It looked and felt just like the Brant Brown Game, didn't it?

A lazy fly ball that the left fielder should have caught to end the game instead winds up giving the game to the other side. It didn't happen exactly as it did ten years ago in Milwaukee -- when Brown dropped the fly with the bases loaded and the Cubs ahead by two, all three runs scored and the Brewers won. In this case Alfonso Soriano's drop just tied the game and the Pirates had to wait two more innings before winning 6-5, but the net effect is the same -- a demoralizing, depressing loss of a game that should have been won.

The good news is that the 1998 Cubs came back from that deflating loss and won the wild card spot five days later. This team is far better than that one and has far more time left, and they'll come back.

But for today, as Len said, Carlos Marmol must have been standing on the mound watching the fly ball knowing he'd saved the game, and then it all changed. The psychological impact of something like that cannot be overstated.

Let's start at the beginning, though, shall we? I hereby offer my services to MLB as a replay official. I work cheap -- don't even need them to buy me a big plasma screen so I can see the plays up close, I already have one -- and I'll instant-message the correct result to the ballpark right after I make the right call. For the fifth time in the last week, an umpire blew a call when Luis Rivas' drive in the first inning hit the top of the LF wall in front of Soriano (who took his eye off the ball, the #1 sin for any fielder), then bounced straight up in the air, never actually landing in the stands, before landing on the field. (Rivas later hit an actual, indisputed homer to the LF corner, as if to say, "See, I really CAN hit one.")

Soriano is partly to blame here. If he had played the ball (and probably didn't because he couldn't find it), then Lou might have had a good reason to come out and ask the umpires to have a conference, and who knows, like they did in New York last Sunday, maybe they'd have overturned the call. You could say this was the difference in the game, since the Cubs would have had a 5-3 lead in the 9th instead of 5-4, but as Bob Brenly said repeatedly during the telecase, you don't know what would have happened if, as should have happened, Rivas wound up on second with a ground-rule double. Maybe he'd have scored anyway.

Soriano tried to make up for his lazy play by hitting a two-run homer in the Cubs' four-run third that gave them the lead, but Ted Lilly just wasn't sharp today. You could tell he was laboring, and each inning that he got through without giving up a run was a gift. He left with the game tied at 4 and having thrown 101 pitches.

The bullpen did its job as the Cubs took the lead on an Aramis Ramirez RBI single, just as A-Ram gave the club the lead last night with his double. Marmol did his job too, although I could have done without the walks. Can anyone explain how that run off him counts as earned? Soriano was charged with an error on the dropped fly ball -- if he catches it, the game is over! The run has to be unearned.

Ah, well. Doesn't really matter. It's a run anyway, a loss anyway, and the team just has to regroup coming home tomorrow. Fortunately, the Cubs have played extremely well at home and they had just as tough a road trip (through St. Louis and Cincinnati) earlier this month and came home and had a terrific homestand. I expect nothing less this time -- 5-2 is imperative, 6-1 would be great.

Len & Bob were, justifiably, extremely critical of Soriano after his drop. They said, correctly, that he really isn't a very good left fielder, apart from his plus throwing arm. With his leg in uncertain status, that has to decrease his range. The Cubs have to think about doing one of two things: if Soriano really is hurt -- and it appears to this observer that he still is -- put him on the DL and let him rest till he's well. If not, then they have to consider taking him out of games for defense in the late innings.

In the meantime, I was serious about my offer of being a replay official, though of course I could only do it for road games, since I'm at all the home games. Len & Bob discussed this and said in shooting the breeze about this issue, someone came up with the idea of assigning an extra umpire to every crew, to cover the outfield for just such situations. That'd be a tall order -- you'd have to have someone who could run fast, to cover the entire outfield -- but this, along with all the other suggestions, are worth considering. In this Baseball Prospectus article ($), John Perrotto says Bud and the boys may actually do something... but check out what Lou has to say, too:

Commissioner Bud Selig has admittedly never been a big fan of the concept. "The commissioner calls instant replay umpires getting together and trying to get the call right," said Bob Watson, MLB vice president of standards and on-field operations. "That is instant replay in his estimation." But when Selig was a guest on XM Radio’s The Baseball Beat on Friday, he told host Charley Steiner that he is at least willing to consider replay. "Everybody knows how I think about these issues," Selig said. "I really am a traditionalist because I think it is right to understand the history of this sport, to be very careful anytime you make a change. But I am very seriously reviewing this entire matter, and I’ll take it from there. I can’t say any more now, because I don’t know how it is going to come out."

As the GM vote suggests, most people in the game are already in favor of limited instant replay. "I think it can be a win-win situation if everyone ends up voting for it," Royals manager Trey Hillman said. "I would be in favor of it because some of the calls--fair or foul, or contact calls [in or out of the park]--are tough for umpires to make."

Astros manager Cecil Cooper would like to see replay used in what he calls 'game-changing' situations. "I think we should have like they do in basketball," Cooper said. "All the times at the end of quarters or end of the games they always let the video determine whether the guy got the shot off."

Cubs manager Lou Piniella, though, is a contrarian, and wants no part of instant replay. He admits to getting frustrated when watching NFL games on television and seeing the coaches throw their red flags to challenge an official’s call. "When they start reviewing calls, I know I have five minutes to go to the refrigerator," Piniella said. "It just really slows the game down. All the general managers and either managers or bench coaches were just required to be on an hour-long conference call [Wednesday] with the commissioner’s office about speeding up the pace of the games. Replay would only slow games down. Players make mistakes, coaches make mistakes, managers make mistakes, and so do umpires. We’re all human, and I don’t think you should take the human element out of the game."

Food for thought, anyway. For now, get this game out of your psyche. There are 112 games remaining, and tomorrow is at home.

One final note -- it's time to call an end to the Jim Edmonds Experiment. His lazy fly ball pinch-hitting today looked like a 60-year-old coach hitting fungoes. He's DONE.

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.

Hey Z! Next time you're pissed at yourself for striking out, don't break the bat over your knee!!!

Seriously. It was, I suppose, sort of funny at the time and provoked a huge cheer from the sellout crowd of 41,686 (largest of the year so far), but Carlos Zambrano, who didn't have his best stuff in the first four innings, completely lost it in the fifth after he came out following the bat-breaking episode. Three hits and two walks later, Lou had to take him out of the game, and thank heavens for Michael Wuertz, Scott Eyre (who was so anxious to get into the game that he started trotting in from the bullpen at the beginning of the 7th, even though Lou hadn't called for him) and Jon Lieber for throwing four innings of two-hit, five-strikeout relief and keeping the game close.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, as Carlos Marmol was touched for a single that -- once again -- might have been handled by Ronny Cedeno at SS, but Ryan Theriot, despite a great effort, couldn't throw Freddy Sanchez out, and then Nate McLouth hit a two-run HR that was the difference in the Pirates' 7-6 win over the Cubs this afternoon, the first time the Pirates have beaten the Cubs since September 9, 2007 in Pittsburgh, ten straight wins for the Cubs over the Pirates; that's the longest such Cub-over-Pirate streak in 117 years (since 1890-91), on a sunny Saturday when the wind shifted from strong-blowing-out-to-RF, to strong-blowing-in-over-RF, which may have prevented Derrek Lee's fly ball from going out in the last of the 9th.

I told Mike after the Pirates took the lead 5-4 in the fifth that it'd be up to the white-hot-en-fuego-any-superlative-you-can-think-of Alfonso Soriano to win the game, and damned if he didn't nearly do just that. In a homestand where Soriano's hit virtually everything in sight, today was his best game of all -- 5-for-5 with two HR and two doubles (13 total bases); he's now 20-for-37 (.541) with 5 doubles, 7 HR and 15 RBI in the nine games played so far in this longest homestand of the year, raising his average to .295 (coming in off the last road trip, he was hitting .188).

And we know that just as quickly, he could turn around and have a bad stretch, so you ride this streak as long as it lasts. Soriano still seems to be running slowly; his ground-rule double into the ivy in the 9th inning would probably have only been a single if it had exited the ivy and been fielded by McLouth, because he rounded first base very slowly. That would have prevented him from scoring on Ryan Theriot's single, not that it really mattered for the final result. Derrek Lee's fly ball looked, off the bat, as if it might make it for an amazing walkoff win, but Xavier Nady caught it just short of the warning track.

Today -- the Cubs just got beat. There's no shame in being beaten by McLouth, who is one of maybe three decent players on the Pirates and who is off to a torrid start himself (his 36 RBI now rank second in the National League). After Z's meltdown, the Cubs seemed to kind of shrink back and Zach Duke, who had been hashed around pretty good in the first four innings (eight hits, four runs), retired the last eight Cubs he faced. Tyler Yates, his relief, had Soriano as his first opposing hitter and he gave Alfonso his 2nd HR of the day. Soriano's so zoned in that virtually all of his HR have landed right near our section -- one yesterday just to our right, close to the foul pole, that second one today just to our left, to section 303 across the aisle in the last row.

It might have been a bit different, too, had Geovany Soto been safe on Mark DeRosa's double in the third inning. It seemed the right call at the time, leading 3-1, to send Soto, even though he's probably the slowest man in the starting lineup. Replays appeared to confirm that he was out. Had he scored, the score would have neen 4-1 and maybe Duke gets yanked right then and there.

On things like this, ballgames can turn. We'll get 'em tomorrow.

Two final notes: I thought having Kosuke Fukudome bunt in the 8th was the right call, especially since he usually handles the bat so well; this was a situation where you're not bunting strictly to sacrifice, but perhaps to beat it out. Dome had that in mind, as he attempted to push the bunt past Damaso Marte, but didn't quite get it far enough, and Marte was able to throw the lead runner, Aramis Ramirez, out at second, effectively killing the rally.

And conspicuous by his absence was Jim Edmonds. Rather than double-switching in the 9th when Marmol came in with Mike Fontenot, Lou could have used Edmonds to bat for Marmol in the last of the ninth. Instead, Edmonds stayed anchored to the bench today, and likely will be again tomorrow with yet another lefty, Phil Dumatrait (who the Cubs have beaten like the proverbial drum), going.

Finally, I heard today about some things that are happening to the guy who jumped out of the bleachers last Sunday. He was apparently dared by some of his friends (as is the usual thing in these cases, perhaps fueled by alcohol), and was in the Navy. He's being discharged from the Navy (my guess is, not honorably), and has also lost a chance to qualify for the US Olympic team, and may wind up in prison, convicted of a felony.

That's a lesson, kids. Don't do stuff like that. There are consequences for bad choices. The jumper apparently had everything going for him and has lost a lot due to one bad choice.