When it's do-or-die, these White Sox only know 'do'

CHICAGO -- Well here they go-go again. The Chicago White Sox. Never take the easy way when there are so many more difficult and interesting paths. Those White Sox. Exactly where we left them a week ago, still.

Hanging onto their season by a thread.

Jim Thome and Ozzie Guillen are no strangers to playing with their season on the line. (Getty Images)

(Now would be a perfect place to head off on a tangent and talk about at least one Chicago baseball team having fortitude and moxie, but maybe that subject is better discussed on a different day at a different time. Though, Sunday's game at the Park Formerly Known as Comiskey was delayed roughly 30 minutes by rain, and you did wonder if that was God crying because even He cannot help the Cubs.)

Anyway, scary thing with these White Sox is, the desperation, the sense that their aortas were about to explode from the tension ... that was all last week.

Why, as mid-season acquisition Ken Griffey was saying following the Sox's latest season-saving victory, this one 5-3 against Tampa Bay to extend their Division Series to Game 4 on Monday. ...

"It's fun. If you don't get up for these games, especially today's, you don't have a pulse."

Maybe you would think that's solely the opinion of a (nearly) 39-year-old graybeard who last played in the postseason in 1997 and knows this might be his last rodeo. Of course he's going to enjoy this.

But. ...

"We're not ready to go home yet," said outfielder DeWayne Wise, who has been sensational in filling in for the injured Carlos Quentin, hitting .400 with a home run and five RBI in this series. "We feel like we can still win this thing."

Be warned: Tampa Bay knows that's still possible, too, and the Rays are taking every precaution to make sure they don't let it happen.

"To think that you're just going to waltz through this whole thing is not a good thought," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "It's very unreasonable. They're very good. And they're very good in this building, also."

Fascinating thing about these death-defying White Sox is this: Just when it would seem the other, younger guys in the clubhouse have got to be melting to the floor like candle wax, they burn as brightly as ever.

It was only last week that the White Sox became the first team in major-league history to win each of its last three games of a season, all against different opponents (Cleveland, the rain makeup with Detroit and the one-game playoff with Minnesota).