It's Gotta Be The Hat

Last Christmas Jeff got as a gift, a Cubs cap where the "C" lights up, with little red flashing lights.

So he wore it last night, and they won, and so he wore it again. I wore the same hat too, but we had to remind Jeff -- the lights only go on when the Cubs are batting, and off when the opponent is. "Hat off!" "Hat on!" Those were the commands.

They worked again -- as did the "Rally Oreos" that Carole, who felt sick and didn't come tonight, gave me to distribute to everyone. On my low-carb diet, I didn't have one last night or tonight.

Gosh, if we are this superstitious, what must it be like for the players?

After some nervous time in the ninth, Joe Borowski nailed down Mark Prior's 16th win and the Cubs beat the Mets 3-2.

It was about the sloppiest 13-strikeout game I've ever seen -- Prior was all over the place, going deep into counts and even though he seemed stronger as the game went on, he was obviously gassed in the 9th inning. Borowski didn't look that great, but he did strike out Roger Cedeno (who had homered earlier, despite the efforts of two people who went to great lengths to bring two large green signs, one that read "Cedeno", the other "You Suck") to end it, and with his 30th save became the first Cub pitcher since Rod Beck had 51 in 1998, to register 30 saves in a season.

That wasn't the only history tonight. The crowd of 39,534 broke the all-time Cub season attendance record; with four dates remaining the attendance is 2,844,087, or 155,913 short of 3 million. 38,979 per date will break the magic barrier which people said the Cubs could never draw in Wrigley Field. Most likely, unless they have a huge walkup sale tomorrow afternoon (come on out if you're in Chicago -- the weather's supposed to be spectacular!), they'll come out about 10,000 short of that milestone.

There were about 60 people wearing orange Mets t-shirts in the CF bleachers; turns out they are family and friends of Mets rookie CF Jeff Duncan, who is from the Frankfort/New Lenox area. Duncan did start in CF, but flied out and struck out, and wound up being removed from the game, as did half a dozen people who showered Roger Cedeno with beer after he made a nice running catch on an Aramis Ramirez drive in the 6th. Several of the people security took away protested their innocence, and we all thought, sure, we've heard this all before. Turns out they were right, as security finally found the real culprit and threw him out.

Howard gave me an interesting and funny book written by the rabbi at his congregation, "Is God (Still) A Cubs Fan?" I haven't finished it yet, but it's worth getting. It'll make you laugh, and we could all use a few of those these days.

The Astros and Cardinals are both winning at this writing, so the standings likely will not change before morning. Will update the top of the page later on.

Keep hope alive. There's still lots of time.