Sunday, August 30th 2009, 4:00 AM
If your allegiance is pinstriped, then there was a whole lot to smile about amid the gloom and dankness of the South Bronx Saturday - a 10-0 laugher of a Yankee victory that prompted two operative questions: Was Sergio Mitre really that good or are the free-falling Chicago White Sox just simply this bad?
In the opinion of the always colorfully blunt White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, it was most definitely more of the latter. Assessing the hideous loss in which the Sox could muster only one hit off Mitre and Chad Gaudin but committed three errors in throwing the ball over the infield during the second of two four-run innings pitched by the hapless Jose Contreras, Guillen seethed: "I'm embarrassed and everybody in that room should be embarrassed. They're stealing money from baseball, and I feel like I'm stealing money from (White Sox board chairman) Jerry (Reinsdorf).
For sure, the beleaguered Sox, who have now lost six of their last seven to fall two games under .500 and effectively out of the American League Central division race, had plenty to be embarrassed about, starting with the fact that, other than Jim Thome's one-out, fifth-inning double into the right field corner, they barely hit a ball hard all afternoon against Mitre, who came into the game with a 6.82 ERA. Indeed, Mitre was in full command and looked as if he might give the entire Yankee bullpen a day off before he was felled by a liner off his right forearm by A.J. Pierzynski in the seventh on his 73rd pitch.
"I don't wanna take anything away from their kid who threw a good game, had a good sinker and got a lot of ground balls," said Guillen. "But you got to start second-guessing yourself when you go out and have more errors than hits in a game.
"I was watching a Little League game this morning and they played better than we did."
Watching the way the White Sox threw the ball around like Little Leaguers in the fourth inning, it was hard to disagree with him. After Derek Jeter led off the inning with a single and stole second, Contreras fielded Johnny Damon's comebacker and proceeded to throw the ball over the head of shortstop Alexei Ramirez in an attempt to get Jeter, who had drifted far off second. Second baseman Jayson Nix caught the ball behind the bag and compounded Contreras' error with a wild throw to third that skipped away from Sox third baseman Gordon Beckham as Jeter slid in safely and Damon wound up at second. A single by Alex Rodriguez and a double by Hideki Matsui then made it a 6-0 game and finished Contreras, who was starting this game only because Guillen had nobody else.
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