The air quality rating society has never crowned Detroit as the best place to breathe in a nice lung-ful of good air. The White Sox may have taken their last couple gasps of it, coming up sputtering and coughing. With today’s defeat at the hands of the spoiler Tigers, the Sox are now a full six games back of the Twins with 22 to play for both squads. The promising road trip started quite well with the unlikely sweep of the Sawx in Beantown, but these last three in Detroit could turn out to be the killers. The Twins are definitely on a roll, winning 11 of their last 13 and will look to cushion their lead this weekend in Cleveland.

The Sox only real hope is to get a huge boatload of help from those Indians who have six more against the Twins, have the best homestand of the season including sweeping the last set against the Twins and head out to the west coast only trailing by a couple. It’s not out of the question, but with the way Minnesota has been playing, it’s going to be really difficult.

Danks and Floyd need to put in quality starts like they’ve been doing all year, not like the last couple games in Detroit when they were off balance, getting behind in counts and putting the pressure on the offense to come back late. Ozzie and Coop have somehow been able to work through the injuries to the relievers (with a big nod to Chris Sale!), but there’s no more room for error from the starters. On offense, the Sox need to get going early in games because the later it gets, the tighter their bat grips are going to get. When the home plate ump is busy cleaning sawdust off the plate, it’s not good. Manny is not quite being Manny with no extra base hits now in 24 ABs since his arrival. He has been hit four times though, is it too much to ask of the Sox pitchers to play some chin music to someone in the middle of the other team’s order? Just a thought.

It’s going to take quite a bit to make up six with only 22 to go, otherwise the Twins are going to get into coast mode, get some quality time for their prospects and widen the smile of one big lefty gum-chewing DH.

I was ready. Hawk and Stone Pony were ready. All my southside brethren were ready. All ready for the first of three huge mid-week series between the White Sox and the Twins which would have a major bearing on the AL Central crown. So, what’s wrong? What’s wrong is that the Sox also may have been ready for the Twins series while they were supposed to be busy taking care of the lowly Orioles at Camden Yards. The Showalter O’s took 3 of 4 with last night’s victory, leaving the Sox and Twins in a dead heat going into this week’s series at the Cell.

The Twins come to town looking like they have righted the ship after a few brief hiccups this summer, and in the Twin Cities, when the ship (or party boat) goes wrong, look out. Just ask the Vikings. When it comes to Sox-Twins though, things have been going the Twins way so far this season as they have taken 6 of the first 9. Unfortunately for the Sox, this is how it has been going since the turn of the millennium. Ron Gardenhire replaced Tom Kelly at the helm of Minnesota’s Boat in the Hump Dome in 2002. Every year since, except for the Sox ’05 championship year and a 9-9 push in ’07, the Twins have won the season series. Overall, Gardenhire’s record against the Sox is 85-73. One could say that they are giving special attention to defeating their rivals in the Windy City, but this record is just consistent with their play against the rest of the league.

Ozzie took over for the Sox in 2004. His record against the Twins is 56-64, in ’09 and ’10 so far, it’s 9-18. Now, the Twins have had some very good teams, but the Sox were arguably better in at least a couple of those years. There is just something they have over us. Mauer? Well, yeah of course. Morneau, Gardenhire? There is no better example than the most recent tilt between the two AL Central titans. On 7/18, it looked like a sweep was going to be avoided, leading 6-3 into the bottom of the ninth at Target Field. But, Jenks came in, then Santos, faced a total of 6 batters, didn’t get anyone out and the Twins rallied for a 7-6 victory, completing the three game sweep. So, what is the problem? It has to be a mental thing. The edge. The mojo. Some sort of intangible advantage. Whatever it is, the Sox need to find it, use it and win at least 5 of these last 9 with the Twins, six of which are in Chicago. If it can be found anywhere, it can be found at the Cell, where the Sox have only lost twice since June 8th. All of the other games count of course, but these will be the keys to the Central castle this year.

The White Sox followed up another Ozzie Off Day Rant by blasting the Motor City Kitties 12-2 today in Game 1 of the day-night doubleheader, pushing the lead back to 1 1/2 games over the Twinkies. This was the makeup game from the postponed 5/17 contest. The Sox seem to shrug off and/or move past their manager’s sometimes nonsensical ramblings with such regularity, they make it look like it’s all part of some master plan. Ozzie followed it up this morning with some “clarifying” comments, saying that he just wants to show his support for one of his young hispanic talents, Dayan Viciedo. (the original rant was triggered by a question about the big young fella) Look, everyone knows, Ozzie knows, Viciedo knows, heck – my little 10 year old niece knows, that every team has plenty of Spanish speakers. What did I hear yesterday… MLB is something like 32% hispanic currently? Saying that translators are needed is obviously just another tactic Ozzie is attempting to employ to take the media in another different direction. Branching the conversations in as many different directions as possible serves to take the attention, and subsequently the pressure, squarely OFF his players backs. You know what? It’s working. The pressure was taken off Viciedo so much, he homered in his only AB today. Even Juan Pierre displayed the lack of pressure by hitting a homer, his first this year, 14th of his career! JP now hits a HR every 424.5 ABs, hope they don’t suspect him of juicing and deflate those power stats. Alexei with yet another nice game with four hits. Don’t stop now boys. Detroit is in a bad way at this point, sinking like an Oldsmobile in Lake St. Clair. Their home record is overinflated, it’s time to bring ‘em back to the pack. (of Indians and Royals)