Game Notes: What was up with Dana Demuth's strike zone tonight? Early in the game Rusch was pitching on the outside corners and getting balls. Suddenly those pitches became strikes. An numerous occasions the ball was a good 2-3 inches off the plate and he was calling it a strike.

Patterson continues to have games of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly variety. The Good is taking a count to 3-2 and fouling off 5 pitches before doubling to tie the game at 1-1. The Bad is in that same inning he gets picked off 2nd base. The Ugly is when Patterson was running straight back on a fly ball to deep center only to have it bounce off his glove. Then we go back to the Good as he redeems himself with a 3-run HR. Basically a game like that lets the Patterson lovers and haters be completely correct and completely wrong about him at the same time.

Alou gets the award for worst acting job ever. A deep base hit to left field ricochets off Alou's glove and goes into the Ivy. Alou begins to dig around in the Ivy for a bit, then quickly raises his hands to try and get a ground rule double. It was kinda funny because we could clearly see the ball on the TV but Alou standing in front of it couldn't. The umpires didn't award the ground rule double so Alou went back to ripping up the Ivy. You could still see the ball but Alou was trying to burying the evidence with the torn up Ivy in a last desperate attempt to convince the Umps it was lost in the Ivy and they would call back the play.

Still the Cubs defense was horrible for this game. For most of the year they have been pretty solid. Martinez bobbled two 9th inning grounders, so that wasn't pretty to watch either.

Yet we still won. I was shaking my fist as Hawkins got the last out saying, Cubs win, Cubs win.