MILWAUKEE (AP) -The calendar said July. It felt like October. For once, the confusion was not just understandable, it was actually welcome.
If you’d told the people at the March 31 season opener in Chicago the starters from that game, Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs and Ben Sheets of the Brewers, would meet again on a Tuesday night in late summer with the National League Central up for grabs, you would have gotten some laughs. Especially from that half of the mostly blue-clad Miller Park crowd that spent the evening stuck to their seats.
After winning a back-and-forth game the previous night, Zambrano and the Cubs played this one like the bullies they’ve become. Zambrano threw eight nearly flawless innings and struck out a season-high nine batters. Meanwhile, his lineup strung together seven straight hits and five runs in the top of the sixth inning to win going away 7-1.
The only moment of frustration on the Cubs side this night came when Zambrano, a .350 hitter, popped out attempting a sacrifice bunt in the fifth. Even that, however, didn’t ruffle manager Lou Piniella.
“I just don’t want to see a nice big bone bruise on his thigh for no reason whatsoever,” Piniella said.
“I wish I was strong enough to do that when I played,” he added a moment later, almost wistful. “I had to use a water cooler.”
After taking most of the last century off, the Cubs look like legitimate World Series contenders again. But Piniella pointed out that for all the hype surrounding the four-game set, it’s still July and he’s not worried about his ballplayers getting ahead of themselves. The last thing they need, apparently, is to be reminded of that.
“That’s not even a consideration. I just let ’em play,” Piniella said, “and I don’t believe in meetings.”
His Milwaukee counterpart, Ned Yost, was quicker to embrace the postseason atmosphere, maybe because the Brewers franchise has been waiting since 1982 to play a few games that matter.
“You don’t have series like this in July,” he said. “Very few organizations, very few teams. The Yankees and the Red Sox maybe. This is not an every day occurrence.”
bringing Rich Harden in from Oakland.
A further reminder of the Cubs’ willingness to open their wallets and look far and wide for talent was apparent on the press-row table just before game time. Offseason import Kosuke Fukudome had his own page of stats and notes, published in Japanese, for the pack of reporters from back home tailing him from town to town.
Those stats have been slipping of late, but in the sixth Fukudome sliced one of Sheets’ offerings into left and outfielder Ryan Braun’s clumsy dive turned it into a triple that scored two runs and sent the Cubs on their merry way.
“They outplayed us every facet of the game,” Sheets said, more than willing to share the blame, starting on the mound.
“It is July,” he added a moment later. “Nobody wins a Central pennant right now. We don’t want to give no more away, but there is still a lot of season left.”
He’s right, of course, and eight of those games remain against the Cubs, culminating with a season-ending, three-game series back at Miller Park two months from now.
“We respect, obviously, the two guys that we beat,” Piniella said about the Brewers aces.
But that’s not the same thing as saying he didn’t expect to beat them. After all, the two pitchers he rolled out against them, Ted Lilly and Zambrano, “aren’t exactly chopped liver.” Ditto for the next two.
“We’ve got (Ryan) Dempster, we’ve got Harden, we’re throwing some darn good pitching out there ourselves. We’re pleased that we won the first two. Let’s not relax now.”
With that, Piniella reached across his desk in the visiting clubhouse and drained the rest of a can of light beer.
“Bet that tastes good tonight,” someone said.
Piniella pulled it back from his lips and smiled.
“Tastes good,” he said through a widening grin, “every night.”
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press Write to him at jlitkeap.org
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