So I'm screaming at the TV -- OK, not screaming, because it's late and I should be sleeping because it's late and I have to get up at 3:30 am for work on Sunday, and it was more like beseeching -- "Put Bay on! Put Bay on!"

Well, the Cubs didn't put Jason Bay on base in the 14th inning, even though the winning run was already on third base and Bay had already homered last night and he's been a Cub-killer ever since the very first game he played against the Cubs on September 19, 2003 (which was also the only time I've been in PNC Park), and he smacked a ball way over everyone's head which normally would have been a double, but instead became a game-winning RBI single and the Pirates beat the Cubs in 14 innings, 5-4.

(Before I go any further, thanks to BCB reader CubbyBlues for posting the extra innings thread.)

The game was lost, really, far before the 14th inning, and you can name any number of turning points:

• Jason Marquis' "one bad pitch", thrown to Bay in the fourth inning, hit for a two-run HR, to give the Pirates a 2-1 lead at the time (credit where credit is due: other than that, I thought Marquis threw pretty well last night);
• That "lefty power bat", Micah Hoffpauir, striking out with one out, the tying runs having already scored in the 8th, and the lead run on base;
• Alfonso Soriano getting picked off second base after leading off the 9th with a double;
• Kerry Wood, for the third time this year, hitting the first batter he faced (Doug Mientkiewicz), and for the third time after doing this, the Cubs lost. STOP DOING THIS!
• Jim Edmonds' lazy fly ball ball leading off the 11th, batting for Wood. Two or three years ago, Edmonds would have hit that pitch over Nate McLouth's head, or maybe even into the seats. Hey, Jim and Lou: Edmonds is done. D-O-N-E done. Move on, please.
• What was Lou thinking, double-switching Derrek Lee out of the game? Yes, Henry Blanco has played first base before. But Blanco couldn't handle Ryan Theriot's low throw on Freddy Sanchez' grounder leading off the 14th, and that wound up being the winning, unearned run. (D-Lee would have made that play, and it wound up being an error on Theriot.)

I'm beginning to wonder about Lou. Did you see the way he trudged out to the mound twice in the 12th, to relieve Jon Lieber with Scott Eyre, and then after Eyre did his job (a sweet-looking K of Adam LaRoche), again to replace Eyre with Michael Wuertz? Lou looked whipped, tired, like he'd rather have been back in his hotel room ordering room service. And really, he should have been. Perhaps the two biggest gaffes of the ones I listed above were Soriano's and Wood's. You just can't get picked off when you're in scoring position in that situation. That could have easily led to an insurance run, which would have made Wood's HBP less critical. I'll just say it again: KERRY, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS! The AP game recap confirms my feeling about Lou:

Cubs manager Lou Piniella, citing fatigue, declined to talk to reporters after the game.

This Cub team has shown remarkable resilience, and they have often come back from tough losses to win the next day. Do that today and they'll have a .500 road trip, which is about all I hoped for and wanted when this one began.

Finally, there was one moment in last night's game -- and this would have been the lead had the Cubs won -- that really shows how players react in much the same way that we do when we're watching. Did you see this? After Carlos Marmol struggled with his control with the first batter he faced, Bay, he threw a slider with his first pitch to LaRoche. There was a moment -- just a moment -- when he turned around and the CF camera caught his body language saying, "I've got it now!" He knew he had figured it out. I sat there thinking, "LaRoche has no chance." And he didn't -- Marmol threw the identical pitch for strike two, and then, with LaRoche apparently standing there sitting on another slider, Marmol blew him away with a 95 MPH fastball, and then for good measure struck out Jason Michaels with a nasty curve.

In this season where all things seem possible, there have been more moments like that than moments like that bad 14th inning. Keep the faith. More good things to come. A game thread will be up in a couple of hours.

After Jason Marquis had had yet another one of those innings that you'd think would produce a pitchfork-bearing mob ready to run him out of town -- the first, giving up a double and two-run homer -- I started talking to Dave about whether he'd be tradable, and who would take him.

His response: "I'll make you a small wager he goes six today."

I didn't take the bet, but damned if he wasn't right. Marquis settled down after Adam LaRoche's jack in the first inning, retiring 13 of the next 14 hitters he faced, and givng up only two more hits and an unearned run, finishing with six strong innings and his second win of the year, as the Cubs walked all over the Pirates 4-3, drawing seven walks off Phil Dumatrait, producing all the runs, and then the bullpen performed as Lou had envisioned it in spring training -- Bob Howry in the 7th (shaky, yes, but he got out of it with no runs), a solid Carlos Marmol in the 8th (please, please win some blowouts so that Marmol can sit for a while; that makes 22 appearances in 44 games, way too many), and then the kind of save that we all dreamed about from Kerry Wood when the season began, his 10th -- a ground ball for the first out on two pitches, and then two strikeouts, mixing up fastballs and sliders and breaking pitches.

Eight out of ten on this homestand -- you could get greedy and ask for more, but really, that's about all we could have asked for. It's the first time the Cubs have won eight games on any homestand since 1978, and after winning bunches of games this week with the longball, today the Cubs played small-ball; in addition to the seven walks, the only hits were four singles, one each from Alfonso Soriano (the sixth straight game he's led off with a hit), Mark DeRosa (setting up Kosuke Fukudome on second where he would steal third and score on a Reed Johnson sac fly), Ronny Cedeno (driving in a run), and Fukudome, driving in the fourth run in the fifth inning.

Let's talk a little bit more about the walks. Seven more walks today give the Cubs 201 for the season. That's second in the NL to the Cardinals, but the team OBA -- .373 going into today, and I don't have time to calculate it including today's game, but that's at least seven points better than St. Louis, and is forty points higher than last year's .333, and fifty-four points better than the last season, 2006, under the hackalicious teachings of Dusty Baker. The 2006 squad drew 395 walks all year. The current total is 51% of that -- in 27% of the schedule. If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to put up a Walk-Meter, showing the progress toward passing the execrable 2006 total. The 201 walks are 4.56 per game; I doubt the Cubs can keep up the pace, but that would translate to 740 walks over the full season, a total that would demolish the club record, 650 set in 1975. More history: the Cubs have started 27-17. Since 1900 -- 109 seasons -- only eleven Cub teams have started better than that in their first 44 games:

1907, 35-9
1918, 31-13
1903, 30-14
1910, 29-15
1969, 29-15
1906, 29-15
1904, 28-14 (two ties)
1938, 28-16
1909, 28-16
1977, 28-16
1908, 27-16 (one tie)

In that group there are six pennant winners (1906, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1918, 1938), a team that won 104 games and finished second (1909), two other 90+ game winners (1904, 1969), a team that finished 82-56 (1903), and the only outlier, 1977.

Can you tell this is a special team? They can find many different ways to win, and to me, that's the sign of a team ready to come to the ballpark every day and adapt to the situation. Today, the wind was blowing in and it was coolish and cloudy most of the time -- LaRoche's HR sliced through a pretty good breeze. Otherwise nothing came close to going out of the ballpark all afternoon.

Now it's on to Houston; I asked Dave if he thought they were for real and he said he did. I wonder, due to their pitching; the Cubs won't have to face Roy Oswalt, and now it's uncertain if Oswalt will make his next start against the Phillies on Thursday.

Micah Hoffpauir, called up when Daryle Ward was put on the DL today, made his ML debut pinch-hitting for Marquis in the 6th, wearing uniform #6. He struck out and looked pretty bad doing it, though, to be fair, it's not likely he's going to be sent up against too many LHP in the time he's on the roster.

Rumor heard today: it may not be too long until the Brewers, who lost to the Red Sox 11-7, getting swept and falling into last place, decide they've had enough and fire Ned Yost. Look for this to possibly happen as soon as this week.

Finally -- thanks again to BCB reader Shanghai Badger for picking up the slack I left by forgetting to schedule an overflow comment thread today. Much appreciated. Enjoy and revel in this homestand and this team's play so far.

Click here for my scorecard

Geovany Soto tagged out by Ronny Paulino in the third inning

Derrek Lee snags Doug Mientkiewicz' line drive and doubles Adam LaRoche off first base in the fifth inning

Damaso Marte dives to throw Mark DeRosa out in the eighth inning

Alfonso Soriano hits his 2nd HR of the day Saturday

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

NEW YORK -- Usually, when I have a meeting like the one I attended last night and it's at the same time as the game (7 pm EDT), I don't get to see any baseball -- the meetings usually run three to three and a half hours, and most of the time, as you know, that's more than enough time to finish a baseball game.

And when I turned on my phone (I turned it off during the meeting, lest everyone there be regaled by "Go Cubs Go", my ringtone) during a break to check the score, it said the Cubs were leading 2-0 in the top of the 8th.

"Great!" I thought, and then...

Well, I got to see the last four innings, getting back to my hotel room during the 12th, and all I can say is, I'm glad the Cubs won, defeating the Pirates 6-4 in 15 innings. If we're all exhausted from the second extra-inning game in a row (4:47 of game time on Monday, 4:20 last night), imagine how the players feel! Not to mention the fans in Pittsburgh: announced attendance was 9,735. The TV people kept away from most "crowd" shots late in the game, but in the couple I saw, it looked like there couldn't have been more than a few hundred left when the game ended.

They'll have to be very, very happy to get out of Pittsburgh. These always feel better, of course, no matter how badly the game was played, when you win.

There was plenty of good to go around from last night. Ryan Dempster threw seven outstanding innings. Ask yourself this: before spring training started, did you ever think you'd be screaming at Lou, "Don't take Dempster out!!!"?

Yeah, me either.

Kerry Wood... not so much. He gave up a homer to the first batter he faced, Jason Bay, tying the game. Does this mean Wood can't be a closer? Of course not. This kind of thing happens. However, it can't be happening too much more often; if it does, Lou may have to consider a change. We're not nearly at that point yet, though.

What I'm more concerned about is the failure to put the game away a couple of times in extra innings. The Cubs left RISP in the 11th and 13th and had a two-run lead in the 14th on Aramis Ramirez' HR before they coughed it up with a mirror-image HR off the lefthanded bat of Adam LaRoche.

Finally, Felix Pie came through with a two-run single in the 15th and Sean Marshall, the last available player (other than Ted Lilly and Rich Hill, Monday's and Thursday's starters, and Jason Marquis, who was back in his hotel room, sick) who hadn't appeared in the game, shut the door for his first major league save.

Can we stop overreacting to some players' bad starts now? The Cubs have played eight games. If I believe some of what I read, Felix Pie is absolutely worthless and has to be sent back to the minor leagues never to return.

You can't judge that off of eight games, only four of which Pie started. With Matt Morris, a righthander who the Cubs have pounded the last couple of years, starting tonight, Pie should be back in the starting lineup. I say you've got to give him at least a couple of months before ANY thoughts of a replacement (whether it's Reed Johnson, who probably shouldn't be an everyday player anyway, or someone to be acquired) be entertained. Lou Piniella noticed that Pie did the right thing last night:

"He stayed right on the pitch, and lined it over short and that's what he has to do to be a big league everyday player," Piniella said.

As I noted in the brief post last night, the last time the Cubs won back-to-back extra inning games on the road was June 20 and June 21, 1989, also at Pittsburgh. Does the coincidence mean anything? Of course it doesn't, but that Cubs team did win the NL East. They also played another long extra-inning game in Pittsburgh later that year -- 18 innings on August 6. They lost that one, but the next day moved into first place to stay.

These two games, long and frustrating though they were, have to be seen as a good sign... because the Cubs won both of them. Previous editions of our favorite team would likely have found a way to lose both of these games. Instead, they found a way to win both of them. A sweep would be sweet. I'll have a game thread up later this afternoon. (Wish me luck getting home in the rain today.)