CHICAGO 7, MINNESOTA 4 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Thursday, June 27.

Batting stars:  Torii Hunter was 2-for-4 with a triple.  A. J. Pierzynski was 2-for-4.  Corey Koskie was 1-for-2 with two walks.

Pitching star:  Juan Rincon pitched 5.1 innings of relief, giving up two runs on six hits and a walk and striking out five.

Opposition stars:  Paul Konerko was 4-for-5 with a home run his eighteenth.  Ray Durham was 2-for-4 with a three-run homer (his fourth) and a walk.  Magglio Ordonez was 2-for-4 with a double and a walk.

The game:  The White Sox got four consecutive singles in the first, but only managed one run.  They made up for it in the second, as Durham hit a three-run homer to make it 4-0.  Royce Clayton singled home a run in the third to give the White Sox a 5-0 lead.  The Twins got on the board in the fourth, as Hunter tripled, David Ortiz doubled, and Pierzynski singled to make it 5-2.  Hunter singled home a run in the fifth to cut the margin to 5-3, but Konerko homered leading off the fourth to give Chicago a three-run lead again at 6-3.  The Twins got one back in the seventh on a sacrifice fly, but that was as close as they would come.  The White Sox got the game's final run in the ninth.

WP:  Gary Glover (3-3).  LP:  Rick Reed (6-4).  S:  Keith Foulke (9).

Notes:  Denny Hocking replaced Luis Rivas at second base.  He went 1-for-4...Bobby Kielty was 0-for-2 with two walks to make his average .333...Pierzynski raised his average to .323...It was Rincon's first appearance for the Twins in 2002.  He had played in four games for them in 2001.  The 5.1 innings were not the longest outing of the season for him.  I'd forgotten this, but he made three starts for the Twins in 2002, all in July.  They were the only three starts of his major league career, although he made 124 starts in the minors and was primarily a starter through the beginning of 2003...Ray Durham was a very consistent performer throughout his career.  He played all but one inning of his career at second base, playing an inning of center field in 2005.  He came up to the White Sox in 1995 and was their starting second baseman through July of 2002, when he was traded to Oakland.  He was with the Athletics the rest of that season, then went to San Francisco, where he played from 2003 through July of 2008.  He was traded to Milwaukee the rest of that season and then ended his playing career.  From 1996 through 2006 he had a batting average between .270 and .297.  From 1998 through 2004 he had an OPS between .800 and .850.  He hit in the teens in home runs every year from 1996 through 2007 except for three--2001 and 2006, when he hit in the twenties, and 2004, when he hit eight.  He made the all-star team in 1998 and 2000, but there's nothing that really differentiates those years from any other in his career.  His best year was 2006, when at age thirty-four he batted .293/.360/.538 with twenty-six home runs.  He also rarely was injured, playing in 150 or more games from 1996 through 2002 and never playing in less than 110.  He was another guy who was never really a star, but if you had him on your team you knew second base was taken care of, and that's pretty valuable.

Record:  The Twins were 44-35, in first place by six games over Chicago.