Oh, Well.

You always want to see a boost to a team, especially on the road, after a big emotional win like the 17-inning win at Milwaukee on Thursday. When a team goes on a streak right afterwards, it's always a good sign.

Guess the Cubs were still pretty tired after Thursday's game, because they looked pretty listless in their dispiriting 7-4 loss to the Cardinals last night in St. Louis. We watched with our friends Carole & Ernie. Carole made a nice low-carb dinner for all of us, good thing, especially because who would have wanted to fill up while watching that kind of game? Plus, after the game I helped them hook up their new DVD player to their new surround-sound system. Pretty cool sound!

One thing the pitching staff has to to is stop hitting people. Matt Clement didn't throw that bad a game -- and because the bullpen had been used up on Thursday he had to throw 116 pitches -- but he hit three batters and two of them scored, and you can't win games that way.

I was amused at J.D. Drew's 514-foot HR, because it appeared to hit his own picture on the video board in RF, right in the nose. Serves him right, plus the photo, at least on TV, appeared yellow. Very odd looking visage.

Even worse was Dusty Baker's quote in the paper today, praising his bench (a good thing, but read on) -- specifically naming Lenny Harris, Troy O'Leary and Tom Goodwin.

OK, Harris and O'Leary have done a good job, and O'Leary in particular has stepped up since he was thrust into the starting lineup after the injury to Sammy.

But loyalty can go too far. Tom Goodwin wasn't a good bench player in his good years, even last year for Baker's Giants. And he is having a miserable year this year, hitting .161 with no walks, and had a terrible day as a leadoff man yesterday. When will Dusty admit defeat on this one and allow the Cubs to release him and put a right-handed hitting CF on the roster?

The good news is that Mark Prior is throwing today, and he's been a very good losing streak stopper so far this year. Today is also the first Fox-network broadcast of the season, and I presume that Fox will simply use Joe Buck, their lead announcer, on this game since he's already in St. Louis as the Cardinals' lead announcer. Will be interesting to see if Buck can tone down his Cardinal rooting for this regional telecast, which is going to most of the Central time zone.