QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Sep 11, 2012 -> 12:23 AM)
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- U.S. Cellular Field, the White Sox's home park, is about a 90-mile drive from South Bend, Ind., home of Notre Dame.
Neither that proximity nor anything else will prompt Jim Leyland to use Knute Rockne-type oratory before his team opens its four-game series tonight against AL Central-leading Chicago.
"There are no rah-rah speeches," the Tigers manager said. "If I've got to go out there and remind these guys that we're in a pennant race and the stakes are big right now, we've got a problem -- then we don't have the team I thought we had. These guys know what's at stake."
However, Leyland might want to repeat the exhortation that fabled Cubs announcer Harry Caray often made over the Wrigley Field PA system just after singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at the seventh-inning stretch:
"Let's get some runs!"
Leyland said: "There are several great races going on in baseball right now. There are a lot of people in the same boat we are, fighting to try to get to postseason. But we're going to have to score more than one or two runs to get there. That's just a simple fact."
He said that on Sunday morning. On Sunday afternoon, the Tigers lost for the fifth time in six games. In all five losses, they've scored two runs or fewer.
Winding down: This series will mark the final four games of the season between the Tigers and White Sox. "They're important, everybody knows that, but it's not the end of the season," White Sox manager Robin Ventura told reporters Sunday. "You still have to play well for the end of the season."
freep.com/sports
Amazing how he takes a story that has nothing to do with Notre Dame or the Cubs and he makes it all about Notre Dame and the Cubs.
