Thome's 541st Bomb and Danks 8 Inning Shut Out Propell White Sox to Playoffs

     The white sox are done. That's all I kept hearing along the streets of Chicago. The fans were in doubt after losing their 5th straight game towards the end of the season to stay a 1/2 game back behind the surprising Minnesota Twins. Finally the White Sox win the final game of the season beating Cleveland 5-1, but the Twins beat the Royals and stay a half-game and win the division right? WRONG. The Sox had one more chance to have a chance and played a make up game against the Detroit Tigers, and won causing a Tiebreaker in the AL central and a chance for the White Sox and Cubs to be in the playoffs for the first time since 1906, when the Cubs beat the White Sox in 6 games. All they needed was to beat the Twins, the team that had swept them the week before in Minnesota. Who do they call to the mound? A 23 year-old left hander who has pitched anything but good against the twins all year that goes by the name of Jon Danks. The Twins called their rookie Nick Blackburn in the biggest game of both pitcher's short careers.

    The game started off with Danks walking Danard Span only to later strike out Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau to end the inning. Nick Blackburn showed no signs of breaking as he went through batter after batter leaving this game up to a pitcher's mistake. Both Danks and Blackburn were pitching the games of their lives until the bottom of the 7th inning when Jim Thome went up to the plate and crushed a change up over the heart of the plate off of Blackburn that went a solid 450 ft to the party deck out of center field. Thats all Danks needed as he pitched his longest outing of the season and arguably the best outing of the season as he had a 2 hit, 8 inning shut-out and left it up to Bobby Jenks in the 9th who shut down the game after 8 hard thrown pitches.

    So the Chicago White Sox did the unthinkable....won the last three win-or-go-home games to make it into the playoffs. Something that has never been done before in Major League History. They did it behind the league leading and rookie record 4th Grand Slam by "The Cuban Missile" Alexei Ramirez and Jim Thome's 541st homer and ended the season after 164 games with an 89-74 record.

   Although they made the playoffs, they face the World Series favorite Tampa Bay Rays starting Thursday, with Javier Vasquez scheduled to make the first start. Can the home-run dependant White Sox do the improbable again?