This'll be a fairly short game post, as I have just returned from the first part of celebrating Rachel's Bat Mitzvah.
She helped lead the Friday night service, and very well I might add, and then her three aunts and uncles and her grandmother from Canada hosted a way-too-much-food dinner.
So, I didn't hear much of tonight's 7-3 win over the Pirates. I did happen to get in the car just in time to hear both Nomar's and Michael Barrett's sixth-inning home runs that gave the Cubs the lead 4-0 and ensured Greg Maddux' 11th win of the season, though the bullpen decided to make it interesting before a 3-run rally in the ninth put the game out of reach.
Thoughts:
- Good for Maddux. He still needs four wins in his final five starts of the season to keep his 15-victory-season streak alive, but now that he's gotten a win in a game where he threw what was (for him) a large number of pitches (75 in five-plus innings), perhaps that puts him over the hump for a winning streak. His next start will be Wednesday in St. Louis.
- This is the way Nomar Garciaparra was hitting in spring training. That makes it even more of a shame that he had three months of his season excised by the gruesome injury in St. Louis in April. If he'd been healthy, he and Derrek Lee could have keyed this offense to a much better first half.
- Speaking of Lee, he was given the day off after fouling a ball of his foot on Wednesday. It doesn't seem serious and he'll likely play tomorrow.
I did promise some more commentary on BodyWorlds, which closes at the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago on Monday and is off to Philadelphia, opening on October 7 at the Franklin Institute.
Do NOT miss this exhibit if you get the opportunity to see it. To put it in very simple terms, they have taken actual human bodies, donated by people (there's a replica of a signed consent form posted there) for posterity, and then through a process called "plastination", they show musculature, skeletons, blood vessels, organs, everything that makes up the body in various poses.
What Rachel was most fascinated with was the exhibit on fetuses in various stages of development, as well as a cross-section of an eight-months-pregnant woman. All of it was exceptionally well presented and organized -- and popular; today's exhibit at about noon was absolutely packed. The MSI is going to be open 24 hours a day starting tomorrow through Monday, so if you still have the urge to see this and you're free at 3 am, you can go.
And, as parent chaperon today, I was told by Rachel that I couldn't "embarrass" her. You know how young teenagers are -- too cool to be around their parents. I can report to you that I pretty much let her do her thing, and so got to be the "cool dad" today. So, that was fun, as well as getting to see the exhibit for free!
Hey, the Cubs won too, which is good any day of the year.