It's always sweet to beat the White Sox, but to eliminate them from the playoffs while humiliating them works, too.
1) It would have been sweeter if the Sox looked like they gave a shit
Could a team mail in a game any more than Chicago did last night? I thought I saw UPS labels on the backs of the players instead of their names.
Seriously, a significant part of Chicago's success last season was defense: they had marvelous starting pitching and pounded the ball, but the defense really excelled. This season they replaced the fan favorite but not very wise Aaron Rowand with Brian Anderson, a guy whose bat is so paltry it's hard to believe he's in the majors ... except that his defense really is exceptional. And then the Tribe started hitting the ball last night, and Anderson joined his teammates in a giant So What Festival, botching one play for an error and letting another "double" go under his glove without any effort to block it. Shin-Soo Choo was credited with a "double" on what was basically a ground ball to second (Iguchi's range normally extends to that spot). Jon Garland gave up 12 hits and 3 walks in 5 1/3 innings, and although he didn't get much help from his "defense" (which included more butchery from both Juan Uribe and A.J. Pierzynski), didn't give them much of a reason to sell out for him, either. The Sox offense contributed 5 hits and was so eager to leave the building, 5 of the 8 batters that faced noted blunderbuss Andrew Brown swung at the first pitch.
Normally, I'd be against kicking a man when he's down, but in this case, the White Sox deserved all the kicking they could expose themselves to.
2) Taking advantage
The White Sox may not have wanted to be there, but Cliff Lee wasn't going to look their gift horse in the mouthal region. Lee threw a relatively efficient 7 innings in 104 pitches (71 strikes), yielding 4 hits and a first-inning run with 4 Ks and a pair of walks. Actually, Lee did a terrific job getting out of the first, and the Tribe's 4-run bottom of the frame seemed to give Lee the confidence to bear down. Of the six baserunners he allowed, three of them were in the first, when he loaded the bases with nobody out. He got Thome to fly out for their only run, and got Paul Konerko to bounce into a double play. A ground ball! Those are handy sometimes.