Sure, the games count, but baseball doesn’t really start until they play the first game at 1060 West Addison. You can have “openers” in Tokyo, or Baltimore, or Cincinnati or any place, but until the Cubs open the ivy covered burial ground for business, it’s not really baseball, is it?

So today, after treading water (sometimes impressively so) on their season starting road trip, the Cubs return home to take on their AAA affiliate in Pittsburgh, where they can simulaneously better their record and scout the Pirates for potential mid-season pick ups.

And, maybe they can do us all a favor and chain Andy Pratt to the bullpen bench. For good.

The weekend in Atlanta was full of good baseball. Especially if you enjoy watching runners get stranded on base. If you like that, you were in high cotton all weekend. Well, until yesterday, when the Cubs got tired of it, and didn’t have Alex Gonzalez around to kill every rally by himself.

Friday night’s game was a nearly wasted gem by our pal, Carlos Zambrano, only bailed out by a two out, top of the ninth blast from Todd Hollandsworth. Then, despite Dusty inexplicably double switching so that the pitcher’s spot would continually come up in the clean up spot for the rest of the night, the Cubs were able to over come the ball four antics of Pratt and Todd Wellemeyer for the best win of the young season.

The Meat Tray was on the mound on Saturday in the game every Cubs fan chalked up as a loss, only to watch Meat make like Kevin Brown and force the Braves to hit everything into the ground. If Sergio had retired Marcus Giles in the eighth, the Cubs would have won, but Giles singled with two outs, forcing Pratt into the game where he quickly pelted the backstop with balls and loading them up for Andruw Jones and Julio Franco. The Farns came in, after pitching on both Thursday and Friday and walked Druw (after getting squeezed on a 2-2 pitch) and then failing to put away the 146 year old Franco who doubled to clear the bases and end the game.

The worst part? El Pulpo got the win on Saturday after throwing two scoreless innings on Friday. When you can’t light up Alfonseca, you need to fire the hitting coach…stat.

Yesterday it was a matchup of the de facto aces of the Cubs and Braves. Kerry Wood is the undisputed ace while Mark Price is standing on the bullpen mound flipping a towel, and Russ Ortiz is the ace in Atlanta because the four other ones are in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and the bullpen.

Wood looked every bit like the best pitcher in the National League, while Ortiz looked like every pitcher on the Cardinals’ staff…bad.

Whether it was a blood blister that broke (according to the genius of Chip and Steve) or a scrape on the back of this right thumb, Wood was bleeding, and apparently liked the feel of the bloody baseball and struck out 11 Braves in seven innings.

Mike Barrett showed why he might be the best hitting Cubs catcher since…(wow, uh, um, man, have we ever had one who could hit, um, uh….Gabby Hartnett?…OK, Jody Davis) with a four RBI day. Granted being a “good hitting” Cubs catcher is not really that difficult, given the previous company.

So the Cubs are home today, and we have a live GameCast starting at 1 p.m., Central Daylight Time. Unless of course you’d rather hang out with the always brilliant Adam Caldarelli on Chicagosports.com. Yeah, sure…whatever.

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I don’t as a rule watch much televised gold, because I normally have better things to do like clean my ears or light my pants on fire, but that was some pretty good, commercial free, stuff on CBS yesterday. It’s hard to root for a guy with $26 million in career earnings, and 22 tour victories and a superhot wife, but there’s something about Phil Mickelson that makes him likeable. And when you couple his popularity with the wooden Ernie Els, and it’s no contest. Watching Phil actually enjoy his comeback win yesterday was pretty good stuff.

Who knew?

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Jamal Crawford scored 50 points yesterday as the Bulls beat the Raptors and I encourage Jamal to do that again, only next time in a game people are actually watching.

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Bill Murray will throw out the first pitch and hopefully throw Chip Caray from the broadcast booth in the seventh.

Kerry Wood likes Atlanta.

Dusty’s already worried about how the new seats behind home plate will impact the games. I think they’ll be easier for Andy Pratt to hit.

Does anybody have any idea what Phil Rogers’ column is about today?

Groucho doesn’t think the Bulls will go after Allen Iverson or Kobe. Gee, what insight!

More on Kerry’s mowing down of the Braves.

Mike Kiley’s drunk. First he thinks the Cubs could play Gruddy at short (disaster) then he plays doctor on Gruddy’s Achilles. Yikes.

Yesterday all three papers said Prior would play long toss and then do the weird towel drill off the mound. That’s what he did. So why is everybody surprised?

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to show that, he too, watched the Masters on TV.

Sports Guy goes to Vegas and rewrites a column from 2001.

Jenna and Barbara can come comfort me whenever they want.

So Shaq likes to swear. Who doesn’t?

Back off boys, Rebecca’s all mine!

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