All Right

Was yesterday a harbinger of things to come? Sammy Sosa goes to right field on a hit and takes an extra base. Then moves up on a medium deep fly ball. Then scores on another fly ball. Carlos Zambrano gets squeezed... And shrugs it off. Corey Patterson hits a key dinger, then keeps his head on and gets another hit. And a walk. And doesn't strike out!

This may all have been triggered by Dusty Baker's "accidental" leak to the press that he had a closed door meeting with Sammy where they discussed moving Sammy down in the lineup. Sosa was clearly embarrassed by that report. What did he do about it? He silenced the critics for a night with a strong game. Perhaps Corey heard all this and thought that he, too, should be an all around player. And then went out and did just that.

And Big Zamboni. What do you think he picked up from Greg Maddux in watching Greg win #300? That you can win 300 games without 300 shutouts. That being up 5-1 isn't much worse than 5-0, but keeping your cool and throwing 8 innings is even bigger.

A few more games like this out of those three guys and maybe the Cubs can go on an 8 game win streak.