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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Carlos Zambrano homered last night, his second of the year, the fourth one he's hit in his career in Houston, and his 14th lifetime dinger, breaking Fergie Jenkins' club record for career HR by a pitcher.

And that was the sum total of the Cub offense last night as they lost their third in a row, 4-1 to the Astros. Z must have felt as if he had to do everything himself, and he was uncharacteristically wild (for this year, anyway -- the six walks he issued is a season high), probably overthrowing, getting back into bad habits from years gone by. Z acknowledges he may have lost control:

Zambrano dropped to 5-1 in 10 starts against the NL Central this season. He often seemed exasperated and [Lou] Piniella wants his fiery ace to work on controlling his emotions.

"There is no reason to show your frustrations," Piniella said. "All you can do is pick up the other team and hurt yourself. He’s a really good competitive guy, he loves to win. All that does is take away from his greatness."

Zambrano conceded that Piniella might be right.

"I wasn’t controlling myself. That’s the most important thing," he said. "You can be mad at yourself, you can be mad at the batter, but you have to stay in control."

The Cubs had plenty of chances to take the lead or even break the game open early -- they left RISP in the second, third and fifth innings (not that I'm complaining about a Z home run, but it would have been more productive with two men on in the second inning), and all seven LOB for the game were in the first five innings. Meanwhile, of Z's six walks, two of them scored as the Astros went out to a 3-0 lead by the end of the third.

And essentially, although I, and most of you probably too, followed or watched the rest of the game, we might as well have done something else with our Saturday evening.

Speaking of which, if you were watching Baseball Tonight after the Cubs game last night, the 2003 game that they were all discussing -- and I hadn't seen the "highlights" from that eventually rained-out game since then -- that was what I've called the "Typhoon Game", played on Mother's Day, May 11, 2003 (there's no boxscore or recap link because they called it, with the Cubs down 11-9, after four innings, so it wasn't official and wound up being rescheduled to September, helping to create the memorable five-game series vs. St. Louis at that time; the Cubs won four of the five, helping send them to the NL Central title). The wind and rain really were that bad, blowing balls that should have landed foul in the seats into the middle of left field. It was raining sideways and so windy that I couldn't even hold up my umbrella. Here's what I wrote about it at the time, and I stand by that five years later. That game should never have even been started -- conditions were appalling, and the Cardinals' Eli Marrero suffered a serious ankle injury, which may have been the impetus for finally calling the game. Check out Marrero's career stats -- after 2003, except for one year as a decent part-timer in Atlanta, he was never really the same player. I have to say that Eduardo Perez was pretty funny on BBTN, expressing how much he did NOT want Tony LaRussa to send him into that game!

One more TV-related event: after BBTN, I flipped on the Orioles-Tigers game on EI, which had, rather comically, gone into extra innings tied 10-10. Luke Scott hit a walkoff HR, went around the bases to his teammates awaiting him at the plate, flipped off his helmet as players now do when they do that (because otherwise it hurts when the happy team bashes you on the head!) -- and then slid into home plate. I thought that was an appalling display of showing up the other team. Wouldn't be surprised to see Scott get knocked down today by a Detroit pitcher.

This recap is just about done. What more can be said? This, for one: Chad Gaudin threw well in relief, and that's a good thing, because you can never have too many capable relief pitchers. For all the criticism he sometimes gets, and yes, he can be extremely maddening -- this team badly misses Alfonso Soriano. Including the game in which Soriano was injured (since he didn't play past the bottom of the first that day), the Cubs have treaded water at 16-16. He appears on target to return next Thursday at home vs. the Marlins (and I am going to bring our secret weapon, my son Mark, whose personal record is 8-0 this year, back to at least one, hopefully two, games in that series). Thanks to Jessica for pointing out that the Cubs catch a break the next week because they won't have to face Dan Haren or Brandon Webb in Arizona, usually a house of pain for Cub teams (they are only 13-25 in the former BOB, and that doesn't even include the two NLDS losses last year), and won't face Ricky Nolasco, Florida's best pitcher, next weekend.

Enough. Salvage one from this series and move on. It's hard for just about any team to win on the road these days -- just look at Tampa Bay, who looked horrid while losing seven in a row on the road (including being swept by the Indians at Cleveland, not a good team this year), and who have righted their ship at home. The pregame thread will be up at 11:30 am CT.

Since yesterday's game was eminently forgettable, let's relive some of the good plays and interesting moments from Wednesday night's win:

Mark DeRosa catches Brian Roberts' (who?) fly ball in the 1st inning

Aramis Ramirez scores the Cubs' third run on Geovany Soto's single

Mike Fontenot catches Melvin Mora's popup in the 3rd inning

During an 8th inning pitching change, Orioles outfielders appear to be having a prayer meeting

Kerry Wood strikes out Alex Cintron to end the game

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

A fair amount of the play in the early innings of last night's 7-5 Cub loss to the Orioles, snapping their home winning streak at 14, resembled the bumbling spy Maxwell Smart (I haven't yet seen the new Get Smart movie, though I think I will -- I was a big fan of the TV series when it originally aired when I was a kid).

Some of the game recaps in the traditional media focused on a certain second baseman, who plays for the Orioles, who was the subject of at least 15,357 rumors on this site alone all winter. Granted, Brian Roberts had a good game last night, singling and tripling (including his 1000th career hit), and scoring two runs.

But the key play in this game was the misplay Eric Patterson made in left field when Luke Scott led off the sixth inning with a short pop fly into left-center. Now, usually that's the left fielder's ball -- any time an outfielder can get into range to catch a ball like that, you'd say he should, because he's got a better angle on it. In this case, Ryan Theriot was waving his right arm frantically, calling everyone else off -- the right thing to do when you've GOT IT!

Patterson bulled ahead anyway, chasing Theriot out of the way, and the ball dropped in between the two of them and Jim Edmonds, who had no shot at it. Scott was originally credited with a double, but later charitable (and correct, I think) scoring changed it to an error, making all three runs allowed by Michael Wuertz unearned (Jeremy Guthrie, the Orioles pitcher, would have made the last out of the inning by striking out).

That really was the game, because it made a 4-1 game into a 7-1 game, and if those runs don't score, Edmonds' three-run HR in the 7th and Aramis Ramirez' RBI single in the 8th would have won the game instead of just putting the Cubs back in it. They had a terrific chance to at least tie the game up in the 9th when they loaded the bases with nobody out, but Ronny Cedeno, Kosuke Fukudome and Henry Blanco all struck out and that was that.

Let's talk about Cedeno's K for a moment. He really didn't have a good at-bat -- he was set up well by O's closer George Sherrill, who put two fastballs by him and had Cedeno (he's got to give back ONEDEC! for a while, I think, having turned back around to the bad old Ronny) looking for a breaking ball outside -- and then Sherrill got him with a fastball again. So although Cedeno looked bad, give credit to Sherrill -- he does, after all, have 26 saves, the second-most in baseball.

Sean Marshall, I thought, threw well enough; he struck out seven and had his curve working quite well -- until he issued a walk in the 4th that helped lead to the first two runs, after which he started getting hit hard and often. The bullpen did a decent enough job of keeping the Cubs in the game -- as noted, the three runs off Wuertz shouldn't have scored.

You didn't really think this home winning streak would last forever, did you? That's a good long run, 14 games, and no streak like this one lasts forever. Credit to the Cubs for turning what looked, after six innings, to be a blowout loss, into a close game in the 8th and 9th that had the ballpark (and unlike a lot of midseason games, hardly anyone had left by the 9th) rocking, on an absolutely gorgeous, though coolish for late June, evening.

This is the first time the Orioles have visited Wrigley Field and there were a surprisingly large number of orange-clad Orioles fans in attendance. They were readily apparent not only for their bright-colored shirts, but they took part in what is a Baltimore tradition -- during the National Anthem, when the phrase near the end "Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave" is sung, they yell, very loudly, "O!" when "Oh" is sung. It was louder than you might have expected, mostly from the left field corner; the crowd last night, 41,537, was the sixth-largest crowd of the year.

That, and some pre-game discussion of the upcoming Peoria Chiefs game at Wrigley Field (to which, I learned from BCB reader BartlettBob, who sat with us last night, you cannot buy bleacher tickets at the box office -- only online), prompted me to go on an expedition to find out what the real seating capacity of Wrigley Field is. I remembered, years ago, there used to be posted signs, required by the Chicago Fire Department, of how many seats are in each area of the ballpark, including the bleachers. I figured if I added them all up, I could get pretty close, because there are so many different numbers online as to the current capacity. The Cubs website says 41,160, but that's been the same since last year; they haven't, it seems, added the 70 CBOE seats to that total. ESPN.com has -- sort of. They say 41,210. Ballparks.com, a pretty good authority, says 41,118.

So what do the official "ballpark figures" say? What they say is, the fire department and the Cubs have to get together and make a new sign. There's only one sign, now posted near the Cubs administrative office entrance. It's dated July 29, 2004 -- that's just about when the city came in to inspect, in connection with the falling concrete found earlier that month. The sign says the "fixed seating" capacity is 38,548 with "fixed seting including standing room" (yes, it's misspelled "seting") as 39,075.

Hey, Cubs: those numbers aren't even close to being right -- they don't include several of the premium seating sections nor the bleacher expansion. How about an accurate count?

Anyway, onward. The Cubs lost at home. It hadn't happened in five weeks. It was bound to happen sometime. We'll get 'em tonight. Final question for all of you: I noticed a third overflow thread was posted. Do you all think I need to post three overflow threads?

Jim Edmonds' HR in the 7th brings the Cubs back to within 7-4

Orioles submariner Chad Bradford pitching to Derrek Lee in the 8th; his hand nearly touches the ground when he throws.