Every columnist in Times wrote on the SOX

[JUGGERNAUT]

http://www.suntimes.com/index/sox.html

 

"We have a nice feeling right now, no matter how many runs we're down,'' said Jimenez, whose recent defensive lapses had him out of the starting lineup Sat-urday. "When I come to the park, I look forward to the game. I saw I wasn't in the lineup, so I was working on trying to make some adjustments. I've been trying to do too much lately.''

 

"I haven't done too much before this, so it's nice to help us win,'' Rowand said. "It's a big series for us. There's a feeling right now that even if we get a few runs down, we can come back.''

 

Rowand is hitting 360 since his return on Jun 11.

 

''You knew he was working hard, but the fastball didn't come through like before,'' Olivo said. ''I don't know if he was that comfortable on the mound. That's why I go out to the mound a lot. But I don't know what is going on.''

 

In his start last weekend against the Cubs, Colon warned the coaching staff before the eighth inning that he was running out of gas and afterward he was diagnosed with tightness in his shoulder, according to Cooper.

 

''With all of our starters we really have started to monitor the sidelines [work between starts]. If you look at [Mark] Buehrle, Colon and [Esteban] Loaiza, they're in the top 10 in innings pitched in the league and in baseball. So the way we kind of diffuse that is to back off sidelines.

 

''He told me, 'I want to win the game. I'm ready and I'm going to throw nine innings today,''' Olivo said. ''I said, 'OK, here we go.' I don't know. He wanted to win the game and he wanted to be in the game for a long time.''

 

The fact he didn't have his best stuff and still gave the Sox 51/3 innings was a positive for Cooper.

 

''The guy has a heart of a lion and he's going to do that,'' Cooper said.

 

Skip his next start. After MIN we finish the 1/2 with the AL least.

 

While some players on both sides have said the crosstown series isn't bigger than any other, Williams doesn't buy it.

 

''Hell no it's not,'' he said. ''This is the Cubbies, man. This is for the bragging rights of Chicago. Our fans care about it very deeply as we care about it very deeply. Hell no it's not another series. Anybody that tells you any different is giving you propaganda.

 

''You see 45,000 people here. You won't find that next week.''

 

WAIT TO SET THOSE SCRUBS STRAIGHT KENNY.

 

KOTEK BOY:

When Jerry Manuel is getting jiggy with it, a party must be starting. But yes, Soxdom, the winds are changing. Your boys seem to have resurrected their peculiar year in successive interleague scrums against the Cubs, which qualifies on the South Side as winning the Powerball lottery on Christmas Day.

 

''We have a nice feeling right now,'' said D'Angelo Jimenez, the maligned second baseman who delivered the game-winning single in the ninth. ''No matter how many runs we're down, we believe we can come back.''

 

Most of the 45,000 fans stayed after a 36-minute rain delay late in the afternoon, more proof that this rivalry means more to Chicago than other interleague rivalries--including Yankees-Mets--mean to their towns.

 

Admittedly, I scoffed in the press box when my colleague, Carol Slezak, said ''home run'' only seconds before Rowand deposited Antonio Alfonseca's fastball into the left-field seats.

 

But he drilled the kind of clutch home run that turns pretenders into contenders. Or, in the Cubbies' case, contenders into pretenders.

 

Reality by KOTEX boy

Eerily, this can be traced back to last year's trade that sent Alfonseca and Matt Clement to the Cubs for Julian Tavarez and a little-known prospect named Dontrelle Willis. Since the high-kicking Willis was recalled from the minors last month, he has emerged as an incredible story and almost singlehandedly returned the Marlins to respectability. Sud-denly, Florida is reluctant to trade Lowell for fear of angering a fan base already devastated by the dismantling of the 1997 world championship team.

 

Without Lowell, the Cubs won't win the division. Without a better bullpen, they might not finish above .500.

 

Carol Slesak

With apologies to Baker, that the last two losses have come against the surging White Sox is at the moment the least of the Cubs' problems.

 

Rick Telander

At the start of this season, it was clear Rowand was not completely healed from his accident and was totally overwhelmed at the plate.

 

Batting under .140, he was sent to the minors in May and had his swing dissected, trashed and totally reconstructed with the help of coaches such as Greg Walker.

 

The fact is, he was 8-for-60 (.133) before going to the minors and is 9-for-25 (.360) since.

 

"To be honest with you,'' Manuel said in a postgame aside, "Alfonseca is a 'down' pitcher. And Aaron looks like he's hitting stuff down well.''

"I didn't expect that,'' he said. "But I expected something good.''

 

"It was awesome,'' Rowand said. "I was on cloud nine. But we weren't done.'' No, that would come with Jimenez's single, which sent the Cubs home as lovable losers once again.

[witesoxfan]

Alfonseca left a mistake out over the heart of the plate for Rowand, and he hit it a ton. Plain and simple.

[JUGGERNAUT]

It wouldn't be fair to single out the Times.

 

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...eball/whitesox/

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sp...eball/whitesox/

By Teddy Greenstein

 

As soon as D'Angelo Jimenez's ground ball slipped past Mike Remlinger's glove and darted into center field, Jose Valentin made a mad dash for first base.

 

A day after beating the Cubs with a ninth-inning homer, Valentin was determined to be the first White Sox player to congratulate Jimenez on his own game-winning hit.

 

"Who's the man?" Valentin screamed at Jimenez.

 

"I am the man today," Jimenez replied.

 

 

By Paul Sullivan

But "El Pulpo" gives up a one-out walk to Armando Rios before Willie Harris grounds into a fielder's choice. Harris steals second, and Alfonseca promptly serves up a 390-foot, game-tying home run to Aaron Rowand, pounding the mound with his right fist in disgust. It's déjà vu all over again.

 

By Teddy Greenstein and Paul Sullivan

"There's noise," he said. "Everyone's yelling and hollering. You throw a strike and the crowd goes crazy. You can hear it, and you like that."

Loaiza, who didn't face the Cubs last weekend at Wrigley Field, said that in terms of intensity, his only comparison would be Game 3 of the 1999 American League division series.

 

Optical illusion?

The Cubs are only three games over .500, but Dusty Baker contends his team is on par with the Yankees, Giants and some other winning ballclubs.

 

Prime-time player

 

Carlos Lee went 3-for-5 Saturday, boosting his lifetime average against the Cubs to .333 with eight homers and 30 RBIs.

 

"I think Carlos is becoming one of those big-game players," Manuel said. "He likes the atmosphere, the full house, people getting on him. He's always put together good at-bats when the pressure's on."

 

Rick Morrissey

The life, the energy that was missing earlier in the season? It's back. In the fifth inning Saturday against the Cubs, with Frank Thomas on first, Carlos Lee fisted a Carlos Zambrano fastball to left-center. Lee hustled into second and surprised second baseman Mark Grudzielanek, who thought the odds of Thomas and Lee running hard were about the same as them taking up 17th Century Norwegian poetry.

 

And Manuel celebrated on the field by pumping his fists to the crowd.

 

Now that's life.

 

KW: "The other side for me was that our fans are still passionate about our chances."

 

In the last three weeks, the Sox have won both series against the Cubs (they go for their fifth victory in six games Sunday); won series against the Dodgers and the Twins; split a series with Boston; and lost two of three games to San Francisco. All those teams are contenders.

 

It has been Williams' contention all along that the Sox were built for a marathon this season. That makes them one of the few teams able to overcome a poor start. And it was one of the reasons neither Williams nor Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf panicked.

 

Bartolo Colon gave up six runs and walked seven Saturday. The Sox probably couldn't have crawled out of that sort of hole in April. But the life has returned to this team. Manuel deserves some credit for the resuscitation.