White Sox turn skeptical owner into a believer

CHICAGO – The most surprised man in Chicago, now that the Cubs will have to share the postseason spotlight with the crosstown White Sox?

How about White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who on Tuesday was at his most brutally honest in the aftermath of his team's tense 1-0 win over the Minnesota Twins in a one-game playoff for the American League Central title.

Had Reinsdorf's faith wavered in the last week?

"Absolutely," he said. "When we lost those three games last week in Minnesota, I thought we were done. These guys, what guts they have. But after we got swept up there, I thought we were dead."

The Chicago White Sox came home to extend their losing streak to five games before winning three consecutive elimination games against three different opponents – the Cleveland Indians on Sunday, the Detroit Tigers in a makeup game Monday, and last night the Twins, who mustered just two hits against Chicago left-hander John Danks and closer Bobby Jenks and were sent home by Jim Thome's home run in the seventh inning that landed somewhere in Indiana.

"To beat three different teams in three days, thank God for the Kansas City Royals," said Reinsdorf, acknowledging that there would not have been a playoff unless the fourth-place Royals had beaten the Twins twice over the weekend.

"A little thing happened this weekend; I don't know if people noticed. The Royals, the Indians, the Tigers, they were out of it, but they all played their asses off. They could have just packed it in.

"In any other sport, when you have a team that is in position to win and the other team is going nowhere, they don't even show up, but these guys, it's really a great tribute to our game the way those teams played."

Few had anticipated that either the Twins, shorn of ace Johan Santana and star outfielder Torii Hunter, or the White Sox, 90-game losers in 2007, would be playing for a winner-take-all trip to October. Neither team played well down the stretch – the White Sox were 11-15 in September, the Twins 11-14 for the month before Tuesday night's showdown.

But before a sellout crowd of 40,354, most of whom adhered to the Sox-mandated "blackout" dress code and were given black towels to wave, making U.S. Cellular Field look like a gathering of Trappist monks, the Twins and White Sox spun a beauty.

"How ironic was it that (Gavin) Floyd pitches last night in a do-or-die situation, and Danks finished it off tonight, with Bobby's help," White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper said, referring to two young starters who won a total of seven games in 2007.

"These were the guys with the question marks. Nobody was counting on them when the season started. Let the record show, those question marks are now exclamation points. That's what we set out to do, the whole year."

Danks walked Twins leadoff man Denard Span to open the game, walked Nick Punto with one out in the third, but did not give up a hit until Michael Cuddyer opened the fifth by lining a double to left. Cuddyer took third on Delmon Young's fly to center, then tried to score on Brendan Harris' fly ball to Ken Griffey Jr. in shallow center. Catcher A.J. Pierzynski fully extended his glove hand to snare Griffey's one-hop throw to the left of the plate, then absorbed a body blow from Cuddyer.

How did Pierzynski hold onto the ball?

"That's what I asked him," Cuddyer said. "My only play was to go for his arm, and he made a great play."

Griffey, picked up from the Reds in an August waiver deal, is returning to the postseason for the first time in 11 years. He didn't hit much for the White Sox – a .249 average in 41 games and just three home runs in 131 at-bats – and was a controversial choice by White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen to play center field, despite range drastically curtailed by age and injuries.

"If Griffey doesn't make that play," Guillen said afterward in his media conference, "all you guys would be crucifying me right now, 'Why do you have Griffey playing center field?' "

On Monday, Guillen had tweaked Twins rookie pitcher Nick Blackburn, saying he deserved little credit after beating the White Sox in the Metrodome last week. But after Blackburn took a scoreless tie into the seventh until Thome hit a 461-foot blast over the hedges in center field, Guillen made certain that he was heard giving props to Blackburn.

"I tip my hat to Mr. Blackburn today – he deserves some credit. The Minnesota Twins should be proud of the way he threw."

Harris would collect the Twins' only other hit, a one-out single in the eighth, but he was erased when Punto rolled into a double play.

"I'm out here still shaking," said the 23-year-old Danks, who said he came to the park fortified by a Bible verse his mom had read to him. "This is the best feeling I've ever had in baseball, maybe in my life."

Thome's father, Chuck, and his twin sister, Jenny, were among the family members who crowded into the clubhouse for the postgame celebration.

"I wrote the script for this one," Chuck Thome said. "I can't even begin to tell you about that one. I know he's so happy, because he's been down a little."

Jenny said: "I've been texting him every day. Just keeping it positive."

Reinsdorf threw his arms around the neck of his plowhorse-sized slugger.

"I saw you do that so many times for the (expletive) Indians," he said. "Thank you for this one."

And so the White Sox head for Florida to play the Tampa Bay Rays in a series that opens Thursday, while the Cubs, feted in a City Hall rally Tuesday afternoon, stay home to meet the Dodgers on Wednesday night in Wrigley Field. Could the last to qualify truly end up first?

"Anyone in the tournament is capable of winning," Reinsdorf said. "Look at what the Cardinals did in '06. They won 83 games and won the World Series.

"We might go out in three, or we might go all the way. This team, getting here, when no one gave us a chance in the spring, everybody was crapping all over Kenny (Williams, the general manager). He didn't have enough pitching, how could he rely on Danks and Floyd, and he went and got Carlos Quentin. And the Cuban (rookie second baseman Alexei Ramirez)? Unbelievable. Just fabulous.

"One hundred and sixty-three games, and one run separated these teams. Unbelievable."