White Sox hold off Rays' party

CHICAGO - If they were going down they didn't want to do it like their North side rival Chicago Cubs, who suffered the embarrassment of being swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series.

Many Chicago White Sox players, in fact, had predicted after their Game 2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays to fall 2-0 in the American League playoff series, that things would be different away from the dome and artificial grass of Tropicana Field and onto the real grass and open, cool-air U.S. Cellular Field.

For one game, anyway, in temperatures that dropped into the low 50s, far from the climate-controlled 72 degrees of Tropicana Field, they made good on that promise, staving elimination from the playoffs with a 5-3 decision over the Rays before a white hanky-waving crowd of 40,142, in a game delayed 35 minutes at the outset due to rain.

The White Sox received strong pitching from John Danks, the gutsy lefty, who had saved the White Sox last Tuesday with a 1-0 win over the Minnesota Twins in a one-game playoff for the American League Central division title. Faced again with a sudden death situation, Danks rose to the occasion again, able to get into the seventh before allowing a two-run homer to B.J. Upton.

While White Sox closer Bobby Jenks preserved the two-run lead in the ninth to earn the save, the Rays certainly didn't give up.

Down by four runs heading into the seventh, Rocco Baldelli walked to start the top of the seventh and he'd come around to score with two outs on Upton's first-pitch fastball that Danks left out over the plate.

The White Sox, considered slow and plodding, beat Tampa Bay at their own game, stealing three bases with two of them resulting in runs.

The White Sox had stroked 12 hits in a 6-2 Game 2 loss to the Rays and in doing so became the first team since the 1959 White Sox in Game 3 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, to collect 12 hits and score only two runs. The worm turned today.

The White Sox started off on the wrong end of the score, spotting the Rays a second-inning run on a beautifully-placed bunt single between the pitchers mound with two outs by Akinori Iwamura who hit a big homer in Game 2 to put the Rays in the lead for good, scoring Dioner Navarro, who hit an opposite-field double with one out.

It was all White Sox after that.

The Pale Hose tied it against Tampa Bay starter Matt Garza with a run in the third on a clutch two-out basehit by No. 2 hitter A.J. Pierzynski, who knocked in Dewayne Wise, who had walked and stole second base with two outs.

Remember Wise' name.

He was the fellow who struck for a three-run homer in Game 1. He also became the centerpiece of Chicago's three-run fourth inning when he stroked a two-run double after Alexei Ramirez hit a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to break the 1-1 deadlock. The White Sox loaded the bases off Garza when the first three batters reached - Jim Thome with a double, Paul Konerko with a walk and Ken Griffey Jr. with a single to right.

Wise, 30, who had played in 880 minor league games since his professional career began in 1997, has found his niche with the White Sox. For the most part he's supplanted Nick Swisher as the starting left-fielder, even though entering this season he had a putrid .201 average in 183 major league games.

Danks leveled off after a shaky first and second inning. The Rays put two runners on base and couldn't get a run in as Danks retired Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford to wiggle out of the jam.