When the White Sox got off to a hot start last year, manager Jerry Manuel said he’d wait until the Bud Billiken Day parade to determine just how good they really were.
Manuel doesn’t need to wait until this year’s parade Aug. 11 to figure out the 2001 Sox.
Cleveland bombed Sean Lowe early to sweep two games from the Sox, cruising to a 10-3 win Thursday night behind Jim Thome’s two home runs and four RBIs.
Cleveland and Boston are eight games ahead of the Sox in the wild-card race, with the July 31 trading deadline looming.
“I think it’s a little bump in the road,” Manuel said. “I continue to feel we will compete.”
It took the Sox 105 days to climb out of their hole and back over the .500 mark–and only two days to fall under it again. Even without the injured Juan Gonzalez and Ellis Burks, the Indians offense was too much for the Sox, outscoring them 19-7 in the mini-series.
“I made some good pitches that got hit and I made some bad pitches that got smoked,” Lowe said.
The Indians led 3-0 in the third when Thome and Marty Cordova crunched back-to-back home runs off Lowe (5-2) on consecutive pitches. After a single, a walk and an RBI double by Einar Diaz made it 6-0, the antsy crowd of 23,450 was calling for Lowe’s removal.
Manuel ignored the catcalls and left Lowe in, hoping to save his bullpen. The Sox pulled to 6-2 and had two on and one out in the seventh before John Rocker struck out Mark Johnson and retired Royce Clayton on a fly to right.
Bob Howry served up four runs in the eighth, including a towering two-run blast by Thome, his 22nd home run in his last 51 games.
And there’s just a little longer than three weeks to Bud Billiken Day.
