Photo by Miriam Romain

MILWAUKEE -- It starts with recognition.

Early in the game, by the second inning, you note to yourself, "Hmmm. Z's got really good stuff today. If everything breaks his way..."

It continues with a buzz going through the crowd. You realize that others are starting to think what you're thinking.

And by the sixth inning, people are starting to stand on every strike-two count and cheer for K's, roaring loudly, as if there were twice as many in the ballpark as the announced 23,441, all of whom bought tickets to the game less than 24 hours before game time.

The tension builds through the latter part of the batting order -- I thought in the seventh, to myself, "Wow, if he can get through Tejada, Berkman and Pence, maybe he can pull this one off..."

And Z did that. And the raucous Miller Park crowd -- 99% Cubs fans, a handful of Brewers fans looking lost, and two or three lonely-looking Astros fans who got booed every time one of them appeared on the Jumbotron -- got on its feet for every pitch of the ninth inning. There's nothing like it in a regular-season baseball game, the tension of each out of the ninth inning of a no-hitter.

Carlos Zambrano made that inning look easy. Two groundouts to Ryan Theriot and his tenth K of the night -- on a low, outside splitter to Darin Erstad -- he had his first career no-hitter, a 5-0 win over the Astros, and in my opinion, only Kerry Wood's 20-K game ten years ago was a more dominant pitching performance by a Cub in my lifetime.

You've already heard the numbers: first no-no for a Cub in just over 36 years; first no-hitter ever at a neutral site park; first no-hitter in Miller Park history (that's one that'll stick with Brewers fans forever, I bet) -- you may not have heard that was the first one thrown in Milwaukee since Steve Busby of the Royals no-hit the Brewers on June 19, 1974. It was the eighth no-hitter by a Cubs pitcher since 1900, and the first on the road since Kenny Holtzman's nearly forgotten second no-no in Cincinnati on June 3, 1971. The long ride home gave me a chance to listen to all of the extended postgame coverage on the radio on -- the snappy 2:17 game had me in my house by 11:00 -- and Lou, who sounded excited just to be there, even though he pointed out he had been on both winning and losing sides of no-hitters as a manager and player, mentioned that he had no intention of taking Z out as long as the no-hitter was intact, saying, "I wasn't going out there -- I'd have sent Alan (Trammell) to take him out."

Lou also said he did have someone warming up -- I never did see who -- in the 9th just in case Z had given up a hit. It wasn't necessary. Z's stuff was outstanding -- he hit 98 a couple of times on the stadium pitch speed meter -- and after a slight lack of command in the first inning, had his location and movement working for him on almost every pitch. He walked one -- Michael Bourn, in the fourth, who was immediately erased on a double play -- and hit Pence on a 1-2 pitch in the fifth.

Thinking about how Z can get during games, something like that might have unhinged him. Not last night. He was focused, didn't engage in mound histrionics, and kept his pitch count down (110 pitches, 73 strikes, and if that doesn't sound like "down", remember that we have seen Z throw 100 pitches in five innings at times in the past). Give Geovany Soto some credit for this -- I think he has been a real calming influence on Z ever since his recall, and deserves all the props he can get for handling the entire pitching staff all year like a veteran. Z also singled and scored -- thankfully, the relay throw was bobbled when Z was rounding third, because the last thing any of us wanted to see was Z having to slide into the plate.

Meanwhile, the Cub offense put the game away early; Alfonso Soriano led off the game with a homer, his team-leading 28th of the year (in only 98 games -- he might have come close to Ryan Howard's league-leading total of 44 if he hadn't missed all that time), and after two were out and Z on first and ONEDEC! on second with singles, Derrek Lee brought them in with a two-strike double, Aramis Ramirez followed with a single and then, heads-up, took second base when Tejada tossed the relay throw away, and Geovany Soto finished the scoring with a single.

Leading 5-0, Z got stronger and didn't allow a ball out of the infield between the third and eighth innings. As is frequently the case in no-hitters, there were at least two outstanding defensive plays that helped Z -- a line drive by David Newhan, snared by D-Lee at 1B in the fifth, and a nice running catch by DeRo on Geoff Blum's leadoff liner in the 8th. Z also made a nice pickup of a slow roller by Humberto Quintero in the third and caught a foul popup himself in the 8th.

The crowd was -- well, at first it was surreal, seeing nothing but Cubs blue in the parking lot and coming into the park, prompting a couple of Brewers employees I saw walking in to roll their eyes. But in general, the Brewers folks were friendly and accomodating -- they brought out some Cubs caps to sell at the souvenir stands, along with all the Brewers merchandise on sale -- considering they had been called into work on very short notice, and as Lou said, the 23,441 sounded like twice that many as the game went on, louder than almost any crowd I've heard at Wrigley. It truly was a magical night.

Sitting right in front of me was a young girl, perhaps nine or ten years old, with her mom and a couple of men accompanying her. The men, both of whom were wearing Zambrano jerseys, jumped up and down and hugged perfect strangers afterwards. That young girl, who had a sign saying it was her first Cubs game, will never forget it.

And me? I've now been to 2,069 Cubs games. I'll never forget last night's wonders, either. It was nice to meet BCB reader Chip Set and to see Shanghai Badger again and I know a lot of the rest of you were there and all of us will remember forever the trip we all took on a whim, just to see an unexpected Cubs road game suddenly moved close to us, only to wind up witnesses to an historic day.

Best of all, the win and the Brewers DH loss -- when the second game score was posted on the Miller Park LF wall scoreboard, cheers broke out -- dropped the Cubs' magic number to Rick Monday (for both a playoff spot and the division title). Though we celebrate Z's masterpiece, the business of winning continues this afternoon. The pregame thread will be up at 11:30 am CDT for today's 1:05 start.

Some more memories from last night's historic game:

Randy Wolf's pitch to Alfonso Soriano was deposited over the LF wall, giving the Cubs a 1-0 lead in the first inning

This was Z's first pitch to Darin Erstad in the first inning... two hours later, he struck out Erstad to end his first career no-hitter.
Photos by Al

My ticket from last night's game -- worth every penny of the $60 price

Click here for my scorecard -- figuring they might not sell cards for this game, I brought my own, a form designed by Mike. I have used my own form for a number of years for games like this, but Mike's is better. All I added was the text and team logos, and this was the first game I had used it for.

What, you thought that was some kind of sex reference? On this site?

Sixty-nine is, of course, the number of wins the Cubs have after today's outstanding 11-4 Cubs win over the Astros, the last of twenty games in twenty consecutive days following the All-Star break, during which the Cubs went 12-8 and increased their lead in the NL Central by half a game over the Brewers. If you check the "Best Starts Since 1900" box I've been keeping on the right sidebar for a couple of months, you'll see that only twelve Cub teams in the last 108 years have played 115 games with a better record than this year's 69-46 version.

That includes six pennant winners and the ill-fated 1969 team, which had just about reached its highest point right at about this time of the season, the first week of August. The 1908 team and the 1984 team didn't get hot till after the 115th game -- many of you probably remember the four-game sweep of the Mets at Wrigley Field in mid-August 1984, during which Keith Moreland and Ed Lynch got into a bench-clearing brawl after Lynch, then a Mets pitcher, brushed Moreland back.

The 2008 Cubs are creating their own history, of course, and today they just kept on rolling. That sounds clichéd, but it really isn't -- every day, there's a new way of winning, and new heroes, proving today once again that this is a complete team, not just one or two superstars carrying a club (although Alfonso Soriano can certainly do that, and has been leading the charge since he returned from the DL).

Today, after Jason Marquis likely got all the Marquis-haters here riled up after he allowed the Astros four runs after two were out and no one on in the third, capped by a Carlos Lee three-run jack (man, does that guy love hitting in Wrigley or what). The key at-bat in that inning was Hunter Pence drawing a walk after Marquis had him down 0-2. The Lee HR put the Astros up 4-1, and the Cubs looked a bit flat in the first two innings except for the back-to-back doubles by Jim Edmonds and Mark DeRosa that had given the Cubs a brief 1-0 lead.

They followed that top of the third with perhaps their best inning of the year -- scoring eight runs after two were out; with those two out and Ryan Theriot on with a single, Aramis Ramirez and Edmonds drew walks. Whoever posted in the pregame thread that if the Cubs waited Brandon Backe out, that would be the key to winning, had it exactly right. After those two walks, DeRo hit his fourth career grand slam, giving him five RBI for the day and 63 for the season, leaving him only eleven short of his career high set in 2006 with the Rangers. After another double by Kosuke Fukudome, the Astros intentionally walked Geovany Soto, only to have Marquis hit yet another double, driving in a run, and Soriano capped it off with his 21st homer.

Since returning from the DL, Soriano is hitting .348/.375/.697 with 6 HR and 14 RBI, and the Cubs have gone 11-4 in the 15 games.

Carrying a team? I'd say so. But again, Soriano's blow today only put the game away; the Cubs added two more in the next inning by drawing a couple more walks. They had six in all off Backe, who was clearly asked to take one for the team today; he allowed eleven earned runs and threw 99 pitches to get ten outs and his ERA went from 4.72 to 5.35.

Meanwhile, after allowing the Lee HR, Marquis settled down and allowed only two hits; the bases got loaded in the fourth on a strange ground ball where the Cubs IF didn't quite seem to know where to throw the ball -- there were two out and it seemed as if DeRosa forgot that; he could have just thrown to first but tried for a force play that failed. It didn't matter as Hunter Pence flied to center to end the inning. After that Marquis retired seven of the next eight hitters and might have had enough to finish the seventh inning had Aramis Ramirez not pulled Derrek Lee off first base on a ground ball by probably the slowest player on the field, Humberto Quintero. When Marquis left in favor of Sean Marshall he got probably the warmest applause he's had in his year and two-thirds as a Cub.

Say what you want about Marquis -- he does exactly what he's asked to do, eat up innings and keep his team in the game. He has now thrown at least six innings in nine of his last ten starts, and that probably makes him the best fifth starter in the league. That's a bold statement and I don't have time to make statistical comparisons with other NL fifth starters, so if anyone here wants to do that, go right ahead.

Today, BCB reader Rudey was the one who emailed me first and bought my extra tickets. Nice to meet you and hope you enjoyed the game.

The Brewers beat the Reds this afternoon so the Cubs' lead in the Central stays at five games; the Cardinals will play the Dodgers tonight and tomorrow afternoon and after last night's rain-delayed, extra-inning game in St. Louis, the best thing we can hope for is two more games just like that one, so that the Cardinals arrive in Chicago for Friday's game exhausted, while the Cubs enjoy their well-earned off day tomorrow.

You enjoy it too. Onward in this remarkable, wonderful season.

Len Kasper said it best, right after Hunter Pence hit the grand slam that held up for Houston's 4-2 win over the Cubs last night. It wasn't "one bad pitch", as is often said when an opposing player hits a key home run.

In the case of last night's game, it was the eight pitches out of the strike zone that Ryan Dempster threw in the Houston fourth inning after Miguel Tejada had led off the inning with a double.

They were the only two walks Dempster issued -- not terrible for a six-inning outing -- but that was the difference in the game, all six runs scoring as the result of home runs; Aramis Ramirez had hit a ball way up on the outfield facing to give the Cubs a two-run lead in the top of the fourth inning. This has been Dempster's problem throughout his career -- too many walks.

The Cubs didn't leave too many men on base last night -- only seven -- but did leave RISP in the 5th, 7th and 9th, and the 7th was the inning that they should have gotten to Chris Sampson and Doug Brocail, who relieved Sampson, because in that inning there were two singles and a walk. Unfortunately, in between the two singles, Jim Edmonds hit into a double play, and then after Micah Hoffpauir reached base for the first time in his brief ML career by drawing a walk, Brocail was summoned and he struck out Alfonso Soriano to end the inning. Edmonds is now 2-for-12 as a Cub with a walk, two strikeouts, and one DP ball. He'll have to do better than this to justify the move.

Funny game, baseball. Soriano and Lance Berkman came into this series as the two hottest hitters in the game. They are a combined 1-for-15 in this series so far.

Good news: Jose Ascanio, just recalled, made his Cubs debut, and despite walking two Astros, managed to get through two innings without allowing any runs. The Astros out-walked the Cubs four to two last night, and that, essentially, was that. I have confidence that Sean Gallagher, who has thrown well in both his starts so far, can beat Houston and Shawn Chacon (who has the unusual distinction of making nine starts this year so far, all no-decisions) and win the series tonight.

More good news: Derrek Lee had three more hits last night and seems to be coming out of his slump. There was some talk about starting Hoffpauir tonight to give D-Lee two days off in a row, but maybe now he doesn't need that.

Finally, the controversy over Geovany Soto's HR Monday night (was it really officially "outside" the park based on ground rules) prompted a major meeting of MLB umpiring and other officials early Tuesday:

In response to a somewhat controversial call made during Monday's series opener between the Cubs and Astros, officials reworked one of the yellow lines that indicates a home run, located just to the right of the "bmcsoftware" sign above the visitors' bullpen in left-center.

Bob Watson, MLB vice president rules and on-field operations, called it a more "umpire-friendly" line, which will better differentiate between a home run and a ball in play.

A yellow wood board that served as a home run indicator was removed, and in its place is a simple yellow painted line, drawn on the inside part of the wall.

via chicago.cubs.mlb.com

The Cubs maintained their two-game division lead when the Cardinals lost late last night in San Diego. That's really all there is to say -- sometimes, you just get beat. Until later today.