What Happened Today? 6/20/08 Or: Of Course They Did It Again

Ironically, this morning when I woke up, a friend of mine who is a Sox fan IM'ed me about this series. A battle of first-place teams is always intriguing, and despite my feelings about it (see below), an intracity series adds a little spice to things. He cracked that he was circulating a petition to keep the Cubs from playing the bottom of the 7th inning today due to their penchant for coming back in that inning, especially at home.

Sure enough, that afternoon, Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez went back to back in the bottom of the 7th, erasing a 2-run deficit and leading to Ramirez continuing his legend as one of the great big-situation hitters in Cubs history with a walk-off to center field to lead off the 9th. It was a win the Cubs absolutely had to have after the demoralizing 3-game sweep to the Rays, and in retrospect seems even bigger after Jason LaRue, Skip Schumaker and an on-the-take Red Sox defense led the Cardinals to yet another ridiculous win over a superior opponent tonight.

The Cubbies have won 12 straight home games, are a nearly unfathomable 30-8 at Wrigley and send Jason Marquis to the mound tomorrow for Game 2 of a series that all of a sudden seems sweepable.

In perhaps even better news, Carlos Zambrano's MRI revealed only a minor shoulder strain. It is likely that Z will miss two starts, then be back in the saddle. It is rumored that Z agreed to miss the 2nd start largely because it would be at U.S. Cellular Field, meaning he wouldn't be able to hit for himself. He's just too hilarious.

In other Chicago sports news (well, kinda), NBC has agreed to extend their exclusive contract with Notre Dame football for five more years, through 2015. Mike Wilbon smartly pointed out on PTI today that NBC has pretty much boxed themselves into a corner with the Irish - since all the major conferences now have deals with other networks, NBC is left with ND. Fine by me.

It's worth noting also that Jay Mariotti, the windbag of windbags, has had about enough of Ozzie Guillen. Mariotti ripped his colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times for being what he called "brainwashed" to believe that Guillen's periodic rants is just Ozzie being Ozzie. Mariotti is not a fan of that, calling Guillen "one of the great crackpots in the history of professional sports". Welllll...this could be interesting.