Mike Fontenot, your plane may be leaving for Des Moines soon.

Last night's 5-3 Cub loss to the Reds wasn't all Fontenot's fault.

Well, wait. Yes, it pretty much was. Fontenot's error on what would likely have been an inning-ending DP ball (yes, I know you can't assume a DP, but a major league 2B has to make that play) opened up the first inning for the Reds to score three unearned runs.

And Fontenot's ill-advised dash to home with the bases loaded and one out in the 9th, on a Francisco Cordero wild pitch that didn't squirt too far away from Paul Bako, probably cost the Cubs at least one run and maybe a chance to tie the game. Incidentally, just like the replay of a play in Toronto on Sunday showed that the White Sox got jobbed on an obvious tag in the infield, replays appeared to show that plate umpire Tim Welke was blocked from seeing Fontenot's foot possibly getting in under Cordero just before Cordero tagged Fontenot; he may very well have been safe.

Still, as Fontenot himself admitted after the game, it wasn't a very good decision.

There was another error made by Mark DeRosa, with two out in the third inning, that would have ended the inning had the play been made. Adam Dunn, the next hitter, nearly hit a ball into Kentucky for a two-run HR that wound up being the difference in the score.

All of this ruined what was actually a fairly-well pitched game by Ryan Dempster -- who struck out seven, walked one, allowed only four hits and actually lowered his ERA to 2.72.

The bottom line is this: Fontenot, for all his grit and hustle, makes too many mistakes to be an everyday player, especially when a hitter as hot as Ronny Cedeno is right now on the bench. What Lou has to do is either get DeRosa back to his normal position at 2B when Aramis Ramirez returns (and man, have the Cubs missed A-Ram the last two days), or get Cedeno in at SS and move Ryan Theriot to 2B, a position he is better suited for.

Let's not fail to give Felix Pie credit for a sensational catch he made, stealing a HR from Ken Griffey Jr. in the fifth inning. It's the second great catch made by a Cub outfielder in the last two weeks -- both of which, including the Reed Johnson diving grab in Washington, came in games the Cubs lost 5-3.

Good idea: Lou says he's going to skip Jason Marquis' turn on the off day Thursday and go with his three best pitchers -- Ted Lilly, Carlos Zambrano and Dempster -- against the Diamondbacks this weekend.

Bad idea: Lou says the Cubs might send Felix Pie to Iowa when Scott Eyre returns, going with 13 pitchers.

I cannot emphasize this enough:

This is a really bad idea.

You need only look at the boxscore from this ridiculous 12-inning Brewers/Cardinals game from April 22 -- only two weeks ago -- to see how bad an idea a 13 or 14 man pitching staff is. Three different pitchers pinch-hit (none of them did anything useful), and because of an injury and a short-handed bench, Tony LaRussa had to play Albert Pujols at second base.

Just imagine a scenario where Derrek Lee had to play second base and Prince Fielder barreled into him to break up a double play. A 13-man pitching staff is unnecessary and makes your bench too shorthanded to be of any use; I'm not even convinced a 12-man staff is necessary.

In any case, with Z on the mound tonight, the Cubs can stop this baby two-game losing streak before it gets out of hand.

I'm lazy today. So here, you can make up your own recap of the Cubs' 9-3 win over the Cardinals:

This afternoon in St. Louis, the Chicago Cubs nine scrappy players Mike Fontenot, who hit a 3-run HR Ted Lilly, who saved the bullpen Tim McCarver and Joe Buck took the field and ended their two-game losing streak evened up the series vs. the Cardinals moved to within 0.5 games of first place played a superb game of baseball all of the above against the St. Louis Cardinals the St. Louis Rams the St. Louis Hawks (yes, there were. Look it up.) does it really matter? Oh, yes. It matters. . Ted Lilly started and lowered his ERA to 5.97 from 6.46 returned to his 2007 form asked to pitch again sometime does it really matter? Oh, yes. It matters. . Carlos Marmol finished up the last two innings because it's a rule that he pitches on Saturdays he was afraid someone might ask him to do a Harry Caray impression like Ryan Dempster did Sean Gallagher's flight from Iowa got diverted to Topeka he wanted Buck & McCarver to talk about him and a) Kerry Wood b) Paul Assenmacher c) Ruben Quevedo d) Bob Howry e) a) and d) weren't available today. Li'l Mikey Fontenot's three-run HR was his second HR of the year was hit farther than anyone 5-7 has the right to hit some Cardinals fans right on the head How DOES a guy that small hit a ball that far? and came right after Geovany Soto hit a ground-rule double was pissed that he hit a ground-rule double said something nasty to Yadier Molina in Spanish kept up his hot hitting . Kosuke Fukudome also had a good day, having three hits including a leg double carrying on a conversation in Japanese with some fans raising his batting average to .348 showing us again why Lou should hit him 1st or 2nd . There were 10,000 25,000 46,792 the entire Cub nation's worth of Cub fans in attendance in the new-record crowd in St. Louis. Cub fans like going to games in St. Louis because it's a great rivalry many Cub fans live within an easy drive of St. Louis when it's just Cardinal fans there you can't tell the seats from the fans because they own nothing but red clothes we are EVERYWHERE. We are Cub Nation! . Tomorrow night, with the game on ESPN, the Cubs will have Jason Marquis Alfonso Soriano Joe Morgan Sandy Koufax someone else from a list submitted by BCB readers on the mound against the Cardinals. Manager Lou Piniella's comments after this big win included: "We're just taking it one day at a time", and then he threw his hat "I told you reporters I wasn't stupid!", and then he threw third base "We're happy the Cardinals lost", and then he threw his entire uniform at Joe Buck "We're going to get that Stevie Eyre back in the bullpen soon." . The Fox-TV telecast was, as usual, mediocre because Joe Buck was there Tim McCarver was there Ken Rosenthal was there all of the above wouldn't stop talking about jinxes, goats, black cats and other nonsense . Finally, the biggest news from this afternoon's game is that the Cubs moved to within 1/2 game of the first-place Cardinals winning tomorrow will win the series from a tough divisional rival Ryan Theriot made a "scrappy" play (it's fun typing "scrappy"!) You've got to be kidding about the choice above. That's not big news! Al's going to try much harder to write a more interesting recap tomorrow .

Jason Marquis stood on the mound at Wrigley Field, alone on the field, tossing a baseball up and down in his hand. Up, down, up, down, several times. He did this while waiting for the umpires to shift positions and gear after plate umpire Jerry Crawford took ill during last night's 10-7 Cub loss to the Brewers.

Cubs players wait in the dugout for play to resume after the umpire delay

Eventually, Geovany Soto came out of the dugout and so did the rest of the Cubs and that's when Marquis, who had been shaky enough in the first couple of innings, completely fell apart. He wound up throwing 98 pitches in five innings, allowing ten hits and five runs, and none of the Cubs' relievers could provide any relief last night -- the only one who didn't have a run charged to him was Michael Wuertz, but he added to the carnage by walking in a run that got charged to Kevin Hart. Even the usually-reliable Jon Lieber got touched for Milwaukee's tenth run, after Mike Fontenot's bases-clearing double had turned a 9-4 apparent rout into a 9-7 "hey, maybe they can come back" score.

It wasn't to be, and although Lou Piniella had sharp words for his bullpen in his postgame press conference:

"Our pitching wasn't good tonight," Piniella said. "We've got to do a better job in the middle before we get to our short people. That's been a problem for awhile."

... that wasn't the main problem. The main issue last night was the fact that Ben Sheets also wasn't sharp after the delay; he wound up walking seven, but the Cubs left most of those runners on base, leaving seven in the first five innings. Had they taken advantage of those opportunities, they could have had Sheets bounced before the sixth, when he was eventually lifted for a pinch-hitter (having thrown 108 pitches), and gotten into the Brewers' 1,325-man bullpen -- which managed to shut the Cubs down in the 8th and 9th after Fontenot's double.

The other important thing last night was... well, let me tell you first about one of the funnier vendors I've seen. He walked by our section, a youngish man I hadn't seen before, carrying the metal hot-dog vending box, yelling, "Who wants a friggin' hot dog??" That generated both laughs and sales (not from me, since I had already had one earlier).

And that's the other thing. Speaking of friggin', it was friggin' cold last night. The official game-time temperature was 38, and though there was some waning sun in the western sky until it dipped below the buildings on Clark about 7:30, that sun never warmed anyone at Wrigley Field yesterday. The wind wasn't too strong -- Derrek Lee managed to loft his 8th HR of April, tying the team record for such things, into the LF bleachers in the third inning, making the score at the time 4-3 -- but it was just enough to make it so feeling my fingers and toes wasn't really possible after about that time. Despite the cold, BCB reader steinmer and a friend of his stopped by in the late innings to say hi. They were some of the few who stayed -- once the score got to 9-4, the place emptied out pretty quickly. Well, except for the Human Air Raid Siren, who decided, since our section was empty, to stand there (mostly in our way) to yell for a few minutes, until we were rescued by a guy wearing a Fukudome sweatshirt who wanted him to come to his section. He left and we didn't see -- nor hear -- him again last night.

Positive note: there's nothing wrong with Geovany Soto. He had two hits last night, including a double, and continues to pound the ball really hard.

There's not much more that can be said about this loss -- the Cubs' first of the season when they have scored four or more runs. Lou, in his press conference, gave credit to the Brewers, who do, after all, have some pretty good hitters, and not just Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun, who are both off to slow starts. Corey Hart (who I advocated the Cubs acquiring a year ago) had three hits including a double and a triple; Bill Hall singled three times and had two RBI, and Mike Cameron, in his first game of the year following a 25-game suspension, also had three hits. Sometimes you just have to give credit to the other guys.

With Ryan Dempster, who has been solid all year, and Carlos Zambrano, who at last is pitching like the ace we need him to be (and with his sinker working as it did when he first burst onto the scene in 2003), going tonight and tomorrow, I still like the Cubs' chances of winning this series.

Did you know Wrigley Field had a Jumbotron? Well, it doesn't, of course, but it now does have this large monitor on the side of the camera house in CF:

Finally, Felix Pie was involved in a scary-looking collision with Rickie Weeks in the second inning, and didn't get up for a couple of hold-your-breath moments. He probably just got the wind knocked out of him, as he stayed in the game. David caught the aftermath:

Click on photos to open a larger version in a new browser window. All photos by David Sameshima

Those flags will fly above the Wrigley Field scoreboard for the rest of the Cubs' road trip; after the team returns, the flags will be autographed by the entire team and be auctioned off at cubs.com.

That's the good news from today. The bad news, of course, is that SBN was down all day -- once again, we apologize for the extended outage and we appreciate your patience. Or maybe that was good news, because I can only imagine the angst that would have been seen here in the game thread during the disastrous bottom of the 8th in the Cubs' 4-2 loss to the Rockies, snapping their winning streak at six.

There was still some good that came out of today's game -- Jason Marquis threw seven solid innings, allowing just two runs and striking out four. Even though the Cubs lost, the seven-inning outing was very important, because with the extra-inning games of late, the bullpen has been in danger of burnout. Only one reliever -- Kevin Hart -- was used today. Hart deserved a better fate than his first loss of the season. After allowing a leadoff double to Matt Holliday, Hart got Garrett Atkins to ground out. Holliday took third, and Brad Hawpe was intentionally walked. So far so good, right? Hart then got the slumping Troy Tulowitzki to hit a DP ball to Ronny Cedeno -- but his flip to Ryan Theriot was bobbled, Holliday scored, and the Rockies put it away with another run after the second out was finally recorded.

It wasn't because Cub fans didn't fill Coors Field for another day -- I was amazed at the number of blue shirts I could see in the stands. I doubt the Rockies would have drawn 32,791 on a Thursday afternoon in April if not for Cubs fans.

These two-game series, one against the Mets and one against the Rockies, are strange not only for their brevity, but because they were both night games followed by day games -- each being two games played in less than 24 hours. It's almost as if the Mets and Rockies were ships passing us in the night, hardly to be seen again. Colorado comes to Wrigley Field in about a month, at the end of May, but the Mets won't be seen by the Cubs till the season is in its final week. Those games could wind up being really important.

I was out for a while this afternoon and thus listened to most of the first half of the game on the radio, the first time I've listened to a significant chunk of baseball via Pat & Ron this season. As most of you know, though I love Ron Santo for his Cub support and fandom, I've never liked his radio style that much -- personally, I prefer an analyst who gives more, well, analysis. That said, I know many people do love Ron for exactly who he is. I mention him because for the first time, I thought he sounded really tired -- and not just because it was a day game after a night game. Ron will be 68 in June and I hope his health holds up. This team has a chance to be something really special and I want him around to see every inning.

After a winning streak this long gets snapped, about all you can say is: it happens. Go out there and get 'em starting tomorrow night in Washington -- the Nationals are really bad struggling. Even Jay Leno noticed, making this recent joke:

"46,000 people showed up to see the Pope in the Washington Nationals' ballpark. He beat the Nationals 15-1. … To make sure the crowd did not get unruly they cut off beer sales after the 7th commandment."

Finally, when I stopped by Wrigley Field to take the photos of the flags this afternoon, I found them in the process of filming a commercial with a large group of kids on Waveland:

Click on photos to open a larger version in a new browser window. All photos by Al

This afternoon was not Mike Fontenot's finest hour as a major leaguer. In fact, it was likely his worst -- he left seven men on base, coming up three times with runners on (once with the bases loaded, twice with two on) and making outs all three times. If he can get even two of those runners in, the Cubs would have been in the game at least till the seventh inning, when Ken Griffey, Jr. smacked his 596th career HR into the teeth of Chicago's typical April lake breeze off Jon Lieber, a three-run shot that turned a somewhat-manageable 5-2 game into a 8-2 rout, and the Reds beat the Cubs 9-2 this afternoon. To make matters worse, the HR came after Ryan Theriot bobbled a routine ground ball and then Fontenot failed to cover first base when Lieber got Ryan Freel to hit a comebacker. Lieber did his job -- got the first two hitters he faced to hit ground balls. The infielders failed today.

Still, you'd take two out of three every series, wouldn't you? Yes, it's nice to think "sweep" when you've won the first two, but it's hard to sweep a team, no matter how good or bad they are, or are perceived to be. The Reds have some pretty good hitters and they showed us that today -- particularly Joey Votto. Votto got two fat pitches from Ted Lilly, and hit the first one for a bases-clearing double and the second for a two-run homer. Other than that, I thought Lilly threw a pretty decent game, his best start all year (it won't show up well in the box score, of course, five earned runs in six innings); at last he had the command that seemed to elude him all spring and in his first two outings in the regular season.

The Cubs had plenty of opportunity against the fireballing Edinson Volquez, who is that typical "throws-hard-but-you're-not-quite-sure-where-it's-going" young pitcher. He walked four and gave up four hits, but thanks mostly to Fontenot, he gave up only one run; the Cubs stranded seven through four innings. Further complicating things was the fact that with two on and nobody out in the fourth, the Cubs down 3-1, Henry Blanco decided to bunt. With Lilly, a terrible hitter (.111 career), up next. If you're going to do that, lay down a suicide squeeze, which would score a run (if properly done) and leave a runner on second. According to Lou in his postgame news conference, which I heard on the radio going home, the bunt sign wasn't on.

Which raises this question: if the bunt sign wasn't on, why didn't someone talk to Blanco after the first missed bunt attempt, to tell him to knock it off? Blanco bunted foul on strike three, after which Lilly sacrificed the runners to second and third, which is where we pick up the Fontenot story again.

All this on a "bonus sunshine" day -- the forecast was for clouds all day, but the temperature at game time was 59 degrees (felt warmer, and probably was -- that reported temperature is usually the 1 pm lakefront reading, and the lake cooling hadn't gotten to the ballpark by then), with bright sunshine. About 2:00, the wind shifted from light southeast to strong northeast, and both HR -- by Votto and Griffey -- would have been far up into the bleachers on an ordinary day. Quite a number of fly balls hit in the later innings -- one caught by Reed Johnson in the 9th in particular -- got pushed in a long distance by the wind.

Good signs today: a good outing from Michael Wuertz, who has needed one. He dispatched the Reds 1-2-3 in the 9th inning, not that it mattered by that time. Reed Johnson had four hits today and played a good CF. I would imagine he'll be playing CF vs. the two Pirates LHP on Saturday and Sunday.

There isn't too much more to say about this. Some days you're just going to look bad and lose. Onward to tomorrow.

I wasn't in favor of the Jon Lieber signing when it was announced last fall. "What do we need him for?", I thought. "We already have plenty of starting pitchers."

If not for Lieber the Cubs might have lost two of three in Pittsburgh -- he threw 7.1 scoreless innings in the series in two appearances, racked up wins in both of them, and currently leads the team in wins (tied with Kevin Hart), and is third in innings pitched despite not having started a game, and has allowed only two runs, both unearned, this season so far.

That's what we need him for... and pretty soon, if Rich Hill doesn't get his act together, Lieber may wind up in the rotation. And that's not just me or you talking, it's Lou:

Asked whether he might take Hill out of the rotation to let him work out his issues, given a wealth of starting depth in Lieber and Sean Marshall, Piniella suggested that would be an option.

"I'm going to sit down and talk to our pitching coach about that," Piniella said. "I want what's best for Hill. We've got to get him straightened out. That's the important thing."

With Lieber -- and Sean Marshall, who may throw on Sunday if Jason Marquis isn't over his case of strep -- in the bullpen, the Cubs do have options if starters fail.

Hill failed last night, walking four and allowing three hits and three runs in three innings, throwing 72 pitches, but Lieber held the Pirates down while the Cubs exploded for five runs in the sixth inning; Geovany Soto's two-run HR off Matt Morris gave the Cubs a 4-3 lead and they never looked back, winning 7-3, and I was a little surprised to see Kerry Wood in the 9th inning in a NON-save situation. Closers often have trouble when they can't put up that counting stat (Ryan Dempster was an excellent example of this when he was the closer), but Wood had no trouble putting the Pirates down. Soto, for his part, had three other hits -- two doubles and a single -- and raised his average to .333. Mike Fontenot also homered. Where does a guy that small get that much power (lifetime SLG .415)?

The Cubs have now won six straight against Pittsburgh (including a three-game sweep at Wrigley Field last September), and this is good news because nine of the next 41 games will be against the Pirates. This year's wacky schedule has the Pirates at Wrigley Field next weekend -- and then again the third weekend of May, followed by a return visit to PNC Park the weekend after that.

Speaking of PNC, it's a beautiful place, as those of you who have been there know, an excellent spot to watch baseball. But the Pirates franchise is going to be in trouble if they keep drawing like they did the last two games of the series. Despite good early-April weather, less than 10,000 attended each game (9,798 last night, 9,735 the night before, which tells you what the Bucs' season ticket base must be) -- and a fair number of those were Cubs fans. Even some of the Cubs noticed:

"I wouldn't say it's difficult, but it's not as enjoyable," Derrek Lee said. "You like the crowd excitement, the noise. Opening Day here was great. But [the small crowds] are kind of different."

With only a few thousand fans in the stands near the end of Wednesday's 15-inning game, almost every voice could be heard in the dugout. Manager Lou Piniella even had to have some words with some rude fans.

"About the 14th inning, I think three young men had had enough beers," he said. "I just told 'em to watch the game, nothing more."

Lee was used to playing in front of small crowds in Florida and admitted, "it's easy to fall flat in that atmosphere."

I would have posted this recap last night, given that the game was only about half as long as the previous two, but, having gotten used to extra-inning games, I got interested in watching a couple of them on... Extra Innings. (They're sure getting enough of those so far this year!) And in one of them, the Mets' 4-3 win over the Phillies in 12, ex-Cub Angel Pagan drove in the winning run with a two-out single. Pagan is hot right now, hitting .370 with 9 RBI, but don't expect that to continue.

Finally, after Soto's HR, he came out to catch the next inning and I got a good look at his chest protector, which has the large letters "GEO" right on the top. What's up with that?

Everyone back in off the ledge?

Good! Nice to see you inside and safe. And warm, too. Brrr. It was cold today -- Jeff entered and announced that he was going to sit in RF today "where it's warmer in the sun". Too bad the sun vanished not long after game time and I can't imagine it was any warmer there than it was in LF.

No matter. The Cubs beat the Brewers 6-3 this afternoon, their first win of 2008. (Note: the Cubs 15th win this year, whenever it occurs, will be the 10,000th win in club history.)

The team clicked on all cylinders today, even after another one of those "here we go again" first innings. Ryan Dempster has always walked too many hitters, and he walked Rickie Weeks to lead off the game. When Tony Gwynn doubled, it was "uh-oh, what next?" What was next was a sacrifice fly, scoring Weeks, but when he bowled over Geovany Soto, Soto couldn't hold on to Kosuke Fukudome's throw and Gwynn also scored, leaving Dome with a tough error.

But that was it. Dempster faced 21 more batters and retired 18 of them, allowing two harmless singles and one more walk. He looked sharp after those first two batters, and threw strikes -- 60 out of 91 pitches. Well done, Mr. Dempster. Do it again next time out. Dempster's only other bad note was his two poor at-bats -- fouling a bunt for strike three on his first attempt, and then trying to bunt through strike three on his next (trying to catch the Brewers by surprise, I think, because I don't think anyone expected him to bunt in that 4th-inning AB). Give the guy a bit of a break for those, as he has had only 14 at-bats in the last two-plus years, since he became the Cubs' closer.

What I quibbled with at the time of that 2nd AB was not asking Felix Pie to try a squeeze, with the bases loaded and nobody out. Bill Hall was playing back at third; they weren't expecting it, and with the score tied, it would have been an easy way to score. Fortunately, Alfonso Soriano drew a bases-loaded walk to give the Cubs the lead, their first lead of the year.

Read that again: Soriano drew a walk with the bases loaded. Excellent at-bat, and he had another RBI in the sixth, flaring a single that landed between Ryan Braun and J. J. Hardy. Incidentally, as bad as Braun was at third base last year defensively, he appears to be just as bad a left fielder. He didn't make any errors today, but he seemed lost even on balls he got to, bobbling a couple and kind of "surrounding" the ball. (He had no chances at all today.) I think the Brewers are going to have to trade him to an AL team in a couple of years, because he appears to be a born DH.

When Carlos Marmol -- and I'm still a bit worried about him, because today he didn't have real good command, just as he didn't have much in spring training -- allowed a run in the 8th, it created a save situation for Kerry Wood, with a three-run lead. Wood loped in from the bullpen to an ovation -- well, it would have been an ovation if anywhere near the 37,973 announced was in the ballpark; it probably was never more than about 20,000 today, and by the 8th, about half of that number had left -- and dispatched the Brewers efficiently, allowing a two-out single to Craig Counsell and then getting Jason Kendall on a called third strike to end the game.

That was Wood's first major league save. Let it be the first of about forty this year.

We were joined today by BCB reader lalocp -- who had given me some email help when my computer had a virus a couple of months ago -- and a friend of his, and also another couple who we just met and who said they'd sit with us again tomorrow. A couple of other BCB readers again stopped by to say hi. Despite the cold -- and we apparently have just missed a large amount of rain which is going to go through overnight -- it's always nice for your team to get that first victory of the season, to not let opening losses grow too far or too fast. Rich Hill faces Chris Sampson tomorrow, as the Astros come to town.

Click here for my scorecard from today's game