Never shed a tear for a professional athlete, but for a little while it’s okay to pity Jose Contreras.

“Jose,” someone may have said, “you’ve got two runs. Give up any more than that, and we’re dead.”

And Contreras, that shaky, shaky back end of a shaky, shaky rotation, went out and delivered in the toughest of circumstances. Was it the best game of his life? No. Was it the best anyone could’ve asked? Sort of.

So when the Sox somehow scratch three runs off of Roy Halladay – a veritable shelling where No. 32 is concerned – you can imagine the absolutely inhuman amount of pressure on the soul unlucky enough to pitch for the opposite team. Two runs. Two runs against a team mostly incapable of only two runs. Ice the hot bats. Quell the rolling thunder. Destroy at all costs and oh, by the way, you weren’t supposed to even factor into the Sox’ discussion until June.

And it’s easy to sit back and carp over yet another loss, yet another disparity between teams that rely on the home run and teams that don’t, yet another case of the South Side Power Company going 3-for-20 with not a walk between the five of them. But that would be trite, because those things are old news. Even the most casual observer knew the Good Guys couldn’t take down the likes of Roy Halladay, but that casual observer can at least take comfort; maybe they can’t knock off elite pitching. . . but they can come close. And that’s at least a step in the right direction.

So what have we learned from these visiting Blue Jays? That the Sox can’t beat aces, but they can’t beat nobodies, either. Somewhere in the American League, a rival team’s most average mid-rotation pitcher imaginable is watching video tape and wondering how long it will take him to refine his breaking ball. He has limited weapons. He relies on nothing spectacular. He is prone to disaster. He is the White Sox’ last hope for greatness.