Sayonar, St. Louis.On a day when the National League turned to seven Cubs to finally give them a chance to win an All-Star Game, the Cubs put their most aggravating loss of the season behind them, and breathed a sigh of relief that they survived what figure to be the roughest 32 games of the season with their 3.5 game lead in tact.

Oh sure, things will get tough again, and there are a lot of games left with the Brewers and their new 340 pound ‘ace’ CC Sabathia, but if the Cubs were going to falter in 2008, they would have done it in that stretch from June 2 through yesterday.

Lots of road games, lots of strange travel arrangements and injuries to Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs got through it and all that really changed is that the Brewers, not the Cardinals figure to be the team who does the chasing from here on out.

Getting Sabathia was a big time move for Milwaukee and it will certainly help them replace Yovani Gallardo, as their starting pitching hasn’t quite recovered from Reed Johnson taking him out at first base at Wrigley this spring. It will also help when Ben Sheets figures out which season ending injury he wants to suffer this year.

The time is now for Milwaukee if they’re going to win with this current crop of players, because Sheets is as good as gone after this season and Prince Fielder is ready to leave after next season. They aren’t pretending they can keep Sabathia past this season. So while it seemed a no-brainer to trade four prospects for three months of the 2007 AL Cy Young winner, it was probably a tougher decision than you think. Matt LaPorta, the centerpiece of the deal was going to inherit Planet Fielder’s spot at first. But you can’t just keep switching out pieces, at some point you have to go for it and the Brewers are.

If they were really serious about winning, they’d find a real manager, but hey, why do we care? We don’t even like them.

The Cubs are still going to win the division, and probably get a rematch in the first round of the NLCS with the Diamondbacks, who figure to win the NL West with a 77-85 record. The Brewers, should easily outpace the Cardinals and Mets for the wild card, so they’ll face the likely NL East champs in Philly. But that’s a long way down the road.

The Cubs are sending quite the contingent to Yankee Stadium for the All-Star Game. The only rookies starting in the game on either side are both Cubs, Kosuke Fukudome and Geovany Soto. Alfonso Soriano probably won’t play, but he’s decided to go to the game now that E-ramis Ramirez has been picked for the squad. The two multi-millionaires are going to charter a flight from New York to the Dominican after the game and then on to Houston when the Cubs resume play on the Friday after the All-Star Break. Three Cubs’ pitchers are All-Stars, and how great was it to see Carlos Zambrano look like a healthy pitcher who just was forced to spend two weeks on the DL, on Friday? That was Carlos at his best. Throwing hard, working fast and beating the Cardinals for an eighth straight time.

As for the other two All-Star pitchers, somebody is going to have to do something we don’t like to do. Somebody is going to have to take a minute to give Larry Rothschild some credit. Say what you want about him, but when you take a guy who hasn’t been a starting pitcher in six years and a guy who’s never closed before and both pitch well enough that the other players in the NL vote them onto the All-Star team? You’ve done a good job.

Ryan Dempster is one of the biggest reasons the Cubs have the best record in the NL, and it was nice to see him get rewarded like that. Nobody, not even the most optimistic of Cubs’ fans ever thought he’d turn into the starter he is now.

And as for Kerry Wood? It’s silly to be excited that a grown man who you don’t even know got picked to play in a exhibition game in the middle of the baseball season. The guy is a millionaire many times over, has a hot wife and plays a game for a living.

But I don’t care. I think it’s cool as hell that Kerry Wood, five years after his best season, and just a little over a year from thinking his career was over is going to be standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium firing bullets, and trying to nail down home field advantage in the World Series in a season when the Cubs just might put it to use. He’s always been easy to root for. He works hard, he never complains and he likes being a Cub as much as every Cubs’ fan thinks guys ought to like being a Cub.

The weekend in St. Louis wasn’t all sweetness and light. The Cubs should have swept the Cardinals, which would have put them five and a half back and alone in third place. The end of Saturday’s game turned on three plays that, if any of them go the other way–the Cubs win.

1) Lassie did a nice job going from first to third in the eighth inning on a bloop hit to left field, but when Mark DeRosa hit a flyball to deep right on the next pitch it should have been easily deep enough to score him. Honestly it should have been able to score any biped of any age. Instead, Edmonds either didn’t, or can’t, sprint and despite a double clutch on the throw by Ryan Ludwick, he was out easily at home. Granted, it was a nice throw, but when your centerfielder is slower than your catcher, you’ve got a problem.

(We’ll have more on Lassie’s wild weekend in a little bit.)

2) Bottom nine, nobody out, Ludwick on first, Yadier Molina strikes out on a 2-2 pitch. It wasn’t even close, but the first base umpire, Lance Barksdale–who gave Kerry Wood a pretty wide strike zone the night before against Troy Glaus–said Yadier didn’t swing. Wood walked him on the next pitch, which set up the next play.

3) If Derrek Lee plays on the line (like Eric Karros suggested during the broadcast) Adam Kennedy hits the next pitch into a 3-6-3 double play. Instead that ball does into the right field corner for an RBI double. Oops.

So the Cubs didn’t sweep. Cardinals fans were joyous. I was not. But that’s not what they had on their mind all weekend. Strangely androgynous Cardinals superfan Elias Coblentz is still miffed that the “World’s Greatest Fansâ„¢” cheered Lassie on Friday night.

[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VThLce8-bTg]

By the way Elias, the Cubs are not Cardinals fans’ biggest enemy. That’s apparently good hygiene.

Lassie and his former skipper, The Genius, had a prissy little bitch fight on Friday night with The Genius taking offense to Edmonds wanting to be treated like a Cub, not a Cardinal, and Edmonds jokingly threatening to punch LaRussa in the mouth.

So far, Edmonds had been pretty patient with the media in Chicago, but maybe a return to his old stomping grounds brought back the petulant prick in him that we used to know so well.

He had this exchange with Bruce Miles of the Daily Herald on Saturday after the game, when Bruce asked him about getting nailed at the plate.

Miles asked Edmonds if he was “confident” he could score on the flyball DeRosa hit to right.
Edmonds replied, “What kind of question is that?”
Miles said, “A legitimate one.”
Lassie snorted, “Have you ever run the bases?”

Here’s where Bruce admits he showed admirable restraint. He had to have had several choice retorts ready, such as:

a) Every Sunday after Kane County Cougars games, big fella. And I see a dozen nine year olds who could have scored on that flyball.

b) Never quite like that. I usually “sprint.”

c) Did LaTroy give you a certificate when you completed his “media friendliness” class?

The biggest problem with having Lassie trying to score on a play at the plate is that he can’t collide with the catcher. Back in the day he’d have given a half-assed shoulder to Molina and tried to cop a feel on Yadi’s groin as they rolled in the dirt, but now he’s a concussion waiting to happen. The one he got at US Cellular in 2006 affected him for so long that was still on the meds in June of this year.

Although, given Molina’s concussion troubles a real head on collision Saturday might have sent both of them to the vegetarium. Honestly, I could have lived with that.

All in all, a good weekend. The Cubs won a series against the Cardinals, seven of them got picked for the All-Star team (actually six were elected either by the fans or other players, only Carlos Zambrano was picked by the manager) and they’re headed home to face Dusty’s boys from Cincinnati starting tomorrow night.

Only one thing was missing. Convincing Jim Hendry to make the Ryan Theriot for CC Sabathia trade.