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Prior to Monday's game, the White Sox honored the late Kevin Hickey by hosting a party for his family and friends, then paying tribute to him with a pregame ceremony and a plaque for the batting cages.
Many White Sox players gave him their own nod by shaving off their beards and goatees and leaving only the moustache. Paul Konerko (whose quote is on the plaque) sported a moustache for the 4-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins, but it was cool to see Kevin Youkilis and Brett Myers join in as well, considering neither player was on the team while Hickey was around.
Gordon Beckham, who is unable to grow one, threw his support behind the movement, as well as some innuendo:
"It's going to take me until next spring to get mine fully out, but I'm going to try,'' Gordon Beckham said. ``Everybody's in on it. It comes fitting today because of Kevin Hickey and this game is about him and we won. He has a plaque up in here now. It was good to remember him with a win and now we're starting the Hick moustaches. We'll ride these out."
Terrerobytes
- Floyd upbeat, to throw again on Thursday - whitesox.com
- Santiago will likely return to bullpen - CSNChicago.com
- White Sox tinker with Francisco Liriano's approach - chicagotribune.com
In the latest installment of "As the Rotation Turns" (get it?), Gavin Floyd is making progress toward a return. Plus, Hector Santiago is likely heading back to the bullpen no matter how he does after Dylan Axelrod returns, although it makes sense to save him for lefty-heavy teams like Cleveland.
The last one is interesting, because Don Cooper is trying to hammer a point home with Francisco Liriano that Colin said Liriano isn't recognizing -- that he should attack the strike zone with the stuff he has.
Adam Dunn struck out for the 2,000th time during Monday's game, joining Reggie Jackson, Jim Thome, Sammy Sosa and Andres Galarraga as the only guys who have wiffed that often. Galarraga struck out far more often than I remembered, although by today's standards, he wouldn't stand out.
James is hoping that all the recent slides dragging down the lineup are due for a very helpful correction, or else this year will look like a few that preceded it.
Mac Thomason, creator of the venerable Braves Journal and one of the first team-specific bloggers, passed away after a long battle with testicular cancer. There's a wonderful obituary on the site (you might have seen Gus' FanShot), and Joe Posnanski uses his death to talk about the purpose of baseball bloggers. Posnanski connects finding team blogs with finding radio broadcasts of faraway ballgames in your car. Those signals could disappear if the wind blew the wrong way or a stoplight interefereced with the reception. Nowadays, you can pick up any ballgame at any time in any location, and good writers, sites and blogs are always right where you found them, too. What a wonderful time this is.