This is the one you've all been waiting for -- the thoughts I have about what sort of 25-man roster, including position players, pitching rotation and bullpen I think the Cubs should put on the field in 2009. I'm also going to make a comment or two on the coaching staff, which by and large did a fine job in 2008 (well, at least until October 1, they did). This is a long post, so I'm going to make you click through to read the rest, rather than show about 3,500 words on the front page. (You're about to find out why this took me so long!)

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There have been, since the World Series began in 1903, 103 major league postseasons -- no, I haven't miscounted; there was no World Series in 1904, nor a postseason in 1994.

The Cubs and Dodgers, historic franchises, have participated in 35 of those between them. Between them they've been in 26 World Series (ten for the Cubs, 16 for the Dodgers; only the Cardinals, with 13, and the Dodgers, have won more NL pennants than the Cubs since 1900) and nine other postseasons in the divisional play era without making it to the Series (five for the Cubs, four for the Dodgers). But tomorrow marks the first time in the long history of both these teams that they will meet in a postseason game.

I thought, rather than do position by position matchups, which rarely mean anything (seriously: catchers don't do battle with each other on the field), I'd take a look back at the seven games these two teams played against each other during the regular season -- with the caveat that the Dodgers are a very different team now than they were then, having added Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake to their offense. The Cubs won the season series 5-2 by sweeping the Dodgers at home and splitting four games in Los Angeles.

May 26 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

Ryan Dempster [had his] 11th good start of the season. Yes, all 11 -- look at his previous game log and you'll see that although he had a couple of "not-great" starts, he hasn't been blown out of any of them, and has gone six or more innings in 10 of 11. Today, after getting out of a first-inning jam he caused himself by walking the nearly-unwalkable Juan Pierre by a nicely-executed rundown of Pierre trying to score (my friend and BCB reader bison texted me from California, where he had scored it from home 1-6-4-5-2-3-4), Dempster settled down and retired nine of the next ten hitters he faced, finally running into trouble in the fifth when Mark DeRosa couldn't handle an infield popup and had no play as Matt Kemp, who had doubled, scored LA's only run.

Dempster got himself out of another jam in the 6th, after he had loaded the bases with two singles and a walk to Kemp, and again in the 7th, when no one was warming up, a testament to how overworked the bullpen was in all the extra-inning games in Pittsburgh. Dempster threw 117 pitches, 71 for strikes, and Bob Howry had to do the same thing in the 8th. We couldn't figure out why Scott Eyre, warmed and ready, didn't come in to face two lefty hitters in James Loney and Delwyn Young. Lou explained during the news conference that he thought Howry was throwing better, and it appears he wanted to give Howry a confidence-builder.

That's a risky way to win games, but it worked. Howry struck out Loney and got Young to fly to Jim Edmonds (the ball, not too far away from Alfonso Soriano, had us yelling, "Let Edmonds take it!" (We were threatening to ask the Cubs to put those beeping sounds you hear from trucks backing up near the wall so Alfonso would know when he's getting close to it, either that or yellow crime-scene tape.)

Dempster, for his part, continued pitching well all year -- he only had one or two bad starts the entire season.

May 28 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

[Kosuke] Fukudome, who has been in an offensive funk, snapped out of it with the double, a single and a walk, and made a couple of sparkling defensive plays in right field. How anyone could consider hurting the defense by moving him to CF and putting a minor league first baseman in right, I simply cannot understand. It does appear, as I keep saying, that Jim Edmonds is done, done, D-O-N-E (have I said done?). He went 0-for-4 last night, got booed roundly the last two times, and his bat speed is probably about the same as Cubs hitting coach Gerald Perry's would be if Perry took the field now. Edmonds did make one nice catch going back on a fly ball to the warning track; his fielding is still decent and he catches everything he gets to. I still fail to see how this team is helped by his presence.

Last night's performance by Kerry Wood ought to quiet a similar chorus asking for him to be replaced at closer. He looked dominant and seems to be getting more comfortable in the role each time out. Meanwhile, Carlos Marmol had a shaky outing, loading the bases before getting out of the jam. I'd like to see him rest up some, as he's bordering on severe overwork.

Well, obviously, I was wrong about Edmonds that day in May -- he started hitting right after that and has been an exemplary presence on the field and in the clubhouse. His postseason experience -- he has more than anyone else on the club, even Alfonso Soriano -- will be invaluable in October.

May 29 at Wrigley Field -- Cubs 2, Dodgers 1:

Before a near-sellout of 39,945 on a night that was, by the end, starting to get cold, the Cubs provided 9th and 10th inning dramatics that had Wrigley Field rocking as I have never heard it for a regular season game this early in the year, and Alfonso Soriano shut up his critics (for a day, at least) by poking a single into left field, scoring Mike Fontenot with the winning run in an excruciatingly exciting 2-1 Cubs win over the Dodgers, completing the Cubs' fourth three-game sweep at home this season, moving their home record to a spectacular 22-8, pushing them 11 games over .500 for the first time since the last day of the ill-fated 2004 season...

Remind me again why the Cubs need another starting pitcher? They allowed an admittedly hurting LA "offense" three runs in this series, and the only one Carlos Zambrano allowed last night was on a bases-loaded walk after he had helped load the bases by hitting Matt Kemp. Z admitted in his postgame comments that he knew he didn't have his best stuff or command; he walked four, tying his season high, and had to get, essentially, five outs in that tense eighth inning because his defense deserted him (Mark DeRosa let a ball go off his glove which was ruled a hit, and Ryan Theriot made a throwing error, both of which could have been outs). Z threw an alarmingly high total of 130 pitches -- something we haven't seen since the Baker era. However, Lou said in his own postgame remarks that he'll keep Z on a short leash in his next start...

It was right after that when Z's shoulder started to bark at him and a little over two weeks later, he had to be taken out of a game at Tampa Bay and wound up on the DL. I think Z is fine now, but the staff will have to watch his pitch count closely. (Yet another reason Bob Howry shouldn't be on the playoff roster.)

June 5 at Dodger Stadium -- Cubs 5, Dodgers 4:

Kerry Wood, who some here were ready to throw under the bus when he had a tough debut as closer on Opening Day, is now leading the National League in saves.

Once again, this team won with a different hero; last night it was Kosuke Fukudome, who hit his first MLB home run away from Wrigley Field and who drove in the winning run with e perfectly-placed single off his countryman Takashi Saito in the 9th inning.

The Cubs blew an early 4-0 lead when Jeff Kent homered twice, once off Ryan Dempster, once off Bob Howry, who nearly did a Ted Lilly slam-the-glove-down move, rare for him -- you almost never see Howry show emotion on the mound -- but this resilient team came back. Props to Neal Cotts for throwing a scoreless inning -- so far, since his recall, Cotts looks more like the setup man who had a 1.94 ERA for the 2005 champion White Sox, than the guy who got sent down seemingly never to return last year.

Kent won't be playing in this series (and we hope, neither will Howry), and it would be great if Fukudome could get out of his two-month offensive funk and contribute in this series.

June 6 at Dodger Stadium -- Dodgers 3, Cubs 0:

... they just got beat last night when they got shut down by a pretty good pitcher. That kind of stuff happens even to great teams (example: the 114-win 1998 Yankees got shut out five times, including by scores of 7-0, 9-0 and 11-0. This makes three for the 2008 Cubs). [Hiroki] Kuroda not only held the Cubs to four harmless singles, he also struck out eleven and didn't walk anyone.

I posted a long diatribe about Ryan Theriot's lack of range in that recap; obviously, we're long past the time when any change is going to be made (especially with Ronny Cedeno now with a balky shoulder because of the dumb dive he made into 1B in NY last week). Theriot's the SS, for good or bad, for the duration. We can only hope that Kuroda's more hittable in game three than he was that night in June.

June 7 at Dodger Stadium -- Dodgers 7, Cubs 3:

Carlos Zambrano actually threw six good innings; unfortunately, his defense deserted him in the seventh, with Aramis Ramirez charged with one error and Kosuke Fukudome dropping a catchable fly ball (the latter would have ended the seventh inning with the score only 4-3 Dodgers). You simply can't give a major league team five outs in any inning and expect to win.

All of this was after the Cubs had fashioned leads of 2-0 and 3-2 against the tough Derek Lowe, and even though Z had given up a ton of hits, he had gotten out of every jam up to the point where Russell Martin homered to tie the game at 2. In fact, all three homers hit today -- Martin's, Alfonso Soriano's, and the killer three-run blast from Matt Kemp that put the game away -- didn't seem as if they were going to go out when they first left the bat. All seemed routine fly balls that wound up carrying; Dodger Stadium seems more conducive to that during the day than at night.

And those defensive lapses were the story of the game; otherwise Z and Lowe matched up pretty well, and once the game was out of hand, Neal Cotts threw an inning and a third without allowing anything else, saving the rest of the bullpen for tomorrow.

So -- the Cubs could have defeated Derek Lowe (who is 2-1, 3.25 in eight career starts vs. the Cubs) if they'd have played a more solid defensive game, and note that the Dodger homers were hit during a day game, when the ball carries better than at night; all the games in the division series are likely to be night games (the first three definitely are).

June 8 at Dodger Stadium -- Cubs 3, Dodgers 1:

Apart from Geovany Soto's throwing error on Juan Pierre's first-inning steal, which allowed Pierre to go to third and score on an infield out, the Cubs were nearly flawless in front of the national audience. Jason Marquis -- see, I knew he had this kind of talent, as Mark DeRosa said:

"I think sometimes he becomes his own worst enemy," DeRosa said. "He sometimes doesn't realize how great his stuff is. When he's on, he's tough to hit. He has a good sinker, he had good command of his slider and his split. He's a good pitcher. He's been a good pitcher in this league."

Exactly. Marquis threw strikes last night and had terrific movement on his pitches. If he hadn't run into trouble in the 7th inning, Lou might have let him finish, as he had thrown only 89 pitches when he was removed, but taking him out in favor of Carlos Marmol was the right thing to do.

Marquis probably won't pitch -- much -- in this series, but it's nice to know that he has this terrific outing, one of his best of the year, to think about if he winds up going against the Dodgers. LA, in fact, is one of his favorite opponents; in 9 career appearances against them (8 starts) he's 3-1, 1.99 in 54.1 innings.

So there you have it. For the Dodger fan's point of view please check out our SBN Dodgers site True Blue LA, and I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Rob McMillin's site that covers both the Dodgers and Angels, 6-4-2. (And Rob's wife Helen is a Cubs fan and occasional BCB poster.) In case you haven't already looked up my 2008 preseason predictions, there's the link; usually it's pretty embarrassing, but only half so this year. I nailed the NL playoff teams, all four of them. (Not so much for the AL, but at least I'm in good company; hardly anyone would have picked the Rays, White Sox or Twins back in March). I'll stand by my NL predictions for the postseason, too: the Cubs to win this series 3-1, and the Brewers over the Phillies, setting up what ought to be a terrific NLCS.

I have only one word to say about today's game:

What on Earth is Bob Howry doing on a major league roster, much less a playoff roster?

OK, that's 17 words, but you get my point. Ryan Braun smacked a game-winning homer in the 8th inning off Howry and the Brewers beat the Cubs 3-1, and when the Marlins beat the Mets 4-2, the Mets were eliminated and the Brewers won the NL Wild Card, sending the Cubs into a first-ever postseason matchup with the Dodgers.

Bob Howry. What is Lou thinking? Howry has allowed 13 home runs in 70.2 innings -- a horrendous ratio for a relief pitcher (comparison point: in 66.1 innings, Kerry Wood allowed three home runs all season). It was the first homer, granted, that he had allowed since August 14 in Atlanta, when he came into a game the Cubs were leading 11-4 and made it close enough that Wood had to come into a non-save situation in the 9th inning.

The Cubs, obviously, didn't play today's game like a regular game -- it was more like the first day of spring training, where no pitcher goes more than two innings. And until Howry, everyone else threw pretty well, except Sean Marshall, who was charged with the tying run when Michael Wuertz, who also didn't throw very well, issued two walks, one with the bases loaded. And now, Mr. Wuertz, you know why you spent most of your summer in Des Moines.

The Cubs did have a shot at tying the game of CC Sabathia in the 9th -- I had just said, to the TV (no one else was here watching with me!), "Say, maybe Theriot should take off for second", thinking Derrek Lee was a DP candidate. Sure enough, he grounded to second, starting a game-ending double play, his 27th of the season, ending the regular season by tying Ron Santo's team record, which had stood since 1973. Maybe a runner on 2nd would have put Salomon Torres into the game, and the Cubs have hit Torres very hard this month.

The bottom line was, the Brewers needed the game more than the Cubs did, and this doesn't reflect what might happen, a couple of weeks down the road, when the Cubs and Brewers could meet in the NLCS. Actually, I'd look forward to that -- it would be a heck of a series.

But first, there are Dodgers to defeat; I'll have more to say about that before Wednesday. Since the TV moguls were probably waiting to see if their crews had to wait to head to LA or NY for the Cub series games 3 (and 4, if necessary), now that the NL matchups are set, game times should follow in short order (it shouldn't really matter to them whether the White Sox or Twins go to Tampa, for game time purposes, and that won't be known till at least tomorrow).

In the meantime, enjoy a couple of days off. We all need them, I think. (And Lou, you still have time to put someone else -- Gaudin, Wuertz, ANYONE -- on the postseason roster instead of Howry.)

For six innings, it looked like Ted Lilly was going to put himself in the record books. As it was, in the last 13 innings he has thrown at Miller Park, he has allowed three hits and two runs to two different teams.

Since Lilly, like all the starters since the division clinching, is on a pitch limit (and won't go until a week from tomorrow, if that game 4 in the NLDS is even necessary), he was yanked, to warm applause from the Cubs fans in the Miller Park crowd.

The rest of the game was ... um, rather shaky. You can't really blame Jason Marquis or Neal Cotts; in fact, Marquis might have saved the game by hitting Ryan Braun with a pitch (no, I don't think it was intentional) -- Braun came into this game 4-for-11 with a double and a homer vs. Jason and the HBP, which caused Braun to slam his bat down in frustration, kind of stopped the comeback of the Brewers. Instead, Cotts came in to face Prince Fielder.

Let me interrupt this recap to say what an absolute slob Fielder is. While he was holding a Cub runner on first in the late innings, the TV camera showed him with his back pocket turned inside out and his jersey untucked. Yuck.

OK, back to the recap. Cotts did his job, getting Fielder to pop up -- but ONEDEC! turned back into Ronny Freakin' Cedeno, dropping the popup, allowing a run to score and forcing Lou, who gave a little smirk after the HBP, to call on Michael Wuertz to get out of the inning. And fortunately, Cedeno sort of redeemed himself with a single in the Cubs' three-run ninth, and it was real nice to see Kosuke Fukudome hit a homer, his tenth, and the Cubs beat the Brewers 7-3; combined with the Mets' 2-0 shutout of the Marlins behind Johan Santana and the Phillies' 4-3 win over the Nationals, the Phillies clinched the NL East and the one remaining race in the NL is Brewers/Mets for the wild card, now in a dead tie, both teams 89-72 with one game left, tomorrow.

Nice homer today too for Daryle Ward, his fourth, and he drove in 17 runs this year with only 22 hits. He also walked sixteen times and is this team's best pinch-hitter.

I'll make no secret of who I want to win it: the Mets. I think the Cubs match up much better with the Mets than with the Dodgers, who they'd play if the Brewers win the wild card. It would, I suppose, be beneficial to the Cubs if the race ended in a tie after tomorrow and the Mets and Brewers would have to meet in a tiebreaker game Monday at Shea Stadium; maybe both teams would run through their entire bullpens and have to shift around rotations and not be totally prepared for the beginning of the Division Series on Wednesday -- the game time of which, we still do not know, and may not know until all the matchups are finalized.

That three extra days' wait will be good for the Cubs, because Mark DeRosa won't play tomorrow and wouldn't have been ready if the playoffs had started today. By next Wednesday, a week after he strained his calf, hopefully it'll be healed enough to play. That link also says that Geovany Soto would have played had today been a playoff game, so I'd expect to see him play tomorrow as a tuneup.

Let me take this opportunity to extol the virtues of Henry Blanco, the best backup catcher in the game. By making an out in what is likely to be his final regular season at bat, his average dropped below .300 -- but at .297, he hit 70 points over his lifetime average (.227) and had by far his best offensive season, having just turned 37 years old. Even if the Cubs have to pay him $3 million to return next year, it's worth it. Would you rather have Koyie Hill or Wellington Castillo backing up Geo next year?

I thought not.

You are, once again, witness to history. The Cubs' 97th win this afternoon makes this the winningest Cub team since the 1945 team won 98, and this group can match that today. It's the ninth-most wins in the 133 years of franchise history.

All that resets to zero on Wednesday, and the important number is eleven. Eleven more wins in October, to victory and redemption.

(with all credit to the late Jack Buck for the headline)

Walking down Sheffield back to my car, I ran into a man wearing a BCB shirt -- sorry, I didn't even get your name -- and we shook hands and hardly even knew what to say about the Cubs' incredible, dramatic, awesome, breathtaking, electrifying, exciting, gripping, intense, moving, riveting, sensational 7-6 win over the Brewers. (Yes, I got all those from thesaurus.com.) We marveled over the comeback, the ups and downs, and he walked one way and I walked the other... and I still almost can't believe it.

There have been quite a number of incredible comebacks this season -- the comeback from being down 9-0 to Colorado on May 30 comes first to mind, along with being down 5-0 to the Marlins in the third on July 27 and winning 9-6. There are others. But I don't think I have ever seen, ever, in all the years I've watched baseball, a last-of-the-ninth comeback that good -- two out, nobody on base, down four runs, and having it capped by a three-run, no-doubt-about-it, first-pitch homer by Geovany Soto. He was the frontrunner for Rookie of the Year anyway; I suspect that clinches it, and it might get him some MVP votes, too. But as Lou said in his postgame press conference, "Let's knock two more numbers down, then we can talk about awards." (And let's stop talking about when we 'want' the Cubs to clinch, too -- just do it!)

Amen, Lou. And here, I was getting ready to write a scathing criticism of Lou for the way he mismanaged the sixth inning into a four-run rally for the Brewers. Not for putting Jeff Samardzija in the game -- although Samardzija didn't have much, it was Mark DeRosa's error that opened the door for the four unearned runs, and that's a play DeRo makes 99 times out of 100. No, it was for not bringing in Neal Cotts to turn Ray Durham around, after Mike Cameron had driven in the first run of the inning. Durham's hitting .305 lefthanded and .224 righthanded this year. Why wouldn't you want a lefty pitching to him?

Lou seems to have an aversion to the LOOGY idea -- and I'm not married to it, like Dusty Baker was -- but this was absolutely, positively the situation to use it. Instead, Samardzija was left in, and predictably, Durham singled in a run. It took two more hits and a walk before Lou finally yanked him for Randy Wells. Wells walked in a run before ending the carnage.

And then it started turning around. Wells retired the next seven hitters he faced; give the guy credit. He's not really a prospect at age 26, and he won't be on any playoff roster (at this rate, neither will Samardzija), but he kept the game close and then, after Cotts finally got into the game in the 9th, he gave up a leadoff double to Prince Fielder -- that's when good defense helped the Cubs out... the Brewers ran themselves into two outs on the basepaths, setting up the incredible bottom of the ninth.

Dave said he had never heard the ballpark that loud -- and that's with about 20% of the crowd having left early, too.

The game moved on, with neither team being able to capitalize on opportunities. Carlos Marmol threw a 1-2-3 tenth, and Kerry Wood had excellent stuff in striking out the side in the 11th -- then he ran into trouble in the 12th, but got out of it in a way you hardly ever see (and having thrown 33 pitches today, won't be available tomorrow. Marmol threw only 12 pitches, and so will likely close on Friday if needed). I hate the pulled-in infield, because so many times you'll see a ball that would ordinarily be an out with normal defensive positioning get through for a hit. Today, two balls were hit right to fielders, one for an easy 4-3 play, the other catching J. J. Hardy off third base in a rundown. The Cubs had a shot at it in the last of the 11th with the winning run on third -- Felix Pie, forced in to pinch-hit after Jim Edmonds was tossed -- but Soto's ball didn't quite have enough to get over Mike Cameron's head.

And that set up D-Lee's heroics, following a leadoff walk to Daryle Ward (it almost didn't seem as if he knew he had walked, with no signal from plate umpire Ed Rapuano. This crew did a horrendous job the entire series -- to assign a crew with two umpires as bad as Joe West and C. B. Bucknor to a series like this was a real, real bad decision by MLB schedulers), and Jason Marquis, pinch-running, scoring the winning run on Lee's single. Before that, D-Lee had gone 0-for-5 and hit into his 26th DP of the year, one short of Ron Santo's dubious 1973 team record. It's nice to see him get a huge hit like that and it just shows, once again, how much of a team this is, with every single member contributing to victories.

All of this was hours after Rich Harden threw an alarming 115 pitches in five innings, having good stuff but absolutely no command, walking six, but giving up only one hit, a double to Durham in the fifth, and walking in a run in the first inning. After having watched Harden throw 29 pitches to the first five hitters, Larry Rothschild went out to have a word with him. Whatever he said turned on a switch, because Harden retired the next ten hitters he faced, at one point striking out five in a row, and though the Brewers loaded the bases in the fifth, he got out of it with an easy fly to right.

There really are no further superlatives I can write -- I'm all out of 'em. Last winter, sort of on a lark, I did a "top 20 Cub HR of all-time" list. Geo's no-doubt-about-it, first-pitch blast today would jump into the top five. In one week I've been lucky enough to be in attendance at my first Cub no-hitter and the most dramatic last-of-the-ninth rally I've ever seen. And it has to be a devastating blow to the Brewers' wild-card hopes, even with them playing the Reds and Pirates the next six games. At this writing the Mets have a 3-0 lead over the Nats in the 3rd inning; the Mets could take a 1.5 game lead over Milwaukee (or even take over the NL East lead if the Phillies lose).

Ain't this great? Press this one in your memory books forever. Now, on to clinching in the next two days, and getting the job done in October.

Click here and here for my scorecard from today's game; it took two separate sheets to finish!

Today, my son Mark, of whom I have written often here, "became a man" in the Jewish tradition, by celebrating his Bar Mitzvah. Although I was at the ballpark today, there's a party tonight and I don't have time to write the usual complete recap of today's 5-2 Cub loss to the Phillies. Thus, I've provided everything you need here to create your own.

This afternoon at Wrigley Field, the Cubs won their eighth in a row had their winning streak snapped at 7 had another magnificent comeback blew a lead for the first time in forever against the Phillies. Ted Lilly continued his great second half got pounded early and often kept his team in the game looked like he was safe on that bunt and Kerry Wood got his 29th save walked too many Phillies didn't pitch today sat in the bullpen soaking up the sun all of the above . Ryan Theriot made several scrappy plays got caught stealing again had another multihit game let some balls get by him got cheered by thousands of fans wearing his jersey . Carlos Marmol didn't set up today because he can't pitch on Saturdays sat in the bullpen sunning with Kerry Wood threw another solid inning of relief wanted Eric Karros to talk about him , so instead a) Jeff Samardzija b) Neal Cotts c) Sean Marshall d) Bob Howry e) a) and d) pitched. Cotts sucked sucked sucked sucked sucked . Mike "The Wonder Hamster" Fontenot hit his tenth HR of the year got a hit, giving the Cubs brief hope filled in at second base How DOES a guy that small hit baseballs that far? and that came right after Geovany Soto extended his team rookie HR record grounded out singled in a run kept up his hot hitting . Alfonso Soriano did three perfect bunny hops homered again dropped another fly ball had an uneventful day, doing nothing important . There were more than 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 all of the above Cub fans in attendance today, keeping the club on pace to break last year's attendance record. The weather was great great great fantastic . Tomorrow afternoon, the Cubs will go for the sweep try to win the series hope Carlos Zambrano is on his game select some fans from the stands to start end the month of August against the Phillies. Manager Lou Piniella's comments after today's game included: "We're just taking it one day at a time", and then he grinned "We'll get 'em tomorrow", and then he left the interview room "We're just taking care of our own business", and then he took his cap off and mopped his brow "We're going to have some reinforcements in the bullpen soon." . The Fox-TV telecast was, as usual, mediocre because Dick Stockton was there Eric Karros 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' magic number stayed at 22 the Cubs' magic number dropped to 21 the Cubs' magic number will drop to 20 if the Pirates can beat the Brewers tonight we shouldn't be talking magic numbers yet! Al will try much harder to write a more interesting recap tomorrow .

Well, that was about the most whacked-out game I've seen in quite some time. Consider:

• Carlos Zambrano started the game by throwing a wild pitch on strike three, walked four, allowed eight hits, made a throwing error, smashed a couple of Gatorade coolers, and didn't last long enough to win.
• Alfonso Soriano dropped a fly ball -- this time after dark -- just as he did in the sunshine May 25 in this same ballpark. What are they putting on that LF grass, anyway? (Later, when he caught a routine fly ball, he exhibited what can only be called, pardon the mild profanity, a shit-eating grin.) Soriano, for his part, did have three hits and a stolen base for positive contributions last night.
• Kerry Wood had a brain fart and failed to cover first base on a grounder to Derrek Lee, allowing Nyjer Morgan to reach base. (Morgan had earlier been caught stealing when his foot came off second and he was tagged out by Ryan Theriot after reaching on a bunt single off Sean Marshall in the 7th.)
• Jeff Samardzija and Neal Cotts weren't very good, allowing the Pirates to re-take the lead after the Cubs had overcome a 3-0 first-inning deficit.

And none of that mattered in the end, as the Cubs annihilated the Bucs 14-9 on the strength of Geovany Soto's best game of his career -- Soto smacked his 20th HR, breaking Randy Hundley's team record for HR by a rookie catcher, and also hit two bases-clearing doubles for a career-high, and Cub season high, seven RBI. The Cubs now have four players with at least 77 RBI (D-Lee drove in his 77th last night) and have a real shot at having four with over 90.

That makes the Cubs' record vs. Pittsburgh this year 13-4, and in six of the 13 wins, they have scored ten or more runs. (Can we arrange to play these guys a few more times in September?) The 82nd win of the year clinched a winning season for the Cubs, the earliest calendar date on which they have done that since 1929, when in a 154-game schedule they won their 78th game on August 23 (in 1969 they won #82 on August 30, the earliest they did so in the 162-game era before last night). I wrote yesterday that a win last night would give the Cubs ten straight series wins -- that isn't correct; the win gives them nine consecutive series wins, but the rest of what I posted is right. No Cub team has done this since 1907.

They're 21-6 in those nine series. They're 24-8 since Alfonso Soriano came off the DL on July 23. Since losing to the Cardinals on August 9 they're 12-3 (and two of the three losses were by 2-1 scores).

It's all good, though I worry a little bit about Z, who, as last August, has been shaky this month. Even Z himself is aware of this:

"I have to eliminate August. Once I get past August, everything will be back to normal," Zambrano said. "I was thinking about that after the game. Last August wasn't that good, but I was able to come back, and September and October were good for me. So it's nothing to worry about."

Zambrano said he's just having problems with his delivery. He was fighting himself on the mound, emotionally if not physically.

Maybe he's a little too aware. Z will have one more start in August, on Sunday the 31st. Let's hope he can turn the calendar page one day early.

In the meantime, let's sweep this series -- weather permitting. I'll have the pregame thread up at 10:30 CDT.

Here's the best way to sum up today's 13-5 Cub loss to the Nationals: it should have kept raining, which it was for about an hour between 12 and 1 this afternoon, delaying the start of the game to 2:20.

Then we would have been spared watching the Cubs quickly run off the rails -- all due to a complete bullpen meltdown. Although four of today's runs were charged to Jason Marquis, only two of them scored while he was actually still in the game.

The rest scored on Willie Harris' first career grand slam off Neal Cotts.

Wait, did I really type that? "Willie Harris' first career grand slam." Yeah, I guess I really did type it, because it really did happen.

Wait, I'm not done: Harris hit another homer off Chad Gaudin in the ninth inning, putting an already ridiculous 10-5 game out of reach when the Nats scored three runs off Gaudin after two were out and no one on base, after they had scored three of Gaudin in the eighth inning.

Have you had enough? I pretty much have. This was the worst Cub loss of the year, worse than this one or this one or even this one, and the latter two of those were consecutive.

If only it had started raining after the fifth; Marquis was sailing and a slick double steal executed in the first inning by Derrek Lee and Alfonso Soriano and two homers, by Lee (his first HR since July 27) and Mark DeRosa (setting a new career RBI high for him at 75), had given the Cubs a 4-0 lead and it looked like it was going to be a no-brainer.

Well, it was, for the Nats -- who had exactly one fan in attendance, or at least I saw only one person wearing any sort of Nats clothes, a man wearing a red Nats cap, and I didn't see him till after the game, on Waveland waiting for one of the tour buses. It was a complete bullpen failure, from Neal Cotts to Bob Howry to Gaudin. The Cubs, presumably, learned the lesson today (if they didn't know this already), that they can't take anyone lightly, even a team that came into the game 38 games under .500. For a similar loss by a first-place team, check out this 1962 Dodgers/Mets game, played on almost an identical date that year, August 24, when the 83-45 (precisely the reverse of this year's Nats' record coming into today's game), first-place Dodgers lost to the Mets, whose win brought them to 63 games under .500, 50 games out of first place.

It happens. I doubt it'll happen again. I've had enough of talking about this one; heading out for the evening. Suggest you do the same. Till tomorrow.

This recap of the Cubs' 2-1 loss to the Reds will be almost as short as the game itself (which ran a snappy two hours and twenty-eight minutes).

Ted Lilly took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, and he appeared to have no-hitter stuff; he had walked only one up to that point, and Mark DeRosa had provided an outstanding defensive play, something you often see in no-hitters, snaring Ryan Hanigan's line drive in the 3rd inning that looked like it was headed up the middle for a hit.

The Cubs, meanwhile, had plenty of chances to score over the first four innings -- in those four innings alone they had three hits and four walks, but two double plays ended innings, and so the only run that scored was after an Aramis Ramirez single; he advanced on an infield out, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a DeRo single.

Still, going into the 6th 1-0 appeared that it might be enough, but Lilly allowed a long double to Hanigan that might, on a day that the wind wasn't blowing in, been a home run; instead it bounced off the CF ivy for a double, and when Lilly struck out Chris Dickerson two batters later, he threw a wild pitch on strike three, allowing Dickerson to reach and Hanigan to go to third, where he scored on a fielder's choice -- another fine play by DeRo. The ball was headed up the middle when DeRo snagged it, but couldn't turn the DP. Had Lilly not thrown that WP, that grounder would have ended the inning.

The Reds' second -- and decisive -- run scored when an Edwin Encarnacion popup dropped just out of reach of Ryan Theriot and Alfonso Soriano in short left. Sitting right behind Soriano, it appeared to me that Sori couldn't have caught up to that ball even if he had gotten a better jump on it (he didn't); it just landed in no-man's-land. Maybe you disagree, but that's how I saw it. Two outs later the Reds had the lead.

The Cubs had only one baserunner after Geovany Soto hit into a double play to end the fourth inning -- Soto drew a two-out walk in the eighth, but Mike Fontenot, batting for Lilly, was called out on strikes. Both Jim Edmonds and DeRo, the last two outs of the game, also took called third's -- that drives me nuts, especially in the ninth inning of a one-run game. All of those pitches appeared too close to take.

Frustrating, infuriating, maddening. But we can take several good things out of even a loss like that: Lilly threw perhaps his best game of the year and if he keeps pitching like that, good things will follow. Neal Cotts and Jeff Samardzija (the subject, along with Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol, of a feature article in this week's Sports Illustrated) finished up with two scoreless innings of relief, keeping the game close. Cotts threw ten pitches and Samardzija nine, so both should be available today. (Incidentally, I was amused when getting a glance at Olympic men's volleyball, USA vs. Serbia, yesterday and seeing that one of the Serbian player's names was Marko Samardzic, perhaps a distant relative of Jeff's.)

Note: the Cubs are in a bit of a power outage. The last Cub homer was Henry Blanco's in Saturday's loss at Florida, the only run in that game. Daryle Ward and Mark DeRosa homered in last Friday's win; the last homers by any of the major power hitters were by Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano in Thursday's second game at Atlanta. Actually, it's nice that the Cubs can win without home runs -- but it wouldn't hurt to have one, or more, every now and then.

Can't win 'em all. Win today and win the series, and as Lou has said, that's the goal for the rest of the season. The pregame thread will be up at 11:30 am CT.

The Cubs beat the Marlins 9-2 this afternoon, winning the series (their sixth straight series win), the season series from the Marlins 4-3, and said goodbye to south Florida for 2008 (Note to Mets and Phillies: please keep the Marlins in third place!) -- and good riddance.

I mean, seriously: a rain delay when it's not raining? And yes, I well remember the non-rain delay on August 23, 1999 at Wrigley Field, when at game time, 7:05, it wasn't raining but the field stayed covered until it DID start raining at 9:15, at which time they called the game. That game, which had a sellout crowd, had to be made up as a conventional single-admission doubleheader two days later, costing the Cubs about $1 million in ticket sales (based on 1999 prices) and likely costing Ed Lynch his job. Today, they delayed the start about 20 minutes, keeping the field covered, because they thought a storm might drift over the park. It never did.

This game didn't start out propitiously for the Cubs -- they kept leaving runners on base, shades of last night, five left on in the first three innings. And let me say right now: I like Ryan Theriot's attitude and hustle. But seriously, he has to stop stealing bases, or trying to, because his 58% success rate (18 SB, 13 CS) is horrid. And what was he thinking, trying to steal third with nobody out in a scoreless game in the third inning? Even Bob Brenly, who nearly always praises Theriot, ripped him for doing that. While Theriot is having a nice year via BA and OBA, what little power he showed last year (30 doubles) is gone (only 16 so far this year). A few days off wouldn't hurt.

Meanwhile, Ryan Dempster was throwing a nice game; his first mistake wasn't really his, it was Alfonso Soriano's, for not playing Cody Ross' high drive off the wall correctly. Thinking he could catch the ball, instead it took a Fenway-like bounce away from him for a triple. If Ross is held at second, maybe he doesn't score, because the next two hitters made outs (a shoestring catch by Kosuke Fukudome helped), and maybe the Cubs then give Hanley Ramirez an intentional walk and get out of the inning. In any case, it was just one run, and Dempster gave up another one on a walk and a double in the sixth, but then got out of the inning with only one more run scoring. In the interim, Soriano had played the next ball hit off the goofy scoreboard in Miami well, and it looked like he had thrown Ramirez out at second base, but it appeared the umpire was out of position to see Mike Fontenot tag him on the leg before it reached the base. No harm, because no runs scored in that inning.

And then the Cubs exploded in the seventh, and once again, everyone contributed; the Marlins' Renyel Pinto, so good early in the year, had an 18.00 ERA in five August appearances coming into this game with six walks in three innings, and after Mike Fontenot and Reed Johnson had started the inning with hits, for some reason, Fredi Gonzalez left Pinto in to throw to four straight right-handed hitters, with predictable results: he walked Mark DeRosa, then Soriano doubled in the tying runs (past a sliding Luis Gonzalez, who might have been able to make that play five years ago, but not at two weeks shy of age 41), one out later -- for some inexplicable reason -- Gonzalez ordered Derrek Lee walked intentionally to pitch to Aramis Ramirez with the bases loaded.

Now, we all love D-Lee, but seriously, who would YOU rather face with the bases loaded? In his career, prior to today, Lee is .214/.254/.491 with 8 HR with the bases loaded; A-Ram is .337/.336/.625 with 7 HR (that's not a misprint of the OBA there -- he's got 14 bases-loaded sac flies, and 7 bases-loaded walks). Anyway, we're all glad the Marlins chose to face Ramirez, who smacked a double down the line just out of reach of third baseman Jorge Cantu, breaking the tie to give the Cubs a 4-2 lead. Ramirez, incidentally, now seems fine after that minor shakeup Thursday night in Atlanta.

The best part of watching that was seeing the close-up replay of the dugout with all the Cubs watching intently, then exploding into cheers, led by Johnson and Henry Blanco (who eventually got into the game, and singled and scored, raising his career-best BA to .292), when the ball skipped into left field. It's cool to know that they're rooting that hard for their teammates.

And then, after a sac fly by Dome, two more walks (one intentional, one drawn by ONEDEC!), Johnson (who finished 4-for-5 today and is now batting .314), batting for the second time in the inning, drove a ball to the wall in left-center, clearing the bases and finishing the 8-run inning, the 22nd time the Cubs have scored five or more runs in an inning, far and away the most in the NL (the Phillies with 17 are 2nd).

Dempster got a deserved win, his 14th (one short of his career best), with the offensive outburst and Neal Cotts, Jeff Samardzija and Carlos Marmol finished up without incident, throwing three innings of one-hit relief.

So the Cubs are back to .500 on the road at 31-31, and finish up a 5-1 road trip, their best multicity trip of the year (I say "multicity" because the four-game sweep at Milwaukee, a single-city trip, was also outstanding). Goodbye to Miami and that silly mosquito mascot. We await the result of today's Brewers-Dodgers game, at this writing led by the Dodgers 3-0 in the second after two first-inning homers, to see if the Cubs will go into the off-day up by 4.5 or 5.5 games.

Great series, great trip. Enjoy the off-day tomorrow.