The Rainbows, Puppies And Unicorns Recap Of Today's Cubs Loss

Since today's 13-5 Cubs loss to the Diamondbacks was so bad in nearly every way, I'm going to spend the first half of this post talking about nothing but the good things (and yes, there were some. Sort of.)

• There were some parachuters who landed right in left field before the game. (Unfortunately, I only heard about this -- I was underneath the stands at the time.)
• Kosuke Fukudome hit his first major league grand slam and his 15 RBI tie him for the team lead. Fun!
• Cubs pitchers retired nine of the first 11 Diamondbacks hitters and the last seven in a row.
• Ryan Theriot got a hit with a runner in scoring position!
• As a result of the point above, the Cubs actually had the lead... for about five minutes.
• James Russell only gave up one earned run!
• The Cubs held an old nemesis, Chris Young, to 0-for-5 (he reached on an Aramis Ramirez error).

Okay... I think that's enough. Don't you? That's about as good as I can get... and I am well aware, it's not very good. Follow me past the jump for the rest of the recap.

I guess someone forgot to tell the Cubs that the wind was blowing out at about 30-35 MPH until the eighth inning, when Fukudome hit his grand slam. By then, of course, the Cubs needed three grand slams to get back in the game, and that's a pretty ridiculous thing to hope for, even for an optimist like me.

What more can you say about a game like this except that it counts for only one loss? Ted Lilly said in his postgame remarks that even though he had a pretty good first three innings, that he realized he wasn't really hitting his spots -- he had a high pitch count even though he did retire nine of the first 11 -- and said he tried to make adjustments in the fourth. Unfortunately, those adjustments wound up with a pair of walks, and then Adam LaRoche hit the first of two D'backs homers in their five-run fourth.

The game might have been closer if not for Aramis Ramirez's error on a sharply hit ball in the seventh. That's a play A-Ram usually makes. In addition to that, it appears that he's throwing sidearm or even close to underhand -- could that tricep injury he had in spring training still be bothering him? And is that the reason he's not hitting? If not for that error, the Arizona seventh would have ended with pitcher Ian Kennedy's fly ball to right, and only three runs in. At 9-1, the grand slam would have at least made it interesting.

Instead, there was a mass exodus after the Cub seventh, so most of the crowd of 36,850 announced (maybe 22,000-23,000 in the park) missed Fukudome's grand slam. All you can really say after this is "we'll get 'em tomorrow" -- and as Lou hinted in his own postgame remarks, maybe in a week or so, we'll start to see some roster moves. Lou said that Jim Hendry wants to wait "25-30 games" before making changes -- that landmark comes up this weekend. In the meantime... there's still time to make something out of this season.

It was nice to sit and talk with BCB'er Clutch16 the last two days... despite the losses. And poor Jessica is now 0-4 in games she's attended in person. Let's get back to winning tomorrow.