CHICAGO 6, MINNESOTA 1 IN CHICAGO

Date:  Tuesday, July 1.

Batting stars:  Cristian Guzman was 2-for-4 with a double.  Matthew LeCroy was 1-for-4 with a home run, his seventh.

PItching stars:  J. C. Romero struck out three in a perfect inning.

Opposition stars:  Mark Buehrle pitched eight innings, giving up one run on eight hits and no walks and striking out five.  Frank Thomas was 2-for-4 with a home run (his eighteenth), a double, and three RBIs.  Brian Daubach was 2-for-4 with a home run, his third.  Sandy Alomar was 1-for-3 with a home run, his second.

The game:  Willie Harris led off the game with a single and Thomas hit a one-out two-run homer in the first inning.  With two out Daubach hit a home run to make it 3-0 White Sox after one.  Alomar homered in the second to make it 4-0.

The Twins opened the third with a pair of singles, but a double play took them out of the inning.  Neither team really threatened after that until the sixth, when ground-rule doubles by Magglio Ordonez and Joe Crede increased the Chicago lead to 5-0.  Thomas doubled home a run in the seventh to make it 6-0.

The Twins got their lone run in the ninth when LeCroy led off with a home run.

WP:  Buehrle (6-10).  LP:  Brad Radke (5-8).  S:  None.

Notes:  Dustan Mohr was in left field in place of Jacque Jones.  Bobby Kielty was in right.  Jones would not return to the lineup until July 17.

Corey Koskie was 1-for-4 and was batting .308.

As often happened, Radke did well after the first inning.  Still, his line was 5.2 innings, five runs, eight hits, no walks, and five strikeouts.  His ERA went up to 5.76.

Johan Santana allowed a run in 1.1 innings to raise his ERA to 2.51.

This was the second time in five days Buehrle had shut down the Twins.  After scoring ten runs off him in 3.1 innings on May 16, the Twins had managed just two runs in 17 innings.

Radke's ERA in the first inning in 2003 was 6.00.  Overall it was 4.49.  For his career, his ERA in the first inning was 5.05.  Overall it was 4.22.

Record:  The Twins were 43-39, in second place in the American League Central, a half game behind Kansas City.