Snatched From the Jaws of Victory; Pirates Display Public Affection

The Cubs fell last night to the Pissburgh Pirates, 4-3, in 15 innings. Ryan Dempster blew a save in the ninth, allowing a Nate McClouth walk to come around and score on a sacrifice fly by short stop Jack Wilson. Lame.

I guess Alfonso Soriano runs whenever he wants. I listened to the game via MLB Radio, since WGN has decided that televising good baseball is so Atlanta. Like, fer sure. Anyway, I happened upon the moment in the game where Fonsie was on first, stole second, got moved over to third and then failed to score on a medium depth pop fly. Granted, this was the first inning, but if you make $136 M, you better be scoring some damn runs. He's starting to heat up, though, and that's a good thing.

Next up are the Pirates again today. Pitching matchup: the Pirates will send what looks to be an inbred in Tom Gorzelanny (4-1, 2.97 ERA) to face our new sort-of ace, Jason Marquis (4-1, 2.09 ERA). Many folks in the Cub Blog Army have given Marquis knicknames for sucking, or something, but so far he's been more consistent than Carlos Zambrano, the face of the franchise. If Jason can keep the tail and sink to his fastball, he'll do just fine this evening.

Let's hope that last night was just an anomoly, but know how Cub the Cubs can be, who knows.