"It was a tough first 10,000 wins," [Ryan] Theriot said with a chuckle. "I hope the next 10,000 are easier."

We are in uncharted territory.

Not just for the 10,000th win in franchise history -- a 7-6, come-from-behind, extra-inning thriller over the Rockies -- but for the 15-6 start which is now tied with the Diamondbacks for the best record in baseball.

Here are all the Cub teams since 1900 that have started the season better than 15-6:

1907: 17-4.

That's it. Four other post-1900 Cub teams (1906, 1932, 1969 and 1975) also started 15-6, and a number of 19th Century teams were 15-6 or better (the best, the 1879 club, went 18-2 with one tie), but the 2008 Cubs are now in the upper echelon of great starts by this 132-year-old franchise. The 1975 team is the outlier in that group -- they were playing over their heads and wound up 75-87 in fifth place in the old NL East -- but the rest of them were all either pennant winners, World Series winners... and we won't talk about the 1969 team, as you all know how that wound up.

The Cubs also won their fourth extra-inning game on the road last night (and haven't lost any -- the only extra-inning loss this year was on Opening Day at home). The last time the Cubs won four extra-inning games on the road was 2004 -- but that year, it took them till August to do that.

Winning anything on the road, particularly at Coors Field where it rarely seems to matter how big a lead you get, is always gratifying. I want to give thanks right here and right now to the thousands of Cubs fans who made the "Let's Go Cubbies!" and "Fukudome!" chants audible -- loudly -- on the CSN telecast (although at least on my cable system, Comcast in Chicago, there was no audio at all on the HD feed for the first few minutes; later they did fix this problem). I know some of that came from BCB readers who posted here that they were attending last night's game.

Rich Hill pitched -- well, okay, considering that his career ERA coming into this game at Coors Field was somewhere orbiting Mars. He walked four, but got out of most jams mostly unscathed; his boxscore line shows he allowed two runs, but only one of those -- a Clint Barmes HR -- scored while he was in the game. Four Cub relievers contributed to the rest of the Rockies' five-run sixth inning, giving Colorado a 5-3 lead.

Then the Cubs clawed back, scoring one run and executing a double steal (when's the last time you saw that happen?) in the 7th, making it 5-4, then taking the lead 6-5 with two strikes and two out in the 9th on Aramis Ramirez' long home run 3/4 of the way up into the LF seats.

Just as Manny Corpas blew a save with two out in the 9th, so did Kerry Wood, allowing a single to Scott Podsednik (Len & Bob noted how much Pods looked exactly like he did as a White Sox, with the Rockies' very similar sleeveless uniforms) and a triple to Ryan Spilborghs, after retiring the first two Rockies in the 9th on strikeouts.

But the Cubs would not quit, and manufactured a run in good style in the 10th, the winning run being driven in by Ryan Theriot in the 2008 "Have A Different Hero Every Day" Cub style. Carlos Marmol finished it out uneventfully -- isn't it nice to know that after your closer comes out of the game for a pinch-hitter, there's someone else right behind him who can also close?

Finally this morning, apologies from me and SBN for the massive outage last night which was caused, ironically, by a server upgrade which was done the night before (if you recall, I'd made this post Tuesday night alerting you to what was supposed to be a short planned outage). Trei and the tech team are hoping we're past the issues, which were caused, we are told, by "bad RAM"... however, they are going to monitor traffic later today when more game threads get going. Apologies from me and know that they're doing everything they can to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Uncharted territory. This is also the first time in Cub history that they have had two separate winning streaks of five games or longer in April. Keep it going. I'll have a game thread up later this morning for the 2:05 CDT start.

See, told you I wouldn't forget.

"I stayed at home the other night and watched that "Cubs Forever" show," he said. "Every once in a while teams should be forced to watch stuff like that and realize how much it means to the city and to the ex-players that have been here, and how lucky we are to get a chance to put on the uniform and play in front of these people.

"I just got a kick out of how much it would mean to the former players if we were able to do it. Sometimes during the course of the year you hit the dog days and lose sight of the overall goal of what you're playing for.

"Every once in a while, to pop a tape in like that would fire you up. I was watching that thinking, 'Man, it's pretty special playing here.' "

Which player experienced one team's 10,000th loss and another team's 10,000th victory in back-to-back seasons?

Lieber, of course, was a Phillie last year when they lost for the 10,000th time in franchise history. The Phillies are the only team with 10,000 losses. Tonight, the Cubs could become the second (after the Giants) with 10,000 franchise wins.

A big thank you to the Rockies for moving game time back to 6:35 Mountain time, which makes the start earlier in Chicago. I still remember when most night games in the Midwest started at 8:00 local time instead of 7:00. But those were the days when most games didn't last more than two hours, either.

Today's Starting Pitchers

R. Hill Cubs vs. F. Morales Rockies 1-0 W-L 1-1 3.86 ERA 6.60 11 SO 5 10 BB 11 1 HR 1 vs. Col -- vs. Cubs

There's a pretty good chance, actually, that this game could drag on for a while. Rich Hill is exactly the type of pitcher who pitches poorly in Colorado -- someone who relies on a big breaking curveball, which doesn't break in the thin air of Denver. Hill is 0-2, 11.32 at Coors Field in his career, the only starts he's made against the Rox.

Franklin Morales (he doesn't look too happy in that picture, does he?) hasn't been a paragon of control this season (11 walks in 15 innings), and the Cubs have been patient hitters this year, so perhaps they can get the bases clogged up with runners tonight. Morales is making his first career start against the Cubs.

Check out our SBN Rockies site, Purple Row, for the Rox fan view of this short series.

And unlike yesterday, I have remembered to schedule an overflow thread; it will post at 9 pm CT.

Today's game is on CSN Plus. That's CLTV in Chicago, and different channels on digital cable and satellite, and also at the MLB.com Mediacenter.

MLB.com Gameday (2007 version)

MLB.com Gameday (2008 version)

Baseball-reference.com game preview

Discuss amongst yourselves.