Before we celebrate today's exciting 8-5 Cubs comeback win over the Pirates (and yes, I call it "comeback" because they seemed to have it well in hand at 5-2 before a bullpen failure in the 8th inning allowed the Bucs to tie the game), a little more perspective.

The win puts the Cubs 22 games over .500 at 67-45. The last time the Cubs were this many games over .500 was October 1, 1989, the last day of the 1989 regular season, when they beat the Cardinals 5-1 in St. Louis to get to 93-69, 24 games over .500, their high water mark of that division title season.

It's taken nearly nineteen years to get that far over breakeven again. Now, if you choose to look at this negatively, you could discuss the mountains of failure over the last two decades, and there's no question that mountain exists.

But this Cubs team is way over that mountain. Today was a perfect example of how this ballclub wins as a team. There was a pretty bad bullpen failure today -- when Jeff Samardzija had to be lifted after throwing 40 pitches in two-plus innings, Neal Cotts (who gave up two hits in facing three batters) and Chad Gaudin (who gave up the game-tying HR to Andy LaRoche) didn't get their jobs done. Fortunately, Gaudin recovered from his failure by striking out Steve Pearce to keep the Cubs tied.

Then, Lou simply took advantage of an inferior team. After the first two outs in the last of the 8th were recorded easily by Craig Hansen (who I suspect the Pirates will install as their closer eventually), Hansen walked Geovany Soto on a very close pitch that got appealed to 1B umpire Ed Montague. It looked to us in the bleachers as if Soto might have swung, but Montague ruled in the Cubs' favor. Lou sent Daryle Ward up to bat, likely with absolutely no intention of having Ward actually hit. As most of you know, Ward hasn't been all that productive as a pinch-hitter this year, and I suspect all Lou wanted was to get the lefty Sean Burnett in the game to face the hot-hitting Reed Johnson, which is exactly what happened.

Johnson crushed Burnett's second pitch deep into the LF bleachers to give the Cubs a 7-5 lead and Alfonso Soriano followed with his 19th of the season, giving the Cubs back the three runs they'd frittered away in the top of the inning. Carlos Marmol, looking like the Marmol of old (15 pitches, 12 strikes), mowed down the Pirates in the 9th for his sixth save. In his postgame press conference, Lou was asked if he'd use Bob Howry to close tomorrow, and he hedged, suggesting that Marmol might be used four days in a row if necessary, for the first time this season. He also said that it's possible that Kerry Wood, who threw a simulated game this morning and was shagging flies in the OF during BP (but without throwing anything back in), could be activated sometime during the Houston series.

Soriano and Aramis Ramirez both hit their 19th HR today. That doesn't even rank in the top twenty in the NL (it's tied for 25th). Even so, the Cubs lead the NL in scoring by a significant margin (currently, 42 runs more than the Phillies, pending Philly's game tonight vs. the Cardinals) -- further proof that this team has learned how to score runs in other ways besides just whacking the ball out of the yard.

About Carlos Zambrano's seemingly too-early exit from today's game: no worries, said Lou in his postgame press conference. Lou explained that Z, having been extended pretty far in his last two starts (125 and 118 pitches, respectively), was "shortened up" this time. He threw 82 pitches in five innings and will have an extra day off this week due to the off day on Thursday (he'll throw vs. the Cardinals on Saturday). Z was in line for the win until the bullpen meltdown, and also contributed with his bat -- the Cubs tied the game in the 2nd on his double play ball, and then he drove in a run with his fourth double of the season. He's now hitting .354 with a .538 SLG. Today is another example, too, of how individual pitcher wins mean little. Chad Gaudin, the pitcher who threw the worst single pitch of the game, the one that tied it up, got the "win" for his record. It's TEAM wins that matter.

So all is well. Today was Jeff's birthday and we celebrated in the bleachers with gooey chocolate cupcakes with red & blue frosting. It was a day worth celebrating. The Cubs did what they needed to do this weekend -- win the series. Onward to tomorrow, and go Phillies! I'll have some of David's photos from both yesterday and today's wins posted tomorrow morning.

I nearly fell asleep in the bleachers today and it wasn't because I was tired, as I usually am due to my work hours -- I've had the last two days off and have had plenty of sleep.

No, today I was yawning because the Cubs looked completely out of sorts, stymied by a guy they apparently knew nothing about:

The Cubs didn't have much of a scouting report against [Jeff] Karstens (1-0), whom the Pirates acquired from the New York Yankees in the Xavier Nady deal. Friday was his first big league appearance this year, and he gave up five hits, walked four and struck out two over six innings.

Well, c'mon now. It's not as if Karstens just magically appeared out of nowhere -- someone had to be scouting him, right? In any case, the Pirates, having turned over one-sixth of their roster in the last week due to the trades of Jason Bay and Xavier Nady, put what was basically a Triple-A team (plus the only real major leaguer, Nate McLouth) on the field at Wrigley today and thus I'm only half-joking when I say the Nashville Sounds, um, the Pirates shut out the Cubs 3-0, the Cubs' fifth shutout of the season -- and of the previous four, two of them were by other teams with losing records (April 27 at Washington and May 7 at Cincinnati).

Jason Marquis threw just fine, thank you. It was a "quality start" (three ER in six IP), though I'm not sure "quality" describes a 4.50 ERA; that's pretty much Marquis' career average. He gave up a HR to Jason Michaels and a couple of RBI singles, to Michaels and Jack Wilson, two sort of marginally better than the rest of the minor league lineup on the field today, and that was it. He walked only one. The bullpen put up three one-hit innings with six strikeouts, and Carlos Marmol looked like the "old" Marmol, snapping off sliders and striking out the side in his one inning of work.

The Cubs just couldn't get anything going, even with men on base all day -- five hits and seven walks. They hit into four double plays, including one by PH Reed Johnson with two on and one out in the eighth when it appeared the Cubs might be mounting a comeback against the Pirates' Sean Burnett, and another by Henry Blanco to end the game (Dave called that one, and I guess the rest of us could have, too).

Were the Cubs in for a letdown like this? Maybe, since the series in Milwaukee had featured one really intense game (Monday), and three blowouts -- you can't sustain that as a team forever, and perhaps the Cubs could be forgiven for looking past a pitcher like Karstens, who had had little major league success with the Yankees, toward two better pitchers (Paul Maholm and Ian Snell) going in the other two games of this series.

There's not much more to say about this day or this game. The Cubs lost and looked flat. By the seventh inning a fair amount of the bleacher crowd had already gone, heading either to Lollapalooza or perhaps the Bears' workout at Soldier Field (which, according to Jeff, had sold over 65,000 tickets, an amazing number for just watching the Bears have a workout). Thomas Ian Nicholas, the actor who played Henry Rowengartner in the 1993 movie "Rookie of the Year" (and later became more famous for his work in the "American Pie" films) thus sang "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" (and not very well, I might add) to a mostly-disinterested, about 1/4 empty house.

Advice to the Cubs: go home, have a nice quiet Friday night, forget about this one and get 'em tomorrow. Stuff like this happens. In the meantime -- go Braves! go Phillies!