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ANAHEIM -- If this keeps up, Don Cooper will be getting more exposure in the New York tabloids than New Jersey flood victims, beleaguered subway riders and John Gotti Jr.

Cooper, a New York native, is respected throughout baseball for his fine work as pitching coach of the Chicago White Sox. The man did, after all, coax a Cy Young Award-caliber season out of Esteban Loaiza two years ago. He's under contract with the Sox through 2006, but that hasn't stopped Newsday, the Daily News and the Post from floating his name as a potential replacement for Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre.

Maybe the events of this October will help pad Cooper's resume. More likely, he couldn't care less. After watching Jose Contreras, Mark Buehrle and Jon Garland dominate the Angels in the first three games of the American League Championship Series, Cooper sounds more like a proud father than an ambitious job seeker.

"These guys are the goods," Cooper said Friday night. "My gosh. I don't know if we could ask anything more than what they're doing. That's all I can say -- wow."

While Paul Konerko led the way with a homer, two singles and three RBI in Chicago's 5-2 victory, the White Sox lead this series 2-1 because of a pitching staff that's stifled the Los Angeles lineup and sent the researchers scurrying for historical precedents.

Chicago's starters have pitched at least eight innings in the first three games of the series. The last time that happened in consecutive postseason games, Bob Walk, Tim Wakefield and Doug Drabek were doing it for the 1992 Pirates.

Buehrle and Garland became the first pitchers to throw back-to-back complete games in an ALCS since Tommy John and Bruce Kison did it for the 1982 Angels. Garland, age 2 at the time, was in the potty-training phase of his career.

The White Sox are making the L.A. lineup look hapless while rendering the bullpen phone irrelevant. In the first three games of the series, Neal Cotts is the only Chicago reliever who has made an appearance in a game. He threw a total of seven pitches in the series opener.

Cliff Politte had to feel special Friday night when he stopped flipping sunflower seeds long enough to actually warm up.

"I feel like I'm throwing 100 miles an hour down there because I've had so much time off," Politte said. "A lot of guys are teasing us because we're so well-rested. Maybe we'll have to start throwing some simulated games."

Scouts and baseball executives have envisioned big things for Garland ever since the Cubs selected him with the 10th pick in the first round of the 1997 draft, but he took a while to develop. In 1998, the Cubs sent him cross-town to the White Sox in a deal for Matt Karchner. And in the winter of 2001, Sox general manager Kenny Williams tried to trade Garland to Anaheim for Darin Erstad, Chris Singleton and a couple of pitching prospects, but the Angels' Disney ownership group rejected the deal.

Garland, a quiet Southern Californian, won 12 games three straight times from 2002-2004, but the labels always suggested something was missing. He was considered too passive, too prone to giving up longballs and losing his concentration and getting dinged for big innings. The Chicago writers reflexively referred to him as a surfer-boy type, even though he never did much surfing.

This year marked a transformation. Garland cut his walks from 76 to 47, reduced his home runs allowed from 34 to 26, and embraced the notion that he could be a better pitcher by subtracting velocity rather than adding. He relied more on his changeup and won a career-high 18 games in the process.

	“	The guy wasn't dogmeat before this year. He was just young and he wasn't ready to give the things that everybody expected. ... The norm is what happened with Jon. You give a few beatings and you take a few beatings, but you get to where you want to go. ”
		— Chicago pitching coach Don Cooper on Garland

"The guy wasn't dogmeat before this year," Cooper said. "He was just young and he wasn't ready to give the things that everybody expected. When a player comes to the big leagues and kicks butt and the rest is history, that's the exception to the rule. The norm is what happened with Jon. You give a few beatings and you take a few beatings, but you get to where you want to go."

Garland's biggest obstacle against the Angels was rust. He hadn't pitched since Oct. 1 against Cleveland, and as everybody knows, excessive time off can be death on a sinkerball pitcher. So Garland improvised in Game 3, throwing fewer sinkers than usual and relying on a rising four-seam fastball in the low-to-mid 90s. And truth be told, he wasn't quite as stale as it might have appeared. He'd thrown a simulated game five days earlier, then a spirited side session, and was good to go.

Garland made his pitching coach happy by approaching the Los Angeles lineup in full attack mode.

"The big thing I always watch with Jon is aggressive rhythm and tempo and driving the baseball," Cooper said. "If you're not coming at a hitter with the first three pitches to dictate the count, what are you doing? You're either gonna suffer a slow death, or maybe you'll survive. You're not looking for either one of those outcomes. You're looking to dominate. So let's go. Let's get after them."

Garland's only lapse came in the sixth inning, when he allowed a two-run homer to Orlando Cabrera on a pitch above the belt. That prompted a mound visit from catcher A.J. Pierzynski to keep him in the right frame of mind.

"I was upset with the pitch I threw and mad at myself because I shook him off and he wanted something different," Garland said. "A.J. came out and calmed me down a little bit. It was like, 'OK, jump back on the mound, and here we go.' "

Garland whiffed Vladimir Guerrero to end the sixth, and retired the Angels in order over the final three innings to wrap it up in a tidy 118 pitches. Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen, a coach on the 2003 Florida Marlins world championship team, is pushing his starters this postseason in much the same way Jack McKeon did two years ago. The only thing missing is the cigar fumes.

If there's collateral damage in the person of a few antsy White Sox relievers, who cares?

"I love it because these guys work their asses off," Cooper said of Chicago's starters. "They deserve the success they've had during the season, and they've put themselves in a position to be here now -- the only game in town."

Will Freddy Garcia maintain the theme in Game 4 of the series Saturday night? Nobody knows for sure. But Contreras, Buehrle and Garland couldn't have set the bar any higher.

Jerry Crasnick covers baseball for ESPN Insider. His book "License To Deal" has been published by Rodale. Click here to order a copy. Jerry can be reached via e-mail.