Mission Accomplished

Congratulations to owner Jerry Reinsdorf and “manager” Tony La Russa. Together, they’ve succeeded in putting a powerful stink on the White Sox that won’t go away anytime soon. The fruit of their labor was on full display last night against the Diamondbacks. White Sox jump out to a quick first-inning lead thanks to a Gavin Sheets’ three-run homerun? Not to worry. They’d be two runs down by the bottom of the second. And here’s how it happened: walk; catcher’s interference; single; walk; strikeout; single; walk; groundout. The wild pitch that preceded the inning-ending strikeout, unlike just about everything that went before, didn’t lead to a run. Want to see a team play without a hint of motivation? Right this way, as Sox hitters managed all of two hits from the second to the seventh innings against Arizona starter Merrill Kelly. They did pull to within 7-5 thanks to two runs in the eighth, but La Russa knew how to fix that. How? By bringing in Joe Kelly, of course. That’s Joe single-walk-single-Kelly, with Reynaldo single-sacfly-Lopez to follow. Final score, Diamondbacks 10 Sad Sox 5. I don’t know if anyone else saw it, but Lopez turned into a statue between pitches. He wasn’t so much shaking off rookie catcher Carlos Perez as he was telling him to drop dead. Not on the same page? More like not in the same zip code. What would a Sad Sox loss be without a La Russa bromide? Here’s the latest one after last night’s loss: “Worst thing you can do is get frustrated and depressed, discouraged. Get angry. Do something about it. That’s the message. Get some adrenaline pumping and get back to even.” [Tribune online story today] Wow, straight out of the mouth of Patton, or Napoleon. Or Bozo.