Cubs Sweep Astros; D-Lee Flips Off the Haters

This game defined how Cubs baseball has been recently. Normally when you go down 5-0 in the 2nd inning to the Astros you start planning ahead for tomorrow's game. Maybe you'll be able to mount a comeback by the time you get to the 8th inning. Not these Cubs. They fought back with a 6 run 2nd inning to take the lead, and took it for good on Ryan Theriot's solo shot in the 4th. I think that was Ryan's personal way of showing his distaste for the 2nd base umpire, who was clearly on the Astro's payroll when he called Hunter Pence safe at 2nd on a stolen base. Or maybe he could just use some bifocals.

And for all the people saying Derrek Lee is doing something wrong because he isn't hitting home runs, how about these numbers today. Lee went 3-for-3 with a 3-run homer in that 2nd inning. The man is batting .335 and people are complaining that he isn't hitting enough home runs? I think he just likes to save up his homers for when the team really needs it, there's no need to embarrass other teams every game when usually a double will suffice.

The Cubs are 25-12 since June 3rd, best record in baseball over that time. I'm predicting we take the division two weeks from today.

So About This Braves Series...

So what I missed yesterday was the big picture of how everything went down. But now that I have collected all the facts, this is what actually happened.

On Thursday, Rich Hill tore the Braves apart with his pitching. This did not make Bobby Cox happy.

On Friday, Soriano hit three home runs. That's more than you, me, and everyone I personally know will hit in a lifetime. That is a big deal.

Saturday started off with Soriano getting beaned with the first pitch of the game by Hudson. Both benches were warned. A few innings later, Sean Gallagher was beaned by Peter Moylan. The umpires did nothing.

Sunday, Ted Lilly got the first two batters out, then beaned Edgar Renteria. The benches emptied, nothing major happened, and Ted Lilly was thrown out of the game. Wait, what? The umpire tossed Ted Lilly with no warnings in the first inning? Then Edgar Renteria stole second and clotheslined Mike Fontenot.

There's a few things I notice about that picture. First of all, he's sliding and his leg is past the bag at this point. I'm sorry Mr. Renteria, I'm sure you're extremely stupid, but I don't believe that you're that bad at sliding into a base. Secondly, one of your arms is around Mike's neck, and the other is behind your back grabbing his glove. Either you are practicing your contortionist routine, or you are an enormous douchebag and I hate you. I now wish you to lay in a deep, dark hole and die, Mr. Renteria. Thank you.

Lou Piniella is Who We Thought He Was

As you've probably already heard, Lou finally went overboard today. I didn't watch the ejection as it happened, but luckily for all of us the Cubs have a video of it up on their website.

As you can see in the video, Angel Pagan was thrown out at third base and Lou was not happy with that call. So he went through all the usual motions, throwing his hat to the ground, kicking dirt on the umpire's shoes, kicking more dirt on the umpire's shoes, screaming in his face while shaking his head back and forth in a silly way, more dirt, kicking the hat, more dirt, lather, rinse, repeat. It made it a lot funnier that the umpire was about half a foot shorter than he was.

But kicking dirt on an umpire's shoes is a very serious offense, as crew chief Bruce Froemming pointed out:

"He made physical contact with the third-base umpire," Froemming told a pool reporter. "He made physical contact with his foot, and he kicked dirt on [Wegner] several times, and the rest was show-and-tell.

"The whole world saw what he did," Froemming said. "It was a terrible display of disrespect and [the MLB office in] New York will be called immediately, and we'll take it from there."

*gasp*. Go ahead and call New York then. People in NY understand the difference between kicking an umpire and kicking towards the umpire. If "physical contact" is all that needs to be made to get someone in trouble, then I am violating my couch right now. Go ahead and call New York about that, ya pansy.

Obviously Lou just needed to release some of his pent up rage about managing one of the most embarrassing teams in baseball. We've had much worse calls this year that he didn't even talk to the umpires for. He was just trying to show the team that he cares about winning as much as Big Z, hoping they would put together a decent effort. Not happening. Therefore I propose a plan. Piniella gets himself ejected every game until we win three games in a row. He gets some stress relief, the fans will love it, and the umpires can complain some more to get their names in the paper. Everybody wins!

There are some things you miss when you don't actually Watch the Game

After looking around the interwebs for a bit, I discovered there was something about the game that was lost in the simple recaps I had read earlier. It appears that Ronny Cedeno was called out at second because the home plate umpire sucks at calling balls and strikes. It's not that he's bad at deciding which is which, but he's terrible at making his decisions known.

The next question is, why is Cedeno running instead of Pie? You figure it would be the rookies that are supposed to make the rookie mistakes.