Short Hops: Who wears the pants in this family?

It was one of those “all in the family” moments when Ozzie Guillen blistered his team after a poor series in St. Petersburg two weekends ago. The volatile White Sox manager basically called upon GM Kenny Williams to clean house. Then, suddenly, Guillen wouldn’t even clean his own pants. It’s come to light that he harbors a superstition of laundering them only after losses so, throughout a seven-game winning streak that ended just yesterday, the grandiloquent Guillen was all soap box and no soap.

Nick Swisher was one of the players singled out in Ozzie’s indictment. After a third straight loss to Tampa Bay, he was puttering along at .201. As it happened, he had trouser trouble, as well. The centerfielder, known to be as flaky as Guillen, went on an 11-for-26 tear with four homers and 10 RBI during the winning spree, capped by a performance against the Twins in which he became just the seventh White Sox player to homer from both sides of the plate in the same game. Swish identified two factors that roused him out of his slump: “The way [Ozzie’s] gotten on me; he’s got me working so hard...and also I started wearing Toby Hall’s pants.”

AFTER 86 YEARS...THERE’S ALWAYS A FIRST TIME

Yankee Stadium is running out of time to keep making history — but it’s doing its best. The 86-year-old facility, which has hosted many of the most memorable moments in baseball annals, will be taken out of commission after this season. Yet things are still happening there for the very first time...two things in the past week alone, in fact.

Last Thursday, Jason Giambi was the first player ever to hit a two-out, pinch-hit home run that turned a deficit into a walk-off victory there. His three-runner beat the Jays, 9-8. And from June 6-9, Jose Guillen became the first visitor to the Stadium to desecrate it with at least four home runs and 10 RBI in a series.

HIT AND RUN

Short Hops’ recurring installment of slapdash observation and imprudent opinion:

The Yankees aren’t exactly doing their part to send their ballpark out in style. Their record has stood at an even .500 22 times already this year. Perhaps it’s time to officially label them “mediocre.”

The Dodgers went 11 games without getting a hit from a shortstop.

Richie Sexson played in 173 games without getting three singles in any of them. While that, at first glance, may seem unusual for an every-day player, consider that Tony Clark once went 662 over the course of almost seven years without doing it.

Between 1956 (as far back as baseball-reference.com’s database goes) and 1991, no pitcher made a start in which he yielded as many as eight earned runs despite allowing fewer than four hits. It’s been done three times since then, though — by Randy Johnson (who walked 10 in his “effort”), Kerry Wood and now Dontrelle Willis, on Monday against the Indians.

Remember when Ken “600” Griffey Jr. was a 19-year-old prodigy bouncing around with Mariners? Now he has a 14-year-old son.

QUOTABLES

“It’s some kind of comedy with me in left field. I’m just trying to drive in more runs than I give up.” — Greg Norton after several defensive misadventures in Atlanta’s injury-depleted outfield.