KANSAS CITY -- The Royals are still 0-for-Chicago. This time, they blew another healthy lead and, of all things, got beaten on a balk.

The first-place White Sox defeated the Royals for the fifth straight time this season, 7-6, on Wednesday night as 16,502 fans observed the latest rash of misfortune at Kauffman Stadium.

"They've beat us five times now, and they're just going to try to keep coming back until we beat 'em," Royals pitcher Brian Bannister said. "And we need to break their confidence a little bit."

The Royals' confidence remained high, though, even when the White Sox wiped out the 5-0 advantage that Bannister enjoyed after three innings. He got into trouble because of an old college rival, Carlos Quentin.

Quentin smashed a two-run homer in the fourth inning and another two-run blast in the sixth, both with Nick Swisher on base. The home runs were Quentin's 20th and 21st of the season.

"He has as small a strike zone as there is, the way he squats down there," Bannister said. "We went away [with outside fastballs], and I would have hit the glove twice if the ball had gotten there. And he took two good swings."

Quentin couldn't remember what he did against Bannister in college. Neither could Bannister, not that it mattered.

"It's strange," Bannister said. "He went to Stanford and I went to USC. I've faced him for years now. He used to stand very upright, almost Griffey-esque, as a right-handed hitter. He's completely different now."

Hunkered down low these days, Quentin uncoils like a snake and bites pitchers throughout the land.

John Buck's solo homer gave the Royals a sixth run off right-hander Javier Vazquez, but the two Quentin blasts cut the lead to 6-4. His first homer sailed 407 feet over the center-field wall and his second landed on top of the left-field wall and bounced over.

The White Sox came within a run with an unlikely event in the seventh -- Jim Thome, a great slugger but an ungainly sprinter, scored all the way from first base on Alexei Ramirez's two-out double.

"The ball got stuck under the wall," Bannister said. "That's how Thome was able to score from first."

Surely enough, center fielder David DeJesus was in pursuit, but stopped. He was waiting for a bounce off the wall when the ball stuck under the padding.

"I was thinking, 'What do I do in this situation?'" DeJesus said. "But you could see it, so I was all, 'Right, I'll go pick it up.'

"Then you have to go and dig it out, and even [Thome] could get around [and score]."

At that point, Bannister was lifted, after giving up five runs on just four hits.

"Other than the home runs and the two doubles, he did a great job," Royals manager Trey Hillman said. "But it's discouraging to see the same mistake made to the same hitter."

Robinson Tejeda relieved Bannister and stranded Ramirez at second, but in the eighth, Tejeda issued two walks and was replaced by Ramon Ramirez. Orlando Cabrera stole third, Jermaine Dye struck out and Thome rolled a single through the Royals' right-side shift to score Cabrera and force a 6-6 tie.

With two out and Quentin on third, Ramon Ramirez was working on Paul Konerko when he looked to catcher Buck for a sign.

"I put down the sign, he didn't shake yes or no," Buck said. "So I decided to put down another one. As I was doing that, he was coming up set. He saw that I put down the other one and stopped.

"Konerko saw that and said, 'That's a balk. Time out.'"

A balk was called by home-plate umpire Dan Iassogna and Quentin trotted home to score what proved to be the deciding run. Hillman said the balk was accurately called, although the ump certainly got a prompt from Konerko.

"What happened was that the hitter called the balk at exactly the right time," Hillman said. "And he actually probably called it before the home-plate umpire did."

The umpires always get a lot of volunteer help.

The Royals stirred in the bottom half of the inning, when Mark Grudzielanek and Ross Gload each notched their third hits of the night, both singles. Billy Butler came up, and Hillman, who admitted he was wrong in asking Butler to bunt the night before, decided against a sacrifice attempt this time. Butler grounded sharply into a double play. (He had bunted into a double play in Tuesday night's 13-inning loss.)

Former Royals closer Octavio Dotel pitched the ninth for the White Sox and struck out Buck, DeJesus and Mike Aviles to earn the save, his first this season.

And just like that, the 2008 Royals were 0-5 against the White Sox.

"If we're going to move up in the standings, we need to beat these guys, because they're on top," Bannister concluded.