Tag: bob howry

Bob Howry and the Cubs playing the spoiler against the Mets

The Chicago Cubs defeated the Mets in New York tonight 9-6. 

With the score tied 6-6, Lou Piniella brought in Bobby Howry.  I groaned audibly.  When Daniel Murphy led off the inning with a triple, the groans turned to plain ol’ swearing.  My wife even commented, "is that the pitcher you don’t like, honey?"  Yeah, that about sums it up. 

But wait!  This story has a happy ending.  With no outs, a runner on third, and no real option left in the bullpen, it was left to Howry to get the job done.  He struck out David Wright.  Lou called for two successive intentional walks to Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran.  A short hop to Ronnie Cedeno by Ryan Church looked like DP-fodder but Ronnie took the sure out at home preventing the winning run from scoring.  Finally, the coup-d-grace, Howry struck out Ramon Castro to get out of the inning. 

The Cubs went on to score three runs in the top of the tenth on a Ryan Theriot single, a Derrek Lee double and a Aramis Ramirez homerun.  Kerry Wood came on to pitch a scoreless tenth to get his 34th save. 

All good things but nothing impressed me more than Howry and how he got out of his 9th inning jam. 

Edmonds belts two, Blanco puts the icing on the cake against Cards

A few friends from work went up to Chicago to catch the Cub-Cardinal game today.  Thanks to Rich, who is a gracious Cardinal fan by the way, who sent me some photos of the game.

Before the game, a member of the US Navy Seals Leap frog team parachuted into Wrigley Field:

navysealsatwrigley

I only listened to the game but from my vantage point, I don’t think they could have chosen a better game to see.  A pitcher’s duel with a tie game with both starters (Looper and Lilly) allowing two runs each after seven runs.  Rich had told me earlier that he was concerned about the Cardinals bullpen but all things considered they didn’t do ALL bad.  That is, till Franklin got to the 11th.

wrigleyvscards

The stories of the game from a Cub perspective?

Of course, the bases loaded walk-off single from unlikely suspect Henry Blanco.  To be fair, Blanco is hitting .300 in limited play. 

Jim Edmonds was 0-7 against his former team, the Cardinals.  He seemed to have made up for lost time today with two solo shots and was literally all the Cubs offense for the first 10 innings.  And he seemed to be having fun:

Edmonds appeared to enjoy his first homer Friday, pausing at the plate momentarily to watch it take off before rounding the bases.

Maybe more surprising, the Cubs handing the ball to Bob Howry with a tie ball game.  Bob Howry and his 5+ ERA.  But Howry got the job done, pitching a perfect 11th with 2 strikeouts to get the win. 

One down, two to go. 

Go Cubs!