There were a couple of comments left over night that the White Sox/Athletics game was pretty bad. The White Sox lost it on an error by Jermaine Dye when he dropped a routine fly ball. Ray Ratto describes it as a Lucy skit.

Facing Chicago's Mark Buehrle, who had already won games that lasted 1:51 and 1:39, with Bruce Froemming and his squash-court strike zone behind the plate to help usher along Buehrle and Oakland's Tim Hudson as impersonated brilliantly by Rich Harden - it was a platinum opportunity to come out, get a stadium blanket, watch a game and still be home in time to watch "The Shield."

Now if that isn't the national pastime at its best, you just don't know how to have a good time while keeping your car running in the parking lot.

But therein lies the game's inherent beauty - the realization that on any given night, everything you know to be true about the game turns out to be utterly false, and delicious, messy fun because of it.

There were five errors, two wild pitches and a balk to go along with 27 hits and eight walks. It wasn't a night for pitching and defense.

Kendall, Chavez, Kielty, Byrnes and Swisher each had two hits to break out of slumps. Oakland is not an inherently bad offensive team. They're going through a collective slump. If they collectively come out of it, runs will be plentiful in the Coliseum.