Third helped them go forth

And they did. The Red Sox beat the White Sox last night by a 12-8 score, and Jose Contreras did not get out of the third inning. Make that the amazing third inning.

It was one of those hang-around-long-enough-and-you’ll-see-everything innings in which the Red Sox produced six more two-out runs on a pitcher’s error, a walk with the bases loaded, a wild pitch for another run and a three-run homer by Mike Lowell, turning a 4-1 Chicago lead into a 7-4 Red Sox advantage. And that was after scoring their first run on a perfectly-executed double steal attempt on which J.D. Drew stayed alive long enough between first and second to allow Jason Bay to score from third. Conventional, this wasn’t.

Oh, and here’s a surprise. Ozzie Guillen was not pleased.

“We didn’t lose the game,’’ he fumed. ‘We gave it away. All my respect to those guys, but when you make those mistakes, I guess [with] that type of ball club you’re going to get hurt.’’

The Red Sox had 13 more hits, and it’s a good thing because Clay Buchholz did not exactly build on that nice start in Toronto. “He was pretty inconsistent,’’ declared manager Terry Francona. Buchholz was given a 9-4 lead but he couldn’t even stick around long enough to be eligible for the W. Francona had a ballgame to save, and he couldn’t be worried about Buchholz and his stats when, after giving up a hit to Scott Podsednik and walking Jim Thome, he gave up a three-run homer to Paul Konerko that made it a 9-7 game in the fifth. Sorry, kid, but the skipper had seen enough.

The Red Sox had to work for this one, and things really didn’t get comfortable until they came up with a three-run eighth inning uprising off Octavio Dotel. There were two outs and no one on, which is generally the case these days, when Drew homered, Alex (3-for-4) Gonzalez doubled, Jacoby Ellsbury tripled into the left field corner and Dustin Pedroia doubled into the alley in left-center.

So this offensive uprising continues. The Red Sox have scored 65 runs in their last seven games.