I attended last night's game, paying the price of an hour-plus commute home (typically 25 minutes) due to the brilliant Texas wisdom that led to the only highway that runs near the Ballpark being reduced from three lanes to one for the night.

But enough growling.  The Cubs won, 5-4, the bullpen sparkled and Sosa the Team Abandoner did not hit his 600th home run.  Life is sweet!

Here are my quick notes, to be supplemented soon by game pix:

The Cubs looked scrappy, getting runs wherever they could, and just enough to make up for Sean Marshall not having his good stuff.

Fontenot and Pie lend a palpable energy to the game just by being in it.

The number of camera flashes firing when Sosa was at bat was stunning.

I lost respect for Sammy Sosa when he quit on our team and left early from the last game of the season.  But this quote from last night, after he struck out three times and looked bad doing it, give me additional ammunition:  "I'm not a guy who swings like a girl."  Via Carrie

Carlos Marmol's control felt dominating.

Cubs fans were well-represented, constituting approximately 60-65% of last night's crowd (as measured by my unofficial count, and given the difficulty of separating Rangers blue shirts from Cubs blue shirts).

Goosebump moment of the night:  After the team did its line of victory high-fives on the field, they turned en masse toward the dugout, to see a few hundred Cubs fans standing and looking at them, loudly applauding and making a heck of a lot of other noise.  It was as if you could see a thought bubble above the Cubs' heads as they realized, "Wait a minute--we're on the road, but it feels like Wrigley!"  The fan support was overwhelming, so much so that Theriot and Pagan gave special waves to the crowd in appreciation.

Update [2007-6-20 10:30:57 by dfrancon]: And, apparently, I saw [Michael Barrett's last game in a Cubs uniform. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2910079] Bittersweet.