Phillies 4, Cubs 1Game 90 - Saturday Afternoon, July 17th in Chicago
We listened to yesterday afternoon's Phillies game while driving home from an out of town wedding. (It was a long drive.) For the first hour-plus of the drive, we listened to the Cubs' radio broadcast team of Pat Hughes and Ron Santo call the game on XM. I love these guys. I almost didn't mind the Phillies weren't winning through the first half of the game, just because it was so pleasant to listen to the play-by-play of Hughes and the commentary of Santo. The rapport between the two is so genuine, and these guys love the Cubbies so much, I almost didn't want to switch over to the Phillies broadcast once we got into range of 1210 AM.
For the second straight game, Cole Hamels pitched like a staff ace. He scattered 8 Cubs' hits over 7 innings of work, and allowed just 1 run in his last inning of work. He worked out of a 1st and 3rd situation in the 4th and the radio broadcasters (both Cubs' and Phillies') commented on how well he was locating his pitches. The offense couldn't push across any runs against Randy Wells and the Cubs' bullpen through the first 8 innings, depsite the fact they had baserunners in every inning.
This game should have resulted in a Cubs' 1-0 W, but Cubs' closer Carlos Marmol had different plans. Pinch hitters Brian Schneider and Ross Gload drew consecutive walks with 1 out. After Shane Victorino struck out for the 2nd out of the inning, Placido Polanco came through with a clutch single to left. Schneider should have been out at the plate on the throw from left fielder Tyler Colvin, but catcher Geovany Soto just couldn't handle the ball and Schneider slid home with the tying run. Ball four delivered to the next batter, Jimmy Rollins, bounced past Soto for a wild pitch and Gload came home with the go-ahead run. Two more walks and four batters later, the Phils exited the top of the 9th with a surprising 4-1 lead, nicely gift-wrapped by Marmol. It was ugly, but we'll take it.
2 comments:
I'm glad you enjoyed the Pat and Ron Show. Pat is a great play by play man. Ron isn't very good at analysis, but like you said, he wears his heart on his sleeve. You can usually tell if the Cubs are winning by the tone of Ron's voice. I'm sure he was just dying during that disaster of a ninth inning.
I switched back to XM at the end of that inning as Hughes was summing up the damage. Ron was just muttering a few Oh Jeeze's in the background.
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