White Sox take two out of three from Blue Jays

Todd Frazier (21)

Since when did Toronto Blue Jays fans start traveling well?

I feel like U.S. Cellular Field was overrun with Toronto fans this weekend -- especially during Saturday's game.

I blame White Sox management for the large quantities of visiting fans that have been populating the Cell this season. Seven years without a playoff appearance has led to fewer Sox fans wanting to come to the park and support the team, so that makes more tickets available for fans of the visiting club.

I get that, but that didn't make it any less annoying when I had the Toronto version of Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers seated to my left on Saturday.

I have little patience for fans who excessively celebrate mundane things, such as major league players executing routine defensive plays. On Saturday, I heard more "Wooooooooooo!" than I care to discuss. This fan seemed pretty excited every time a Blue Jays fielder successfully caught a pop fly.

Even though the Sox lost Saturday, they took two out of three in the series, and Mr. "Wooooooooooo!" can go back to Canada secure in the knowledge that his beloved Jays went 1-5 against the Sox this season.

Here's a look back at the weekend that was:

Friday, June 25
White Sox 3, Blue Jays 2: Todd Frazier's two-out RBI single in the bottom of the seventh inning scored Tim Anderson with what proved to be the winning run in a game that was nip-and-tuck throughout.

It's been an interesting season for Frazier, to say the least. His batting average has been hovering around the Mendoza line -- he's at .201 through Sunday's play -- and that has led to fans drawing comparisons between him and past Sox busts such as Adam Dunn and Adam LaRoche.

Thing is, Frazier has 21 home runs and 49 RBIs, which puts him on pace to hit about 44 homers and knock in 104 runs if he keeps this pace over 162 games.

LaRoche had only 12 homers and 44 RBIs for the entire 2015 season, and I struggle to come up with any key hits he had for the Sox.

Frazier needs to get more hits, no question about that, but at least he has provided some key hits at important times that have produced victory for the Sox. Friday night was the latest example.

Closer David Robertson escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the ninth to preserve this win. He struck out Edwin Encarnacion on a 3-2 pitch, then got Michael Saunders to pop out to shortstop to end a heart-stopping inning.

Saturday, June 26
Blue Jays 10, White Sox 8: Now I've seen everything. The Sox out-homered the Blue Jays, 7-1, in this game, but still managed to lose, thanks to poor starting pitching by Miguel Gonzalez.

Toronto had a 5-0 lead by the time it finished hitting in the second inning. The Sox fought back -- Brett Lawrie's inside-the-park home run was the first of back-to-back-to-back home runs that brought the South Siders within two runs at 5-3.

Dioner Navarro and J.B. Shuck went deep during the barrage against Toronto starter R.A. Dickey.

Lawrie would go on to become the first Sox player since Ron Santo(!) to hit a inside-the-parker and a conventional homer in the same game. Santo accomplished that feat June 9, 1974, in a loss to the Boston Red Sox at Comiskey Park.

Shortly after the Sox got back into Saturday's game, Gonzalez put them back in the hole by coughing up a three-run top of the fourth inning that extended Toronto's lead to 8-3.

The Sox chipped away, mostly with solo home runs. Lawrie went deep in the fourth and added an RBI single in the sixth. Anderson homered in the seventh. Alex Avila's blast in the eighth made it 8-7.

But Toronto scored two insurance runs in the top of the ninth to go up 10-7, which proved important when Adam Eaton hit a solo home run in the bottom of the ninth to cap the scoring.

Sunday, June 27
White Sox 5, Blue Jays 2: Chris Sale once again showed why he is the best pitcher in the American League with another masterful performance in the rubber match.

He shut the Jays out through the first seven innings, and needed only 99 pitches to get through the eighth. Sale struck out seven, walked only two and allowed five hits to pick up his major league-best 13th victory of the season.

The Sox got a three-hit day from Melky Cabrera and another home run from Anderson to build a 4-0 lead through seven innings.

Toronto finally chipped away at Sale with two in the eighth on solo home runs by Troy Tulowitzki and Junior Lake.

Shuck, of all people, answered with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth that made the Sox lead a little more comfortable at 5-2.

There would be no drama from Robertson on this day. He needed just 10 pitches to retire Josh Donaldson, Encarnacion and Saunders, all on lazy fly balls to the outfield. The Sox closer is now 20 for 22 in save opportunities this season.

The Sox have won two consecutive series and have pulled their record back to .500 at 38-38. Next up, three games at home against the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Ernie Banks makes an interesting comment about Ron Santo

While I was on vacation, I had a chance to read Sports Illustrated's annual "Where Are They Now?" issue. It's always a great read, full of interesting stories about sports figures of the past.

The cover story this year was about perhaps the greatest player in Cubs history, Ernie Banks, who hit 512 career home runs and earned consecutive National League MVP awards (1958-59) despite playing on mostly terrible teams throughout his 19-year career.

Banks was nearing the end of his career in 1969, when the Cubs had a nine-game lead as late as Aug. 16, only to spit it out and lose the NL pennant to the New York Mets. Naturally, Banks was asked about what happened for the SI article, and his answer was quite revealing. He pointed the finger right at fellow Hall of Famer Ron Santo.

"They say one apple can spoil the whole barrel, and I saw that," Banks told SI's Rich Cohen. "Before going to New York to play the big series against the Mets, I went to different players on our team and told them, 'We're going to New York, and when the game is over, there's going to be more media than you've ever seen in the clubhouse, so watch what you say.'

"So we get to New York, and lose the first game. Don Young dropped a fly ball, and that was it. We came into the locker room. I was next to Santo, and he just went crazy [blaming Young]. Young was so upset, he ran out. Pete [Reiser] had to bring him back. I had never seen something so hurtful."

Santo's comments ended up in the paper, and Banks said it caused a split in the locker room. The Cubs crumbled and lost the pennant by eight games.

For so many years in Chicago, we heard a lot of moral outrage about Santo being excluded from the Hall of Fame for so long. After his playing days were over, he became a beloved radio broadcaster -- mostly because he was an unapologetic homer for the Cubs -- and he was put on a pedestal because he raised a lot of money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

How could someone so great not be inducted into the Hall, people wondered? I would say comments like the one Santo made about Young that day in 1969 would be on the list of reasons why.

I always had the feeling that Santo was hated and despised by everyone who is not a Cubs fan, between his obnoxious heel-clicking after victories as a player, and some of the disrespectful comments he made about others at different points during his baseball career.

I'm not going to belabor the point, but if you were ever wondering why Santo wasn't inducted into the Hall until 2012 -- two years after his death -- now you know. He made his fair share of enemies in the game. You don't have to take it from me, you can take it from Ernie Banks, whose comment targets Santo as a central figure in the collapse of '69.

That's a take on 1969 that I don't think I had ever heard or read previously.