Do you remember the last time the Cubs won this many in a row at home?
The stars of that streak were just who you'd expect. Soriano, E-ramis, and...Lassie?
The Cubs wild comeback last night, which featured a near inside the park homer from Petecrow, Petecrow yelling at Matt Shaw for not telling him to slide as he scored the tying run, and of course a totally predictable Michael Conforto pinch hit walk-off homer, extended their Wrigley Field winning streak to 12 games.
They haven't lost at home since April 11 against Pissburgh when Alex Bregman tied the game in the ninth and Ian Happ came up with two outs and the winning run on third and hit a pop-up to right field. In the 11th came a play you probably remember when Caleb Thielbar fielded a little roller hit just the right of the mound by Brandon Lowe. With two outs and runners on first and second, all Thielbar needed to do was straighten up and make a decent throw to first. Instead he yanked it, made a terrible throw and Shaw, playing his second inning of first base ever, didn't know whether to come off the bag or stay there, shit himself and go blind. He opted for the latter.
Cubs-Pirates: Caleb Thielbar E1
The Cubs had runners on first and third with nobody out in the 11th, but Shaw lined out softly to right, Bregman hit a majestic foul pop to first base and then big brained Pissburgh manager Don Kelly intentionally walked the mighty Happ to load the bases, but Yohan Ramirez got Seiya to also hit a majestic foul pop fly to first.
The Cubs got on a roll the next day with a come from behind win. Michael Busch got a pinch hit two-run single to tie the game in the sixth and Carson Kelly "singled" over the centerfielder's head for the win.
Cubs-Pirates: Carson Kelly walkoff single
The streak is the longest since the 2008 Cubs won 14 at home at Wrigley from May 26 to June 22. When I looked back at the longest winning streaks in Cubs history it was amusing, if not at all surprising, that so many of those seasons' iconic moments happened during those streaks.
Andy Dolan
So let's look back at 2008 and see if that holds true.
When the streak started, Lou Piniella's defending NL Central champions were 29-21 and tied with the Cardinals for first place. They had just been walked off in back to back games by the Pirates. No, Rob Mackowiak was not involved.
They lost the first game when Kerry Wood came in to a 4-3 game and hit Doug Mientkiewicz to lead off the ninth inning. Future Cub Xavier Nady singled the Eyechart to second, Freddy Sanchez bunted Nady and the Eyechart to second and third, and Luis Rivas hit a sac fly to tie it. Nobody scored again until the 14th when E-ramis Ramirez clanked a leadoff grounder by Sanchez, then Michael Wuertz wild pitched Sanchez to second. After Rivas grounded out but advanced the runner to third, Lou intentionally walked Nate McLouth and Jason Bay singled to left center to win it for Pissburgh.
And the next day the Cubs took a 5-4 lead into the ninth when Carlos Marmol walked Sanchez with one out, but then struck out Rivas. McLouth hit a lazy fly ball to left field and Alfonso Soriano dropped it. Whoops. It was ruled a hit, charitably, as the official scorer assumed a Major League player couldn't have missed that without some solar interference. Lou made Marmol pitch the tenth, but Jon Lieber, in his ill-fated return to the Cubs, pitched the 11th. Lieber had pitched two uneventful innings of relief the day before, but this game ended just like that one did with Bay singling in the winning run.
Lieber made 26 appearances (one start) with a 4.05 ERA in 2008, but he allowed 59 hits in 46.2 innings and struck out just 27.
Anyway, the Cubs returned home, grumpy after 25 innings of walk-off Iron City losses to face the Dodgers, and Ryan Dempster got the start. You'll remember the teams faced off in the NLDS that year. Did Dempster walk seven Dodgers on May 26th? Of course not. He outpitched Chad Billingsley in a 3-1 Cubs win. Dempster went seven, gave up a run and struck out seven with three walks.
They won the next night behind seven strong innings by Sean Gallagher. The Cubs were down 1-0 in the seventh when Ronny Cedeno led off with a walk, Ryan Theriot pinch hit for Gallagher to sac bunt and of course he fucked it up, bunted it straight to pitcher Hiroki Kuroda and got Ronny thrown out at second. Soriano singled Theriot to third. Theriot scored when Mike Fontenot reached on an error by third baseman Blake DeWitt (future Cubs legend!). After Derrek Lee flew out, E-ramis singled to score Soriano, then Kosuke Fukudome doubled in Fontenot. The Cubs went on to win 3-1, again.
The finale was a pitcher's duel between Derek Lowe (seven scoreless innings, four hits) and Carlos Zambrano (eight innings, six hits, one run). The Cubs trailed 1-0 in the ninth when Dodgers' closer Takashi Saito walked Theriot, then walked E-ramis with one out, Kosuke reached on an infield single to load the bases, and eventual Rookie of the Year Geovany Soto hit a sac fly to tie the game. Mark DeRosa was apparently (not for the last time) unclear about how tiebreaker rules work, and flew to right to end the inning. In the tenth, Chan Ho Park came in to pitch for the Dodgers and with one out Fontenot doubled, and Soriano singled to left to win it. The Cubs swept the Dodgers, and would split two games in LA the next week. But surely the 5-2 regular season record against them would portend playoff success, right?
Next up were the dead ass last Rockies (20-33) for a four game set. The Cubs trailed 4-3 in the seventh, but a Matt Herges error on a Derrek Lee comebacker allowed Soriano to score a run and Soto hit a sac fly to give the Cubs a 5-4 lead. RBI singles by Micah Hoffpauir and Soriano in the eighth made it 8-4 and the Cubs won by that score.
And that brought up a crazy Friday game that you almost certainly remember. See how this works?
Ted Lilly got the start and he was...bad. He allowed a three-run homer in the first to Todd Helton and an RBI double to Jeff Baker? Oh, come on. In the third the Rockies pushed their lead to 7-0 on a homer by Chris Ianetta and RBI single by the great Omar Quintanilla. Lieber relieved Lilly in the third and gave up a homer to Ryan Spilborghs in the fourth to make it 8-0.
DeRosa got the Cubs on the board with a sac fly in the fourth, but Quinantilla drove in a run off Lieber in the fifth to make it 9-1 Rockies.
It stayed that way until the sixth when Kosuke Fukodome hit a two run homer with nobody out.
Jim "Lassie" Edmonds had joined the Cubs off of waivers from the Padres a couple of weeks earlier and we were not cool with it. And through his first eight games as a Cub, he gave us no reason to change our minds. He was slashing .125/.160/.125 with no homers or RBI.
So when he came up in a 9-3 game, our expectations were low. And he followed Kosuke's homer with one of his own.
In the seventh, Hank White himself, Henry Blanco, hit a two-run bomb to bring the Cubs to within 9-6. Hoffpauir singled and Rockies starter Aaron Cook was finally removed and future Cubs star Manny Corpas came in. Kosuke singled, and Lassie did it again! OK, Edmonds didn't homer, but he doubled to score Hoffpauir and Kosuke to make it 9-8 Rockies.
DeRosa worked the count full and crushed one into the bleachers in left center for 10-9 lead. Holy crap.
Carlos Marmol came in to pitch the eighth and struck out Scott Podsednik, Seth Smith and future Cubs legend Jonathan Hererra on 10 pitches.
Wood walked Spilborghs to open the ninth, but got a double play and Todd Helton flew out to right to end a crazy, crazy game.
Dempster beat his old teammate Glendon Rusch in the third game of the series as Soriano homered and drove in three in a 5-4 Cubs win.
Sean Gallagher got yet another win (his third of the season), defeating Ubaldo Jimenez behind another Soriano homer. Edmonds doubled, tripled and drove in two runs as the Cubs won 5-3.
The Cubs had a perfect home stand and took a seven game winning streak to the coast where they won two of three in San Diego and had that aforementioned split with the Dodgers. They returned to face the Barves for three games before heading back out on the road. Nice scheduling, MLB.
They knocked Tom Glavine around in the first game, with four runs, six hits and six walks in just three innings. Lilly was back on form and he held the Barves to three runs as he left with two outs in the seventh. Every Cub had at least one hit in a 10-5 win.
Noted star pitcher Jeff Bennett was the starter for the Barves the next day and he was...terrible. Kosuke hit a three run homer off of him in the first, Theriot drove in two in the second and Edmonds drove in two in the third. Hoffman gave up seven runs and got six outs. Dempster pitched a complete game for the Cubs with 11 strikeouts in the 7-2 win.
Check out the parade of studs who pitched for Atlanta that day.
Jeff Bennett
Phil Stockman
Jeff Ridgway
Royce Ring
Blaine Boyer
The only impact Jeff Bennett made was that he hit Soriano with a pitch and Alfonso broke his hand. Sori missed 35 games, not returning until July 23.
Thursday's day game was a thriller. Jeff Francoeur hit a two run homer off of Big Z int the second inning. And Carlos took that personally. He allowed nothing else through seven, but the Cubs were doing nothing against Tim Hudson.
It was the 60th anniversary of WGN-TV doing Cubs games, and they had a bunch of throwback elements to the broadcast, including doing some of it in black and white. The Cubs dressed for the part, with snazzy non-pinstripe whites that they wore in the 1940s. (It's the same one they gave out on Jackie Robinson day ((observed)) this year.)
Edmonds got the Cubs on the board with a sac fly to score E-ramis in the seventh, but the Cubs were down 2-1 in the ninth when Lassie came up against Blaine Boyer with one out.
Len and the production team went all Jack Brickhouse on the call.
The game was still tied in the 11th when Barves' reliever Manny Acosta had quite an inning.
He walked E-ramis to lead things off, then a passed ball advanced E-ramis to second, Bobby Cox ordered an intentional walk of Kosuke, and then Soto hit a soft single past the third baseman to load the bases. Jeff Ridgway came in for Acosta and hit Reed Johnson with his first pitch for a 3-2 Cubs win.
The Cubs went back on the road where they won two of three in Toronto, but got swept in Tampa by Joe Maddon's suddenly frisky Rays. The Rays had never had a winning season in their history, including three years under Joe's predecessor, Lou Piniella. But in 2008 they'd go 97-65 and win the pennant.
So the Cubs returned to Wrigley on a three-game slide, but winners of 11 in a row at Wrigley, and their opponents were Ozzie Guillen's White Sox. I'm sure Ozzie said a bunch of hilarious shit about rats at Wrigley.
The first game was a matchup of lefties, John Danks and Theodore Roosevelt Lilly. The Sox took a 2-1 lead in the third on a homer by AJ Pierzynski. It was 3-1 in the seventh against Octavio Dotel.
Things didn't go well for Octavio. Lee homered on his first pitch, and five pitches later, E-ramis also hit a bomb to tie the game at three.
Brian Anderson led off the ninth for the Sox with a double, but Kerry Wood retired Jim Thome and Orlando Cabrera and struck out Pierzynski.
Scott Linebrink came in to face E-ramis to lead off the bottom of the ninth.
On Saturday Jason Marquis faced Jose Contreras and many runs were scored.
The difference was that Marquis scattered five over seven innings, while Contreras gave up nine in 3.1. The Cubs scored eight of them in the fourth off of Jose, in a nine run inning featuring not one, but two sets of back-to-back homers. Edmonds and Fontenot to did it to start the inning, and Edmonds got into the act from behind this time, following an E-ramis homer with another of his own.
The Cubs won 11-7.
Dempster went eight innings in the final game of the series, scattering TEN hits, while allowing just one run. The Cubs got homers from E-ramis (he hit one in all three games) and Eric Patterson.
The sweep over the White Sox gave the Cubs the best record in baseball at 48-28 (one game better than the defending World Champion Red Sox) and their 4.5 game lead in the Central was tied with the Angels for the largest in either league.
The Cubs nearly rallied against the Orioles in their next home game. Trailing 7-5 going into the ninth they loaded the bases with nobody out, but perhaps didn't have the batters coming up they'd have liked.
Against reliever George Sherrill, Ronny Cedeno, Kosuke and Hank White all struck out. the 14 game home win streak was over.
Those Cubs would lead the NL with 97 wins. Only the Angels would win more in all of baseball (100), and the Rays equalled the Cubs with 97. The Cubs won the Central by 7.5 games. The Brewers would finish second in the division and win the Wild Card, buoyed by a trade for CC Sabathia. Two future Cubs managers would play big roles on that team. Craig Counsell played 110 games with a .355 on base, and Dale Sveum would take over for the final 12 games of the season when Doug Melvin fired Ned Yost.
If your memory tells you that Dale saved the Brewers' season, he really didn't. Ned was 83-67 when he got fired. Including the playoffs, Dale was 8-8.
It was a rare season in which the Cubs, White Sox and Brewers all made the playoffs. They combined to go 1-9 in them. Of course.
The Cubs made their own big trade, dealing Gallagher, Patterson, Matt Murton and some guy named Josh Donaldson to the A's for Rich Harden and Chad Gaudin.
Donaldson would win the 2015 MVP for the Blue Jays. Harden was really good when he was healthy for the Cubs (5-1, 1.77 ERA) but he was rarely healthy. Gaudin was also a nice pickup. He was a dependable reliever who struck out 26 in his first 21 innings with the Cubs.
But on August 29 after a win over the Phillies in which he pitched a scoreless inning, he had a few cocktails at a neighborhood establishment and hurt his back while tripping over a curb and crashing into a dumpster. He missed a month, and when he came back he posted a 15.75 ERA in five games in September and never pitched for the Cubs again.
The Cubs playoff run was frustratingly short, as Dempster walked seven Dodgers in the first game of the NLDS, all four Cubs infielders made an error in game two, and Kerry Wood destroyed a water fountain during game three.
But hey, they won 14 in a row at home!
