Buehrle to get opening day start for White Sox

— -- TUCSON, Ariz. -- Esteban Loaiza passed on the chance to start the season opener for the Chicago White Sox to repay a favor to Mark Buehrle, who gave up his final start last season for Loaiza. "I think it was real class and real unselfish," new White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said Monday. "They treat each other like professionals. They treat each other with respect. Having that in the third day, the fourth day of spring training, it shows me the character of these kids. It shows me that we have something nice going right now here and, hopefully, it will keep up all year. Buehrle, who will start his third straight opener, gave up his final turn last year so Loaiza could bid to join Fernando Valenzuela as the only Mexican-born pitchers to win 21 games. Buehrle gave up a chance to reach 15 wins for the third straight season. "I kind of wanted to keep my streak of 15 consecutive wins going," Buehrle said. "My agent said something about that, I had two, and I wanted to keep three going. Esteban had the year he had, in my mind I was giving it to him, but I had other people trying to talk me out of it. The year Esteban had, he deserved to try to go out and tie the Mexican record." Loaiza beat Kansas City, finishing 21-9 with a 2.90 ERA, and went on to place second in voting for the AL Cy Young Award. Buehrle went 14-14 with a 4.14 ERA. Buehrle will not only start the opener, but is slated to get his first career start in Yankee Stadium that first weekend. Loaiza starts the second game against the Royals and gets the home opener for the second consecutive season. "Owed him a little favor, especially because I want to start the first game in Chicago," Loaiza said. He added, "It's just a little gift from me to him, like he gave me last year." Buehrle was more than thankful. "It was a classy move what Esteban did, he remembered what I did for him last season," Buehrle said. "It's going to seem like two opening days for me. Pitching in Yankee Stadium, there's going to be a huge crowd, fans are going to be going crazy, so it's almost going to be like pitching opening day or pitching the first day of a series. Both first games for me are going to be big."