pretty endearing touch. I think Danks had just struck out Mauer or Morneau or one of the other fuckers and he said “Danks is really dealing tonight”, seems trite in print, but at the time captured the moment perfectly.

regards

Especially when you’re hungry

The White Sox are undefeated in games after SSH has been banned.