White Sox’s Buehrle a favorite in clubhouse

DETROIT (AP) — Mark Buehrle already had a no-hitter on his resume when the White Sox left-hander threw his perfect game against Tampa Bay on Thursday.

So the surprise isn’t so much that he retired all 27 batters he faced, but in how he does it. Buehrle doesn’t overpower batters like Randy Johnson or Nolan Ryan, but he has a style that works just fine. Call it the Buehrle Way: Work fast. Throw strikes. Change speeds. The key is that he doesn’t waste a lot of pitches.

He threw 116 of them on Thursday in a game that lasted 2 hours, 3 minutes. Buehrle was on the mound for only 32 minutes.

“When you face him, you have to be ready to hit because he’s gonna throw strikes,” said White Sox slugger Jim Thome. “He’s gonna work quick. There’s not a whole lot of time to think.”

“The next thing you know, you’re in the seventh inning, going ‘Where did this day go?’ ” Thome said.

Working fast doesn’t mean Buehrle flies under the radar. The 30-year-old pitcher is, after all, a four-time All-Star who is 133-90 with a 3.76 ERA in his 10 major league seasons, all with Chicago. He just goes about his work quietly, with little fanfare. Even Thursday, with excitement building as the Rays batters kept going down 1-2-3, Buehrle was staying loose in the dugout, smiling and chatting with teammates.

In seemingly no time at all, he had pitched the 16th perfect game of the modern era.

Manager Ozzie Guillen and his players say no one deserves it more.

“You ask his teammates. It couldn’t happen to a better guy,” the manager said.

Thome called Buehrle a “tremendous, tremendous” guy.

“Genuine. As good as any teammate I’ve ever played with. No question. He gets it. ... I think that comes from his family. He grew up in the Midwest,” Thome said.