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Pregame Thread: Cubs vs. Braves, Tuesday 8/12, 6:10 CT

By Al Yellon

Next Game

Chicago Cubs
@ Atlanta Braves

Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008, 6:10 PM CDT
Turner Field

Rich Harden vs Charlie Morton

Mostly cloudy with a 60-percent chance of rain. Winds blowing out to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game Time temperature: Around 80.

Complete Coverage >

There will be a pregame ceremony tonight honoring longtime Braves broadcaster Skip Caray, who died last week. From Yahoo, here's a column on Skip's funeral yesterday. Skip Caray was an acquired taste -- not everyone liked his style -- but I always enjoyed his dry sense of humor and how he could make games involving the horrid Braves of the 1980's interesting. His call of the Braves' 9th inning win in the 1992 NLCS over the Pirates is a broadcasting classic.

That is, the ceremony and the game will be held, weather permitting. This weather forecast and radar for the Atlanta area doesn't look very encouraging.

Today's Starting Pitchers
Rich Harden
R. Harden
Cubs		 vs. Charlie Morton
C. Morton
Braves
6-2 W-L 3-5
2.27 ERA 5.70
139 SO 32
40 BB 22
10 HR 6
vs. Atl -- vs. Cubs
W-L G GS CG SHO SV BS IP H R ER HR BB K ERA WHIP
2008 - Rich Harden 1-1 5 5 0 0 0 0 30.0 22 8 7 5 9 47 2.10 1.03
W-L G GS CG SHO SV BS IP H R ER HR BB K ERA WHIP
2008 - Charlie Morton 3-5 10 10 0 0 0 0 53.2 55 36 34 6 22 32 5.70 1.43

Charlie Morton will be making his 11th major league start tonight, and first vs. the Cubs. Most of the previous ten have been pretty bad, but five days ago threw seven shutout innings vs. Arizona, the best outing of his career. It appears from his gamelogs that if you can wait him out, you'll draw walks and score often. Sounds like a plan for the Cubs tonight.

Rich Harden faced the Braves in interleague play on May 17 in Atlanta and got a win. He allowed four hits in seven innings, all singles, walked one and struck out eight. One of those hits was by Mark Teixeira, who's no longer on the team. Casey Kotchman, who was acquired for Teixeira, is 3-for-12 (all singles) vs. Harden (from Kotchman's days with the Angels while Harden was in the AL).

Today's game is on cable in Atlanta and on WGN, so it should be available to just about everyone. Also see the MLB.com Mediacenter.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

The game comment threads (except for this one) have moved off the front page. You can find the overflow comment threads, including the first pitch thread, on the right sidebar of both the front page and any interior page in the box headed "RECENT STORIES IN GAME THREADS". Today's first pitch thread posts at 6:00 pm CT, and the overflow comment threads will post at 7:00, 8:00 and 8:45 pm CT.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

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