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The White Sox are in Southern California, so let’s go with a show business theme to start.

Me: I’ll take White Sox for $200, Alex.

Alex: Poor fielding, bad baserunning, mental errors, mediocre pitching, and a lack of production from the meat of the order.

Me: What caused the Sox to lose to the Angels 5-4 last night?

Let’s take ‘em one by one.

• In the first inning, Juan Pierre and Alexei Ramirez made errors that led to a run off Mark Buehrle.

• In the seventh, Tyler Flowers tried to advance from first to third on Brent Morel’s grounder to second. Flowers, of course, was thrown out, violating baseball maxim of never make the third out at third base.

• In the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied, L.A.’s Erick Aybar singled and went to third on pinch hitter Alberto Callaspo’s single. Gordon Beckham failed to cover second on the play where there would have been a play on Callaspo trying to take the extra base. That took away the potential double play and forced Ozzie to change strategy by walking Maicer Izturis to face Peter Bourjos instead. Bourjos poked a single to score Aybar, and this game was o-vuh.

• Mark Buehrle struggled all night, giving up four runs in his six innings, though the first of them was unearned. Jason Fraser couldn’t retire Bourjos with the game on the line.

• The third through sixth hitters – Paul Konerko, Alex Rios, Alexei Ramirez, and Adam Dunn – were 2 for 15, with one RBI.

The one RBI and one of the two hits belonged to Konerko. It was Paulie’s 2,000th career hit, which begs the question of how likely is he to reach 3000. I hate to say it, but I’m afraid the answer is “not very.” It’s taken Paulie 1,970 games to reach 2,000 hits, so at that same rate, he’d need another 985 games to accumulate another 1000 hits. Even if he played in every game, Paulie would need another six seasons. He’d be 41 by then and it’s far from clear that he’ll be playing at that age, let alone continuing to be as productive as he’s been till now. But, hey, there are only 28 guys who are in the 3000 hit club, so it’s no shame for Konerko not to join.

Go Sox!