Chicago ? A know-it-all baseball scribe from the East Coast put in a call to the White Sox’s general manager, Ken Williams, as the club was getting off to a best-in-the-bigs record of 15-4.

Williams quickly came to realize that the guy thought the Sox’s start was a stroke of luck, an aberration, a fluke.

“I’m sorry that you don’t like our manager,” Williams says he told him.

“I’m sorry that you don’t like our 3-4-5 hitters. Or our closer.

“I’m sorry that you don’t like our third baseman and our shortstop. Or our left fielder and our right fielder.

“I’m sorry people feel this way about our club. But I also want you to know something about that:

“We don’t care.”

The White Sox are white hot.

Going into a game Monday night in Oakland, the Sox already had as many victories as Cleveland and Detroit combined. Not to mention nearly twice as many as the New York Yankees.

Williams phoned from North Carolina, where he spent part of his weekend watching the Sox’s wonderfully named Class-A team, the Kannapolis Intimidators, in a game against the equally charming Hickory Crawdads.

Congratulated on the Sox looking so good so far, Williams laughed.

“This is the first voice of optimism I’ve heard,” he said. “Thanks.”

That writer who broke down his team’s supposed shortcomings, position by position, obviously didn’t see the White Sox as any kind of intimidators.

Williams said, “Oh, I guess I can understand that. If there are people who are maybe not looking at us as a team to be reckoned with, I’m sure it’s because when they see a team lose a Carlos Lee or a Magglio Ordonez, they tend to ask: ‘So how can your team be better than it was?'”

Well, maybe it won’t be.

For now, though, the White Sox are the talk of the game, if not the town. Chicago has been a little distracted by the Bulls’ playoff run and the Bears’ draft day, but bit by bit, the Sox are beginning to catch the public’s eye.

How hot are they?

Well, as of Monday they had four .300 hitters (Willie Harris, Joe Crede, Scott Podsednik and Tadahito Iguchi). None of their five starting pitchers had a losing record. Paul Konerko shared the majors’ lead in home runs with seven. Relief pitcher Dustin Hermanson’s earned-run average? A perfect 0.00.

So hot are the Sox, they had a man (Crede) who took a 14-game hitting streak into Sunday’s game in Kansas City … and batted him last in the order.

Is everyone hot? No.

The Sox committed four errors Sunday in a victory that manager Guillen immediately branded “ugly.”

Don’t forget, though, it was a Sox team of 1983 with a motto of “Winning Ugly” that might have given Chicago its best shot at playing in a World Series in the last 46 years.

It is way, way, way too soon to tell if the 2005 Sox are ugly, bad or good.

But they do have more self-confidence after a winter’s overhaul. They can exhale about a calculated risk they took on Iguchi — yes, he can play — and have their fingers crossed that Crede’s team-high hit total and Jon Garland’s 3-0 start are proof that the club’s patience is being rewarded.

Some believe the Sox aren’t as strong as they seem, that they won’t keep this up, can’t keep this up. But as Williams put it, that’s the thing.

They don’t care.