Sweet and Sour Lou

Braves 5, @Cubs 3

It was a lot closer this time, but in the end, things turned out like they have for the Cubs most of this season: they self-destructed down the stretch. After Rich Hill had one bad inning, giving up three runs, the Cubs scratched back to tie the game at 3-3 through seven. Enter Will Ohman; exit lead. After going 0-2 on the first hitter of the inning, Ohman proceeded to walk him. This despite the fact that Ohman was only brought on because the leadoff hitter was a lefty. Then, despite being a prototypical LOOGY (Lefty One-Out Guy), Ohman was left in, and proceeded to give up the go-ahead run. In the bottom of the eighth, Angel Pagan led off with a double and tried to make third when the ball got away from the catcher; unfortunately, it didn't get far away enough, and Pagan was gunned down in a bang-bang play. Pagan and Quade argued with the third-base umpire, and then out came Piniella, who was almost immediately tossed from the game and spent the next five minutes kicking dirt and his hat and ultimately being restrained by the umpires. For good measure, the game had to be delayed for several additional minutes because the bleacher fans deposited most of their beer cups onto the field at this point.

If yesterday was an embarrassing day to be a Cubs fan, today wasn't much better; for one thing, there's no excuse for throwing stuff onto the field, and for another, at least yesterday there was little belief the Cubs might actually win. When Pagan doubled I thought the tide was turning in our favor. Instead it was just another disappointingly close loss; once the dust settled in the eighth, the Cubs' remaining five outs went pretty smoothly for Atlanta aside from a Soriano single in the ninth. Lee came up as the tying run in the bottom of the ninth and grounded weakly into a fielder's choice. Obviously it's unfair to think he would be able to hit a home run in that situation all the time - no one is going to do that - but this was a big spot for the Cubs' season as a whole. And Lee went down without much fight.

After hitting their 25-33 nadir last year, the Twins turned around and won 21 of their next 23. Before they lost consecutive games again they were already 11 games above .500. I sure don't see that happening with this team. I'm sure Lou's ejection was half to vent his own frustration and half to try and motivate the team. Do you get any sense that it may have worked?