Cubs 3, Giants 2. Bruce Bochy got outsmarted by Lou Piniella. That’s not easy to do. Kevin Correia made two great pitches and gave up two cheap singles, then Randy Messenger threw a slider near Aramis Ramirez’s ankles, and Ramirez golfed it to the left-field wall. Tip of the cap time.
Call me cruel, but what got my goat the most tonight was Tim Lincecum’s five walks. Three were with two outs and no one on base, just spasms of wildness, a fourth was to the relatively harmless Daryl Ward to lead off the 7th. Lincecum was overpowering otherwise, but those walks kept him from going deeper into the game. Lincecum going longer might not have helped the Giants win, but it was frustrating nonetheless.
PLODAG: Pedro Feliz. Single, home run, and — lawdy miss clawdy — a leadoff walk that led to a run in the 8th.
Also, mid-game the Cubs traded for Jason Kendall. They didn’t give up too much: a backup catcher already DFA’ed and a big lefty minor-league reliever, Jerry Blevins, who’s put up nice numbers in the low minors this year.
***
SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Now listening to Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, in preparation for Thursday’s show in Berkeley. The entire album live, revisited 20 years later. As usual, what many fans and critics hail as a band’s best work is not my favorite, though Lee Ranaldo’s beat-poet song-speak was never finer. What I don’t get is how people scoff at later albums like Goo and Dirty for being too “pop,” when Daydream Nation has some of the hookiest riffs the Yoof ever laid down. “Total Trash”? “Teenage Riot”? Except for the former’s mid-song meltdown and the latter’s trancey intro, they’re toe-tapping garage pop gems.
