In the midst of the seemingly hourly updates on a possible Jake Peavy trade (they're getting almost as tiresome as the discussion last year of the deal for Brian Roberts that never happened), I thought it would be useful to post a list of some of Jim Hendry's best deals since he became general manager in July 2002:

• December 4, 2002: sent Todd Hundley and Chad Hermansen to the Dodgers for Mark Grudzielanek and Eric Karros
• July 23, 2003: sent Jose Hernandez, Bobby Hill and Matt Bruback to the Pirates for Kenny Lofton and Aramis Ramirez
• November 25, 2003: sent Hee Seop Choi and Mike Nannini to the Marlins for Derrek Lee
• July 8, 2008: sent Eric Patterson, Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton and Josh Donaldson to the A's for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin

Now, answer this question honestly: how many of those deals did we hear a single peep about before they happened?

The correct answer is "None", because they all seemingly happened out of nowhere, unexpected either for the player acquired (did anyone really think D-Lee was coming here? He was rumored to be headed to the Orioles, among others), or for the idea that they'd happen at all (how many of us thought Todd Hundley's deal was dumpable?). My point is this: it seems the more we hear about a potential Cub trade, the less likely it is to happen. And I suspect that's what is going on with the Peavy rumors: all smoke, no fire. Peavy will either become a Brave, or go to some other team that hasn't even meen mentioned, but not become a Cub. I believe Jim Hendry is working hard on potential deals, but this isn't one of them. (Granted, that a couple of the deals mentioned above were salary dumps, but Hendry still had to become aware of them and offer the right players, otherwise they might have gone elsewhere.)

Just before the Hendry era, remember the Fred McGriff deal? That one dragged out for three weeks before McGriff decided -- magnanimous soul that he was -- to drag himself away from his family in Tampa to help the Cubs' push to the NL Central title in 2001, which ultimately failed. McGriff's numbers were decent in Chicago, but his attitude sucked. Fortunately, the Cubs gave up very little for him (infielder Jason Smith, who has played for five teams since leaving the Cubs and has a .221 lifetime BA to show for it).

So be a little patient, at least. The open free agent season doesn't start till Friday. I have faith in Jim Hendry -- who has made many excellent moves in the last two years -- to put the right pieces on the field for 2009.

A couple of things that flew under the radar yesterday:

• Geovany Soto says Henry Blanco will be back:

  Soto said he talked to Blanco recently and expects the free agent backup to return to the Cubs, who declined their $3 million option on him in hopes of re-signing him for less. "He wants 100 percent to come back and doesn't want to go nowhere [else]," Soto said.

• Guess who's interested in Bob Howry? The Giants, who have made a cottage industry out of signing the oldest players they can possibly find. The only criticism Brian Sabean probably has about Howry is that, at 35, he's not old enough for the geriatric Giants.

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!)

Continue reading this post »

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.)

Raise your hand if you still want Micah Hoffpauir on the postseason roster.

No hands? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Oh, and raise your hand if you think the Cubs should let Henry Blanco go and give Koyie Hill the backup catcher slot in 2009.

Thought so about that, too.

The Cubs gave the backups some playing time last night, partly for playoff consideration and partly because, unfortunately, Geovany Soto had to leave the game after re-hurting (I didn't want to say "injuring", because it isn't really an injury) his hand during an at-bat in the sixth inning, and the result was another loss, 5-1 to the Brewers. The Cubs will need to win both of their remaining games to match the 1945 team's total of 98, which is the most wins any Cub team has had since 1935.

This, combined with the Mets' 6-1 loss to the Marlins, gave Milwaukee a one-game lead in the wild card race. If they win it -- and it's possible they could today (although the Cubs will have something to say about that) -- the Cubs' first-round opponent will be the Dodgers. But there are still two days left in the season and -- as the old mantra goes -- stranger things have happened.

About the misplays that cost the Cubs the game: Hoffpauir made a truly bad baserunning blunder in the fifth inning, with the game still tied. After a single sending Mike Fontenot to third with two out -- and Fontenot had zero chance to score, and Mike Quade wisely held him -- Hoffpauir inexplicably decided to stretch his single to a double; he had about as much chance to do that as I would have, and he was gunned down easily to end the inning. Soto was the next hitter, which would have given the Cubs an excellent chance to break the tie -- and maybe that would have avoided the play in the next inning where Geo swung and re-aggravated his hand owie. What else do you call this? It's not really an injury, because he can play, but it occasionally gets bad enough to have him sit. He'll sit today, and play Sunday. Henry Blanco should be starting today -- he could use the playing time, too.

Koyie Hill finished off Geo's at-bat by striking out, and then let Brewers pitcher Seth McClung (who, incidentally, had one of the better relief outings by anyone this year -- four one-hit, six-strikeout innings) reach in the 7th on catcher's interference. CI -- as Len kept reminding us, that's the scorecard abbreviation -- is rare enough that it doesn't even have a separate stat line; the catcher gets charged with an error. So, when Chad Gaudin gave up a three-run homer to Rickie Weeks later in the inning, icing the victory for Milwaukee, one of the runs was unearned.

It appears that Gaudin has pitched himself off the playoff roster, especially now that Lou has committed to Bob Howry for the postseason bullpen. To which I say something that I often hear among our group in the bleachers, right now directed at Howry: "Please don't suck."

Jim Edmonds provided the Cub scoring with his 20th homer of the year, technically giving the Cubs six 20-homer men (only 19 of his homers have been with the Cubs, so I'd like to see him hit one more to make this "official"). Mark DeRosa, who hasn't played since tweaking his calf muscle on Wednesday, dumped the boot he's been wearing since then and wants to play on Sunday, just to get some timing back, and I think this is a good idea, especially since he'll be facing CC Sabathia, the quality of pitcher he'd be seeing in the postseason. The best news to come out of the loss was Ryan Dempster's performance -- he allowed four hits and a run in five innings, throwing 80 pitches, in a final pre-playoff outing.

Or not. If the Brewers win today and the Mets lose, Milwaukee wins the wild card and Sabathia would probably then not pitch Sunday. (Parenthetical good news: the Brewers' win eliminated the Astros from the wild-card race, meaning the Cubs will NOT have to go to Houston for the Hurricane Ike-postponed makeup game.) The Cubs will have something to say about this, of course. The races this year have been pretty wild. I think we've got a couple of days of craziness left.

The best news about last night's 7-6 Cubs loss to the Mets is: it wasn't postponed or suspended, which would have forced the Cubs to return to New York on Monday to finish up. And, even though we'd have liked to see the Cubs win on a day when Micah Hoffpauir made his case for the postseason roster by going 5-for-5 with two homers, the wins by the Mets and the Brewers last night reduced the elimination number for the Astros (who also won) to one -- meaning that any win by either the Brewers OR the Mets would eliminate the possibility that the Cubs would have to return to Houston on Monday to make up that postponed game.

Now that we've cleared that up, and now that Ryan Dempster has been named the game one starter next Wednesday -- all eyes are on the last playoff roster spot. Will it be Hoffpauir? Lou says he's at least bought himself another start tonight in Milwaukee. But remember this: Hoffpauir won't be starting games in the postseason. He would be on the bench, to serve as a middle-inning pinch-hitter. As a pinch-hitter this season, he is 3-for-13 (all singles) with a walk and seven strikeouts. He isn't really a good defensive player -- there were a couple of balls that got by him at first base last night that Derrek Lee would have stopped, and you wouldn't want to see him in the outfield in a playoff game -- and so, if I were making the choice, I wouldn't make it based on one spectacular game which isn't likely to be repeated. Felix Pie is my pick for the final playoff roster slot, presuming the Cubs do go with 11 pitchers rather than 12 (and Chad Gaudin is rapidly pitching himself off the roster), due to his speed and ability to play all three outfield positions. I'm more concerned about Mark DeRosa, who now may sit out the entire Milwaukee series with the mild calf strain he suffered on Wednesday night.

The loss took away any chance for the Cubs to win 100 games this season (unless they sweep the Brewers AND the makeup game in Houston is played, an unlikely scenario), but if they can sweep in Milwaukee they'd have 99 wins, the most by a Cubs team since 1935. The 840 runs scored is the most since they scored 847 in 1935; only two Cub teams since 1900 have scored more than 847 (both in high-offense seasons: 982 in 1929 and 998 in 1930).

Also last night, Rich Harden made a decent showing in his final start before the postseason, though the five walks is too many, as were the 98 pitches in six innings. Harden gets at least a week off, as he won't throw till at the earliest next Thursday in game two, or, depending on the opponent (Lou might want to throw Ted Lilly vs. the lefthanded hitting Phillies in game two, if they wind up being the opposition), maybe not even till game three on the road. I was surprised to see Koyie Hill catching last night -- he won't be on the postseason roster and Henry Blanco will, and Blanco could use some playing time, too. I assume Hank White will catch at least one of the games in Milwaukee this weekend.

So the Cubs return to their second-favorite park tonight, where they have won all six games they've played there in 2008 against two different teams, where they'll have a fair number of fans -- a quick check of ticket availability for Miller Park just before this was posted shows Sunday's game a complete sellout and only SRO tickets for tonight and tomorrow. TV and schedule reminders: tonight's game has been moved to CSN Plus for Chicago-area viewers, but has also been picked up by ESPN, so it will be available nationally; and tomorrow's game time has been changed to 2:55 to accomodate Fox. Here's the link that normally carries the market listings for Fox games; as of this morning it hasn't yet been updated for tomorrow's games.

Far be it from me to look to John Kruk as the fount of all baseball wisdom, but if you saw Baseball Tonight last night, you'll have to admit he had a point.

They ran the highlight of the bizarre play where Johan Santana's bat broke when he hit a ground ball up the middle, only to see the ball hit one of the bat pieces and bounce away from Ronny Cedeno. Marshall waved his arms as if to say, "What the heck?", as if it were Cedeno's fault, which it wasn't. He did strike out Jose Reyes and the inning could have been over, and then he seemed to lose focus, walking Luis Castillo and giving up a two-run single to David Wright, which tied the game.

Kruk said Marshall's body language was all wrong, and he's right. Lou didn't look happy in the dugout, but that didn't stop Lou from praising Marshall after the game:

"Our guy matched [Santana] pitch for pitch there, and actually was doing a little better until the fifth inning," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "We need to get [Marshall] back in the bullpen, where he can help us in the middle. He'll pitch a little in the middle in the Milwaukee series to get ready for postseason."

I like Sean Marshall and I think he'll be very valuable in the postseason. But he can't lose focus like that. The Cubs lost the game to the Mets 6-2, not really important in the grand scheme of things, except that it now will require winning out in order to get to 100 wins, perhaps the only remaining team goal.

Meanwhile, Chad Gaudin may have pitched himself off the playoff roster by giving up four hard hits and inexplicably flipping a ball to Derrek Lee on which he had no chance of getting the runner; a run scored on the resulting error, but it would have scored anyway as the Mets pounded Gaudin. Maybe it's the effects of not having pitched in nearly a month, but I'm guessing Lou looks at quite a number of different bullpen combinations before making a decision prior to next Wednesday.

Reed Johnson had been 10-for-19 vs. Santana in the AL and he continued that domination; going 2-for-3, he's now 11-for-22 against one of the best pitchers in the game and that could prove to be important if the Mets are the Cubs' first-round opponent. It was also good to see Kosuke Fukudome get two hits, especially against a tough lefthander. I'd like to see Dome play every day the rest of the week; if he can get back on the track he appeared to be on early in the season, that'd be a real boost to the offense.

It's getting hard to write these recaps; with this much time left until a game that really means something, what else can you say except to use clichés like "playing out the string". With the Brewers also winning last night, the Mets' lead in the wild-card race remains at one game with five to play, and the Cubs may not know who will arrive at Wrigley Field on Wednesday until Sunday -- or maybe even beyond.

On yet another picturebook gorgeous end-of-summer (the equinox passes tomorrow, putting us astronomically as well as meterologically into autumn) afternoon, the Iowa Cubs defeated the Cardinals 5-1, winning yet another series and reducing their magic number (yes, there's still one left) for clinching home field in the first two playoff series to one.

All the regulars got the day off -- that is, all but Jim Edmonds, who was sent up to pinch-hit in the sixth inning to a standing ovation.

Now think about this. Say, six months ago, I had told you that we would be giving a standing ovation to Jim Edmonds during the Cubs' last home game of the year against the Cardinals. You would have shaken your head, said, "Al's nuts", and walked away.

But that's exactly what happened this afternoon -- Edmonds hit a sacrifice fly to score the Cubs' fourth run -- and even a makeshift team that included four guys who spent most of the year in Triple-A beat the Cardinals. Ain't that great?

Casey McGehee, at the bat, drove in two more runs -- and got his first major league hit, a little dribbler of a ball that Troy Glaus couldn't handle at third base. I joked that he could tell his grandchildren that it was a line drive in the gap -- but then, by that time, those grandchildren could just look it up in some video archive and learn the truth.

It was that kind of afternoon, festive but laid-back, nice to enjoy a "who-cares" type of game that felt like a spring training game (with a spring training kind of lineup) rather than the intensity we've lived the last week or so. There will be another week of this -- although, the Cubs surely owe the Mets and Phillies their A-team lineup for the next four days as the Mets, who lost to the Braves 7-6, try to fight off the Brewers for the wild-card spot. Ryan Dempster threw five innings, enough for his 17th win, and the rest of the afternoon was auditions for the final spot in the postseason bullpen. Everyone who threw -- Jeff Samardzija, Chad Gaudin, Randy Wells and Bob Howry -- came out unscored-on, though Gaudin's command was a little off, understandable after a four-week layoff. Wells, actually, has been pretty impressive in his outings and might be a dark horse for a playoff roster spot. I'll give some more thoughts about this in the next few days -- and also to the performance today of Kosuke Fukudome, who looked completely different at the plate, standing in there close in and not bailing out as he has for two months, and the results were positive: two hits and a run scored, and he ought to start every game for the rest of the year to try to get back whatever it is he had in April and lost since; he could be a very valuable part to reclaim in October. Felix Pie also looks very different since his recall and maybe, just maybe, will be the "extra" guy kept since 12 pitchers won't be needed in the postseason.

The crowd of 40,551 brought the season total to 3,300,200, the first 3.3 million season attendance for either Chicago team and more than 99% of capacity for the entire season. There were a few empty seats as some (including a couple from our group) deserted the bleachers for today's Bears loss, but it was mostly full, and given the fact that many of today's crowd won't be able to make it into the ballpark for the postseason, it was a terrific sendoff for a marvelous year, 55 Wrigley Field wins (one short of the all-time Wrigley record).

I'm sitting in my friend Jim's place directly across from the left-field bleachers with several other bleacherites watching the Cubs load on to their bus headed for New York. There's a small group, maybe 50 people, getting autographs from Reed Johnson and Ryan Theriot, among others, as the team gets on the bus. A week from Wednesday, they return to the North Side to begin their pursuit of their goal from spring training, and our dream for decades: a World Series title.

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.

I happened to be in the car at the end of last night's game, and honestly, I'm lucky I didn't drive right off the road when Daryle Ward smashed his game-winning, pinch-hit, three-run homer off Kevin Gregg, giving the Cubs yet another thrilling win, 6-5 over the Marlins, their 35th come-from-behind victory (tied with the Tigers and Brewers for most in baseball), ninth consecutive road win (bringing them, at last, back to .500 on the road -- a place where only four other teams, the Phillies, Cardinals, Brewers and Angels reside), and fifth straight overall. It was done in front of a raucous Cub-centric crowd of 28,163, nearly twice the Marlins' season average of 16,130 (by far the worst in the majors), and Cub fans there came across loud and clear both on radio and TV.

Pat Hughes doesn't often get real emotional on the air, but it was easy to hear the genuine surprise and excitement in his voice in calling the no-doubt-about-it HR; it landed just about where I was sitting for games three and four of the 2003 NLCS, both Cub victories. Can you imagine how Ron Santo would have reacted if he had been in the booth last night? Dave Otto -- well, he's kind of the goofy little brother who you sort of tolerate because he's on your side, but he just didn't seem to understand that this kind of thing just hasn't happened for the Cubs, not for many years, maybe not ever.

Daryle Ward? I mean, come on. Most of us have either criticized Ward all year because he simply hasn't produced as a pinch hitter or said, "Well, he'll come along because he's done it before"... and darned if he didn't do it exactly when his team needed him most. Some quotes from Ward that show that he absolutely, positively understands what his job is and how he hasn't been doing it:

"I knew [Gregg] was going to come after me," Ward said. "He's a closer, and has a good fastball. I took the first one, and I was kind of thinking that was it. It was right down the middle. I did it again, and took a fastball right down the middle. Now, I'm going to have to really battle, and I picked up the release spot early, and saw it was another fastball and took a good hack and connected, and it felt great."

He had shortened his swing Thursday when he hit a sacrifice fly against the Atlanta Braves, and took that into his at-bat on Friday. Ward has been trying to get out of his funk. The home run was his first hit after an 0-for-13 skid, and when you're primarily a pinch-hitter, it's a long time between at-bats.

"Right there, I'm just trying to make good contact and I crushed the ball," Ward said. "It takes me time to adjust sometimes, and when you pinch-hit, you get one at-bat, it might take a week and it seems like forever. I was so excited."

Yeah, he stood and watched it. A bit. I guess most hitters do that these days. Should I say "It had better not happen again"? Not this time. We're too happy this morning.

It didn't start out that way. The Cubs took a brief 1-0 lead when Carlos Zambrano drove in a run with a single; Z has now hit in 11 consecutive games in which he's started (he did have a pinch-hitting appearance on July 10), and overall has hit in 17 of the 23 games he's started. He's hitting .362 in 69 at-bats, by far his best offensive season.

It's becoming, however, an eerie replay of last year when all of us -- and apparently the coaching staff can see it too -- could see that Z's arm slot is off kilter. He's almost sidearming the ball and it's resulting in more walks, five of them last night, four of them scoring, three of those on Jorge Cantu's homer in the third that gave Florida a 4-1 lead. It was 5-1 when Mark DeRosa's career-high 14th homer cut the lead to 5-3... and there it stayed, thanks in part to outstanding relief work from Chad Gaudin (two hitless innings) until Ward's heroics in the 9th. Kerry Wood made it interesting by allowing a walk and hitting Cantu before striking out Alfredo Amezaga to end it. Wood, unlike some closers who do elaborate dances on the mound when they're finished, stepped off the mound almost in relief, drenched in sweat (it must have been really humid there last night -- when I saw the schedule for this year, I thought "Miami in August? Ugh."). It was his 25th save, and first since his return from the DL. Despite Wood's extended absence, he's now tied for 7th in the league (with Brandon Lyon), one behind Kevin Gregg, who had his seventh blown save last night.

But I worry about Z. He's throwing like he did last August when he had a 7.06 ERA and I thought it wasn't too smart, in a year when he spent some time on the DL, to leave him out there in the sticky conditions to throw 119 pitches. He's got to sit down and look at video or whatever he does to get his mechanics right again. Lou has switched the rotation around so that everyone gets enough rest, after Sean Marshall starts tonight:

Right-hander Jason Marquis will be available out of the bullpen tonight, according to Lou Piniella.

The Cubs will bypass Marquis during the upcoming series against Cincinnati at Wrigley Field. Instead, they'll start Marquis next Friday at home against Washington.

Lou Piniella had toyed with bringing Marquis back on three days rest to pitch Sunday. Instead, Marquis will have to wait a whole lot longer, as the Cubs go with Rich Harden, Ted Lilly and Carlos Zambrano next Tuesday-Thursday against the Reds.

And thank heavens, the Cubs got the Florida monkey off their back, recording a win in the state (didn't win in Tampa either this year) for the first time since July 10, 2005. More good news -- the Dodgers helped the Cubs -- and themselves -- out with a 5-3 win over Milwaukee, increasing the Cubs' lead to 5.5 games with forty games to go.

Every day, a new hero. Every day, more excitement. I've said this so many times, but once again, it bears repeating: savor every one of these, remember where you were, what you were doing, who you were with... because you'll want to press these into your memories forever. Onward to tonight.

You may have seen this number already, but it bears repeating: 26. Twenty-six games over .500, the most a Cub team has been since the last day of the 1984 season, when they finished an NL East title year at 96-65, 31 games over .500.

You've seen these numbers if you keep track of the "best starts" box I've had on the right sidebar since May -- there are, as of this morning, only nine Cub teams that have had a better record through 120 games than this year's 73-47. That includes six pennant winners, a 104-win second place team (1909), a 91-win third place team (1912) and the ill-fated 1969'ers.

The 2008 Cubs have a chance to outdo nearly all of them -- only one of those nine won the World Series (1907); the 1908 team is on the list on the sidebar, but if you've been keeping track, you know that it just recently appeared on the list. In 1908 the team got off to a good start, slumped in the middle of the season, and didn't return to first place to stay till late September, finishing 99-55.

And yesterday, they swept the Braves in a doubleheader, winning the first game 10-2, and then came out blazing with four first-inning runs in game two, shutting Atlanta out 8-0, their first doubleheader sweep since the twinbill that clinched the NL Central title on September 27, 2003.

As has been the case with this year's team, different heroes emerged for each game. In game one, Jim Edmonds and Geovany Soto both homered -- Soto needs one more to tie the Cubs' team record for HR by a rookie catcher, 19, set by Randy Hundley in 1966 -- and Aramis Ramirez, Mark DeRosa, Ryan Theriot and Alfonso Soriano all had two hits. It's one of the Soriano hits that was the only blemish on this gem of a game -- when he stood at the plate admiring a ball that he thought was out of the ballpark, only to see it bounce off the wall. Sori had to stop at first with a single and he also had to apologize to Lou Piniella and his teammates. This isn't the first time Soriano has done this -- but it had better be the last. This team doesn't need this kind of hotdogging. It led to a pitch high and tight by Braves rookie reliever Francisley Bueno the next time Soriano came to bat, leading to Bueno's immediate ejection. While a "message" pitch may be "part of the game", as many players say, throwing at someone's head is decidedly not.

In game two, Kosuke Fukudome perhaps began the process of coming out of his slump with a two-run, first-inning single in the Cubs' four-run inning. This made life easier for Rich Harden, who, throwing with eight days' rest, was a little wild, walking five, but allowing only two singles. The walks helped lead to a large pitch total (92) after five innings, so Lou took Harden out, and the bullpen, consisting in game two of Chad Gaudin, Neal Cotts, Kerry Wood and Sean Marshall, gave the Braves only one hit and one walk over the last four innings. The Cubs' eight-run, ten-hit, six-walk attack in game two included no homers; that's one of the things I like most about this team, that they can put up big run totals without the long ball. Marshall, incidentally, will start on Sunday in Florida, an extra starter being needed because of the juggling as a result of Tuesday's rainout. Harden, whose turn would have come up on Sunday, will throw the first game vs. the Reds at Wrigley Field next Tuesday.

With the win well in hand, the CSN crew decided to focus on the frivolity in the dugout -- Carlos Zambrano balancing a bottle on his head, and putting a bubble gum bubble on the top of Mike Fontenot's cap. You could hear "Let's Go Cubbies!" loudly chanted in the stands -- almost as loud as at a home game; looking at various crowd shots, Cubs fans had to outnumber Braves fans, at least in the late innings of the two blowouts.

I've written this before but it bears repeating. Remember each and every one of these games in this special season. We are seeing things that most Cubs fans have never seen before. With the Brewers still winning, all of these wins are important. Let's sweep this series -- the Cubs are, at last, winning on the road (that's seven consecutive road wins, incidentally, dating back to the last game of the Arizona series), and that's about the only thing this team hasn't been doing well.