A rock-solid Contreras

With two out in the eighth, Jose Contreras just jogged off the mound after a strong pitching performance and received a thunderous ovation from the 40, 717 on hand today. Contreras was impressive, as advertised, allowing just two runs on eight hits. Seventy of his 100 pitches were for strikes.

Meanwhile, for all the talk of Ozzie Guillen pitching around David Ortiz to challenge Manny, Ramirez certainly didn’t take advantage of any of Contreras’ offerings. Ortiz was 2-for-4 at the plate, Ramirez, 0-for-4.

Ramirez started to hear it from the left field crowd too in the top of the ninth, as the fans did their best Fenway Park, “Dar-ryl” drone by chanting, “Man-ny, Man-ny.” You thought they dug their chants at Fenway, you haven’t seen anything.

Of course, A.J. Pierzynski interrupted the party with his second homer of the game. That would be a club record five home runs in a postseason game for the White Sox. Bronson Arroyo is now in the game. So, how does Boomer feel about going nine tomorrow?

— Believe it or not, with the 11-run lead, not too many blue seats can be seen at US Cellular, nearly all still occupied even with the laugher on hand.

— We’ll file some postgame reaction here about an hour or so after things are finally finished here. Stay tuned.