Morning Box Score
By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jul 4, 2009 3:20PM
White Sox Roll Past Royals
The White Sox hit lucky 7 last night as they won for the seventh-straight game, rolling by the Kansas City Royals 5-0. John Danks pitched lights out, shutout baseball for 7.1 innings to secure his seventh win of the season and Scott Linebink locked down 1.2 innings of scoreless pitching for the save. A.J. Pierzynski homered in the second inning, a solo shot, to give the White Sox all the offense they would need, but just for good measure the Pale Hose added four more. The Sox took advantage of a Royals error in the third allowing Jim Thome and Paul Konerko to get an RBI each and the Sox would score again in the fourth and seventh innings. The Royals threatened twice late, once in the eighth and once in the ninth, but Linebrink was able to get the Royals to ground into double-plays both times. As for Danks, his catcher summed it with one word: "Strikes." Pierzynski continued, "Quality pitches early in the count, keeping his pitch count down. You saw it tonight -- strike one on a lot of hitters. And if he's falling behind, he has enough pitches with the changeup, curve and cutter to get guys out." The Sox are still 2.5 games out of first and go for their eighth straight win today at 12:10 p.m. (CSN).
Cubs Edge Brewers in Extras
Don't look now, but the Cubs have put together a little winning streak. And at the right time, too. The Cubs edged the Brewers 2-1 in extra innings for their third straight win and fourth in their last five games. Carlos Zambrano had a quality outing, allowing only one run on five hits over seven innings and helped his own cause by singling in a run in the fifth. That RBI tied the game at 1-1 after the Brewers had gotten a run in the fourth. Typical for the Cubs, they failed to take advantage of having runners in scoring position, going 1-for-11. The heroics for the Cubs came in the bottom of the tenth when rookie Jake Fox battled off several foul balls and eventually earned a bases loaded walk (albeit on a very close pitch) to bring in the winning run. With the win, the Brewers fell out of first place in favor of the Cardinals, whom the Cubs trail by 2.5 games. After the game, Zambrano said, "This is a game we have to come through in. We have to beat these guys. St. Louis is coming, and we have to play good against them. I wish we could go with the same mentality that we had today against every other team. If we play like this against any other team, we'll be tough to beat." The Cubs look to extend the winning streak to four today at 12:05 p.m. (WGN).
Stars Cloud Sky
The Chicago Sky got a nice performance from Armintie Price off the bench (17 points), but it wasn't enough as they lost on the road to the San Antonio Silver Stars, 85-72. Canidce Dupree added 13 and Chen Nan had 12 in the losing effort.