Games in early April against the Kansas City Royals aren’t supposed to be big, but I say the White Sox rallying to win 10-7 in 12 innings this afternoon was huge.The good news for the Sox is that Detroit has already been exposed as a pretender. The AL Central is a two-team horse race, the Twins and Sox.The bad news is the Twins started on the road against their worst two matchups, the homer-happy Blue Jays and Yankees, and after Tuesday’s semi-miracle comeback against the Yankees, Minnesota was on the verge of being tied with the White Sox, who had opened against the dreadful Indians and perennial loser Royals.Normally, I’d say opening against bad teams is a bad thing; I’d rather play them in August when they are 20 games behind and have lost all hope of respectability. But Kansas City is the exception. With a farm system that reportedly has more top prospects than any minor league system in the draft era, I say play KC now before it calls up its star kids.The Sox NEED to get off to a better start than the Twins. And they weren’t doing that. Until they scored four runs in the ninth inning today off Kansas City’s one star pitcher, Joakim Soria, regarded as perhaps the best closer in all of baseball now that Mariano Rivera has become a graybeard.Today’s comeback win was as big as you can ever get playing in Kansas City in April.Minnesota sent Chicago a shot by coming from 4 runs down in the eighth to beat the Yankees. The White Sox answered right back with an equally stunning comeback.This might go on for months. If it does, it will be a heck of a race.
