CHICAGO: When the Indians' game highlight is Victor Martinez getting his foot stuck in a bucket, you're pretty safe in assuming it was not a good night for the Tribe.

But at least the hitting didn't trigger the 7-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night at U.S. Cellular Field. It didn't do much to advance the Indians' cause, either, but in analyzing the defeat, there was something else on which to focus.

For the first time in 19 games, Tribe pitchers gave up more than six runs. The Sox did their damage off three pitchers: starter Paul Byrd, who gave up five runs and five hits in 51/3 innings, Jorge Julio, who was charged with one run in 11/3 innings but let in two for Byrd, and Craig Breslow, who yielded a solo homer.

But enough of the nuts and bolts. It's showtime!

With one out in the fourth, Martinez whacked a line drive to center that was dragged down by Nick Swisher. Martinez trotted to the dugout and angrily kicked a white plastic bucket filled with small bags of sunflower seeds. Nothing wrong with a little emotion, right? But Martinez's shoe went through the plastic, and he was unable to extricate himself from the bucket. As Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore sat on the bench trying not to be totally overcome by laughter, head trainer Lonnie Soloff bent down and removed the bucket from Martinez's spikes, without having to resort to surgery.

Manager Eric Wedge said he didn't see what happened, but he didn't seem surprised that one of his players would be overcome by the frustration of losing five games in a row and the club's inability to mount an attack.

''I don't think they're happy,'' he said. ''I don't think they should be. This is where the toughness comes in. You can't hang your head. You have to be strong.''

For 42/3 innings, Byrd did not allow a hit, but Swisher broke the spell with a single to right immediately after David Dellucci had taken away a double from Joe Crede, who drove a ball to the fence in left. The third out of the inning also was a line drive hit by Alexei Ramirez, but it was caught by Casey Blake at third.

''Byrd threw only 55 pitches the first five innings,'' Wedge said. ''It just got away from him in the sixth.''

In retrospect, Byrd's fifth foreshadowed the tragic sixth, an inning that included a missed call by an umpire that cost Byrd (2-4, 4.10 ERA) at least two runs and maybe more.

Orlando Cabrera led off the inning with a single, and Byrd walked A.J. Pierzynski, which preceded a turning-point type of event. Carlos Quentin slapped a ground ball to third that began a third-to-second-to-first double play.

Except first-base umpire Paul Schrieber didn't see it that way and called Quentin safe. Replays disputed the ruling and so did Wedge, but, of course, that changed nothing.

''It was frustrating for me,'' Byrd said. ''But I can't react that way when an umpire misses a call.''

So instead of two outs and a runner on third, the Sox had runners at first and third with only one out, bringing up Jermaine Dye, who crushed a 2-and-1 pitch, sending it far over the fence for the first three runs for the White Sox. If not for the missed call by the umpire, it would have been two runs.

Two singles later, Jorge Julio relieved Byrd and let in two more runs, one on a sacrifice fly that would have been the third out of the inning had Schrieber got the call on Quentin correct.

''Instead of giving up a sacrifice fly to Dye or trying to make a good pitch,'' Byrd said, ''I tried to strike him out, and I'm not a strikeout pitcher. My ball flattens out when I try to do something like that.''

Byrd lamented the fact that he gave into his emotions and did not focus all of his attention on the hitters.

''I was going for my 100th win, and my wife was sitting in the stands, and I want to stop our slide,'' he said. ''I was thinking about those things when I shouldn't have been.''

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, anyway, because Julio gave up a solo homer to Dye in the seventh, and Breslow (remember him?) — who hadn't pitched since May 10 — gave up a home run to Jim Thome with nobody on base.

The Indians' attack consisted of Michael Aubrey's second major-league hit and second major-league homer plus consecutive doubles by Ben Francisco and Hafner that accounted for run No. 2.

The operative statistic: When the Indians score three or fewer runs, they are 6-19.