The Curse of Wrigley Field

But despite the drama that unfolded at PNC Park, Chicago walked away relatively unscathed with a 12-inninning 10-8 win. I say relatively unscathed because in a situation when you could rest most of your bullpen you were forced to use everyone but Kerry Wood. Fortunately the Cubbies have an off-day before the play again on Wednesday. But still, you blew a seven-run lead?

The worst part of it all was that I couldn’t even see the Cubs’ six-run third inning. The video feed went out all that was left was audio. Great job WGN. Including the first two innings I missed while I was in class, I actually saw the Pirates outscore Chicago 8-2. So, while the overall result was a win, I feel a bit cheated by the whole experience. I didn’t actually see much good on TV.

But, I’m being bitter. The encouraging thing is that Chicago put up 10 runs on the board without notching a single home run and just four extra base hits out of 13 total hits. Pretty impressive when you think about it. And the 12th inning epitomized the Cubs at the plate today.

Ryan Theriot walks, then steals a base. Alfonso Soriano walks and both runners advance on a wild pitch. One out. Derreck Lee is intentionally walked and Aramis Ramirez plates a run with a sacrifice fly. Another wild pitch followed by an intentional walk. DeRosa earns a walk to score the second run of the inning.

Talk about working for your runs. Two runs, zero hits. It’s the equivilent of a garbage goal in hockey; it won’t make top plays but it wins you games. And that’s how Chicago was all day. Patience at the plate, combined with timley hitting and some lucky bounces and you get ten runs without the aid of the long ball. It also helps that the Pirates pitchers sucked today, but that’s neither here nor there.

Kosuke Fukudome (3-for-5, RBI) and Lee (2-for-5) continue to tear it up at the plate and Soriano is slowly but surely raising his batting average (now a healthy .094).

And props go out to Jon Leiber, who lost the battle for the final two spots in the starting rotation, but stepped up in a big way by pitching three scoreless innings to earn the win. In baseball years he’s like 70, but as long as he gets the job done, I don’t care if most of his money is coming from social security.