California Sports Journal

The A’s scraped out a 9-7 victory over the white-hot White Sox Tuesday night, largely thanks to some timely hitting and a fortuitous series of Chicago misplays and fielding errors.

With the game tied 7-7 in the bottom of the eighth, former A’s outfielder Jermaine Dye botched a routine fly ball off the bat of Marco Scutaro. Mark Kotsay then walked, and Erubiel Durazo’s potentially inning-ending ground ball slipped right under the glove of Chicago shortstop Willie Harris, scoring Scutaro from second. Jason Kendall followed with an RBI single to left.

"It was just one of those freak things," said A’s centerfielder Mark Kotsay, who was one-for-four and threw out Chicago second baseman Tadahito Iguchi at home with the score tied 4-4 in the fifth.

"We caught some breaks tonight. Now we just gotta grind it out and get back into this thing," Kotsay said.

With the win, the A’s put the stop to two dubious streaks. Up until their four-run fifth inning, Oakland (10-11) had been mired in a 26 inning scoreless streak, and had lost three games in a row. The White Sox (16-5) are off to their best start in franchise history and had won eight in a row, but they committed four errors Tuesday night.

For the slumping A’s batters, it was a breakout night. The team racked up 13 hits, and their struggling star Chavez drove in three runs with a double and a two-run single.

He sat in the clubhouse before Tuesday’s batting practice experimenting with alternative ways to tape-wrap his bat handles. "I’m trying everything," he said, creating small ridges on the handle in hopes of an edge, "this is an old grip I used to use when I was younger."

Manager Ken Macha was heartened by his third baseman’s performance. "Chavvy came through with some big hits tonight," he beamed.

A’s starter Rich Harden (2-1) was pulled after 5.1 innings in his least effective outing of the year. He gave six runs, five earned, on nine hits, while striking out 4 and walking 2. 102 pitches, 67 strikes.