CHICAGO -- It's highly unlikely that Lance Berkman will have to host a media session on a nightly basis to explain his latest ejection, but following the Astros' 5-2 win over the White Sox on Friday, it sure seemed like this was becoming a habit.

Over the course of seven hours, Berkman addressed two heated conversations he's had with umpires, which resulted in two ejections and, so far, one suspension -- which he's appealing.

The latest fracas occured in the fourth inning. Berkman took what he thought was ball three from White Sox lefty John Danks, but home-plate umpire Sam Holbrook called strike three and quickly received a less than favorable reaction from Berkman.

Berkman and manager Phil Garner, who had walked onto the field when he saw Berkman's displeasure, both maintain they were talking to each other, and not Holbrook, just before the ejection.

"That ball is at my letters, don't you think?'" Berkman recalled saying to Garner. "And Gar was like, 'Yeah.' That was it. And he threw me out of the game. I am more baffled than I am upset."

"Lance didn't say anything unusual," said Garner, who was also ejected. "He just said the ball was high, and when he walked off the field, he was actually talking to me. He turns around and said, 'The ball's high,' but he's actually talking to me.

"That was not an angry statement from him and I just didn't feel like he should have been thrown out of the ballgame. That's overreaction. I think the umpire was looking for something."

Still, the Astros were able to overcome losing their No. 3 hitter and later, his table-setter, when Hunter Pence was forced from the game in the seventh after straining his right hip flexor. The Astros received contributions from the entire lineup and were buoyed by a solid peformance from Chris Sampson, who admitted this was not his best night in terms of location.

Sampson yielded a solo homer to Tadahito Iguchi in the first and an RBI single to Rob Mackowiak in the fourth, but he kept the remainder of the White Sox damage to a minimum en route to his sixth win of the season.

"I didn't feel real good at the start of the game," Sampson said. "The sinker wasn't sinking, the slider wasn't sliding. I was just trying to keep throwing strikes and using my defense to keep us close in the game. The defense really came through for me tonight."

Pence, who struck out in his first two at-bats but doubled and scored in the fifth, is on day-to-day status but does not feel his injury will sideline him.

"I've pulled two of them before," he said. "When it tightens up like it did, and I try to ignore it and run through it, it pops really bad. So I learned whenever I do feel it, I can't run through it. We just have to get it loosened up again. It's just a cramp."

Pence and Berkman could both be in the lineup Saturday. That doesn't mean either is over their respective issues, but Berkman may have the bigger challenge ahead of him.

Berkman doesn't necessarily think the umpires are out to get him after his run-in with Ed Rapuano in Denver, but he does feel that officials are a bit overly sensitive in the area of players griping about balls and strikes.

"I'm not sure if I didn't get the memo that the umpires are going to have zero patience or what," Berkman said. "Generally, as long as you don't directly insult them personally, I've never had a problem questioning calls or letting a guy know that I was displeased with the way the call went.

"I've had two really quick ejections and both times, I'm still wondering -- what exactly it was that they took umbrage with? The only thing I can think of is if you know you're wrong, you get really defensive, and maybe they didn't like the fact that attention was brought to a questionable call. I don't know. I'd love to sit down with both guys who ejected me and say, 'Hey, what's the deal?' -- just hear what they have to say."

Asked if he felt he needs to be more careful because of what happened earlier this week, Berkman said, "Not really."

"I never have understood the whole showing up deal," he added. "When [players are] terrible, we have to face the music. Every time I go to the plate, it shows my batting average, my RBIs and my home runs. We can't hide from it.

"So if I disagree with the guys calling, if it turns out to be not the right call, nobody's perfect, right? Nobody expects those guys to be perfect, so to me, they shouldn't have a problem with somebody questioning whether or not the call was accurate."

Despite the tense moments during the game, the Astros were in high spirits following the win, one of the few they've had on the road lately.

"I hope it gets us on about a 25-game win streak," Garner said. "We haven't exactly built on any sort of momentum, so we're still trying to figure out how to get going here. Hopefully, it's a good thing for us."