Do you know what victories are like for the Cubs this year?
They're little tiny delicate unicorn butterflies - so rare you hardly ever see them, so fragile they can be squashed by a breeze.
When Mike Quade watched Carlos Marmol walk Mike Stanton to lead off the top of the 9th, there were a number of things he had to be thinking.
Unfortunately, none of those things were: "Gosh, these darn victories are so hard to come by, maybe I should be extra careful and get somebody up in the bullpen..."
Remember when Albert Pujols hit that game winning homer the second day in a row?
You know what Quade didn't think?
"Gosh, didn't Albert Pujols just hit a game winning homer against us yesterday? Maybe I should put him on base..."
He refused to pay attention to reality, which is what happened as the 9th went on last night.
Because then Marmol proceeded to walk Mike Cameron and everybody in the ballpark, in the television audience, even my kids who were in line at a theatre to see the final "Harry Potter" movie and didn't even know the Cubs were playing... all these people could see that Carlos Marmol had no idea where the plate was.
But I guess Mike Quade couldn't.
How is it that this manager, during this season, doesn't have the ability to recognize the times when Carlos Marmol's got a big fly swatter in his hand and he's about to go smack the unicorn butterfly?
Then .218 hitting Marlin catcher John Buck walked, and now the bases are loaded, and, you know, I let out that kind of scream that makes animals nervous.
I turned it off.
I see this morning that Greg Dobbs hit a pinch run double to tie it up, and that Quade left Marmol in STILL to walk one more guy before being relieved by Kerry Wood.
I wonder if that's because...NOBODY WAS WARMED UP YET?
Here's what it says in the box score - Carlos Marmol threw 7 strikes in his 25 pitches.
But, you know, he hadn't thrown a real pitch in 3 days!
You know what that's like, when you've had a 3-day weekend and you go back to work and - say you're a construction guy - you open your toolbox and look at your hammer and think, "Whoa, what the hell is that?"
So I can totally relate to Carlos forgetting how to pitch.
3 days is WAY too long to be away from the game.
Anyway, the box says the final score was 3-6.
But I say the Cubs lost by quadecision.
