Cubs 4 Pirates 3

The View from Section 103:

We decided to go to the game at about 6:05 tonight, and at 6:30, much to our surpise, a giant line greeted us as we came over the Roberto Clemente bridge to wait in line for tickets. We got our tickets and were in our seats just as Kip Wells threw the first pitch to Corey Patterson. We looked around the ballpark and quickly realized that there were more people in PNC for the Fleece Blanket Night and the Kip Wells/Ryan Dempster pitching matchup than there were last night for Jason Bay Bobblehead and Oliver Perez/Carlos Zambrano (almost 6,000 more people in fact). This should be a message to the Pirates, if you win, they will come. Seeing this, we figured Lloyd HAD to have gone with the same lineup that worked so well the night before. Of course much to our dismay, the third basemen was short and fat, ruling out the possibility that it was Bobby Hill and narrowing it down to, well, Ty Wigginton. Because why stick with the lineup that scored 5 runs against one of the best pitchers in the NL and 8 runs total, that would make sense and Lloyd McClendon does a lot of things, very few of which make sense. Kip Wells was cruising along until the follwing incident in the third inning:

Me: Well, if Kip walks Nomar here, there's gonna be two runners on for Aramis. That's bad.

Kip: I'm gonna go ahead and walk him anyways.

Aramis: (doesn't speak, just crushes a three run homer) At this point we look for Bobby Hill who is still sitting on the bench. Will Hill ever be an adequate replacement for Ramirez? We'll never know with him on the bench, that's for sure)

The Pirates still claw back, with a homer from Matt Lawton, who seemingly only tried at the plate, because who looks at fielding stats when trying to trade for an outfielder anyways? They then tie the game up on an RBI infield single for Rob Mackowiak. If Mack ends up on the bench when Jose Castillo comes back, someone is getting punched. That's all I have to say about that.

Anyways, David Ross, the 8 hitter, makes the last out in the bottom of the 6th. Seeing as how Kip's last pitch in the top of the 6th hit 66 on the gun and his fastball was topping out at about 90 after 105 pitches, 34,000 of us thought Kip would be hitting the showers. Lloyd McClendon disagreed and didn't take him out of the game until we were behind 4-3. Curiously, when he did replace Kip he took Wigginton out, but didn't replace him with last night's hero, Bobby Hill, instead switching Mackowiak to third and putting Freddy Sanchez at second. This meant Hill got one at bat as a pinch hitter (and walked) while Sanchez went 0-2. Why? Beats me.

The Pirates went down mostly without a fight (note: only the Pirates can load the bases in the 8th and put a runner in scoring position in the 9th and leave people feeling like they never threatened to score). They did succeed on taking another step on their quest to load the bases the most times in one season without scoring (I think they're up to three already). In the 9th I thought to myself "This is sad, we have the top of the order up and that WORRIES me." The only thing of note in the 9th was Jack Wilson's single to left, which in the split second pause by Jose Macias in left took second on the play. Nice to see that Jack is still hustling, even if he can't hit. Jason Bay weakly grounded out, sealing up a nice 0-4 night for him and a 4-3 loss that 34,000 people came away from feeling like we probably could have won if everyone in Black and Gold cared as much as Jack Wilson and Rob Mackowiak.

ESPN summary here