Late last night, Fat Lance Berkman homered to erase a ninth inning Giants lead and officially put the Cubs in the driver’s seat in the NL Wild Card race. Thanks. We’ll take it from here.

Behind another ho-hum 15 win season from legend-in-residence Greg Maddux, the Cubs won their eighth straight game against the mighty Pirates of Pissburgh and have now won 12 of their last 15 games. Maddux drove in two runs and pulled off more unnecessary flops than Lassie Edmonds can cram into a homestand in the Cubs 6-3 win. For many of us the only downside to the day was when our ears began to spontaneously bleed just seconds after Chip Caray referred to the Pirates as the “Burgers.”

Maddux has now won 15 games for 17 straight seasons. Not even strike shortened seasons in 1994 or 1995 could stop him. Did you think a little thing like a return to the Cubs would derail it? It’s fitting that the Cubs two most consistent starters won their 15th games in back-to-back efforts. Now, maybe Greg can get Carlos Zambrano to do it for another 16 years. Provided of course that Carlos doesn’t do most of it in Atlanta, of course.

Now, more than ever the Cubs know what their task at hand is. If they win, nobody can stop them. The only scoreboard watching they need to do is on their own game. The Astros are off to Milwaukee for the weekend where the Brewers have assumed the fetal position and are just hoping that eventually the other teams will stop kicking them.

Can we get a Wes Obermueller sighting? Would it kill the Brewers to give him a start against the Astros, considering he finished their season last year on that glorious Saturday when the Cubs won the doubleheader and the Astros ran around trying to find somebody to give them the team Heimlich?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. At night I dress like a Hispanic and because of that, the Tribune Company offered me a job cleaning the newsroom. So the cinco of us, Consuela, Guillermo, Jose, Jose and myself were doing our normal chores on Wednesday night. It’s not as easy as it looks. You have to vacuum the doughnut crumbs up from the meeting room, John Kass does some hellacious things to the executive washroom and of course, you have to poke Mike Downey with a stick to see if he’s still alive. Lately we’ve just been holding a mirror under his nose. He doesn’t breathe hard enough to fog it up, but he still drools on it.

Wednesday night, I was over at Phil Rogers’ cubicle and after neatly stacking his gay porn magazines for him and celebrating the fact that Jose had drawn the short straw and was giving Phil’s Alex Rodriguez Blow Up Doll a thorough orifice “cleansing”, I noticed a note Phil had taped to his computer monitor. It was a reminder note to himself. Normally, I don’t pry. Just like the time I decided not to mention that Bob Greene’s toupee had love notes stuck to it by a 12 year old girl that were postmarked in 1974. Anyway…Phil’s note said,

Dear Phil,
You are the greatest sportswriter in the world. Remember that! Cherish it! You know more about baseball than any other writer in the world!

I love me,
Phil Rogers

PS – For Friday’s edition write the dumbest piece of crap you can positively think of about Nomar. Especially if that brilliant Chris DeLuca beats you to it on Thursday!

Somebody’s been watching way too much Dr. Phil.

Here’s a handy tip. If you ever have the urge to write yourself one of those self-motivational notes…just stick a gun in your mouth. Do us all a favor. Thanks.

So here’s the steaming pile of feces that Phil so proudly turned into his editor last night.

If you don’t have the time, I’ll break it down for you.

Phil says that Nomar doesn’t deserve a big contract and that the Cubs could just go out and sign one of these studs to play shorstop…(get this list), Omar Vizquel (old), Jose Valentin (bad), Cristian Guzman (bad), Neifi Perez (do we really want to press our luck) and of course Orlando Cabrera.

Maybe Ed Lynch wrote this and sent it in as a prank?

It’s not that difficult to see that the Cubs traded for Nomar for the long-term. If their idea was just to catch lightning in a bottle and patch the shortstop position for two months, they wouldn’t have traded for a guy whose Achilles’ won’t be right until March. They got Nomar because they wanted him to get comfortable in Chicago so they could sign him and keep him. Just how difficult is that to understand? The fact that both Chicago newspapers employ baseball experts who are still trying to figure out what two colors to mix together to get “green” is an insult to all of us.

You wonder if when the Tribune and Sun-Times hold interviews for that job that they don’t turn away candidates and say, “That guy’s just not dumb enough!”

Look, if you want to go to battle for 162 games with Neifi Perez because the Cubs got lucky and got through eleven games with him at short, try and fight the urge. And this isn’t a slam on Neifi, because he’s done a great job. But the law of averages are a powerful thing. If you started him in ten more games his batting average would find a way to get to the .240 that it yearns to be at.

Here’s a handy reference for guys like Phil who want to immediately equate Orlando Cabrera’s arrival as the reason the Red Sox are going to the playoffs.

I’m sure that hefty .319 on base average he’s posted since coming to the Sox is the reason that they are winning. Or something.

Orlando will be 30 in November, which makes him a whopping year younger than Nomar. Quite the youth movement there.

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Death, taxes and 15 wins for Greggie.

Sammy says he’s still going to hop. Hey, if he just hops when he actually hits one out, what’s the problem?

Moron the Lucky Deer.

Kerry got his weak back about a week back, but now it’s gone.

I didn’t name my second-chance Survival Football team The Todd Johnson Experience for nothing.

R Dub tries to play nice with Randy Moss. He’s just trying to limit the torching he’s going to get on Sunday.

Ed Sherman actually watched “Hu$tle”. He’s a better man than I. I have less than no interest.

Another Rick Morrissey half-assed column? This is getting old.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut for more exciting Sammy hop coverage. It’s not like there’s anything interesting to write about.

Chris DeLuca on the Shawn Green Yom Kippur controversy. He gets a quote from noted theologist Matt Herges, too.

Greg Maddux is good.

Bryan Johnson…a fullback the Bears actually use. How novel.

The Wizard of Roz on Green’s decision.

TJ Simers proves the Dodgers can’t lose every game. Just most every game.

The Packers might still trade Mike McKenzie. Though their plan is sneaky. They’re going to trade McKenzie and instead send Al Harris to the new team. See, he looks just like Mike, only he sucks. Wait, there’s no way Mike Sherman would have thought of this. He’s still standing on the sidelines waiting to get a chance to pick up the spare.

This seems like a perfectly rational way to respond to a bad milkshake. If they’d gotten a bad Big Mac they were going to firebomb the place.

Oh, the irony. Check the headline.

Gee, I’m shocked that the “ugly one” on Sex and the City (though that could actually apply to three of them) is a lesbian. Shocked! Next you’ll tell me that Liza Minelli has married two gay men in her lifetime!


I’m the only hot one.

Mary Kay Latourneau wants to get married! Ah, if only I was 12 again.

You read it first here yesterday (somebody posted it in the CubsLive thread) but some Jacksonville U students are my heroes.

The world’s greatest newspaper says that China is demanding that laundry become an Olympic sport.