No Carlos, We Can't Believe It, Either: Dodgers Beat Cubs 10-3 Thanks to Hideous Chicago Leather at SportsHubLA

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October 3rd, 2008

No Carlos, We Can’t Believe It, Either: Dodgers Beat Cubs 10-3 Thanks to Hideous Chicago Leather

By Brian Kamenetzky | MLB, What I See, Los Angeles Dodgers

Not to say the Dodgers didn’t earn their 10-3 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Thursday night, giving them a commanding 2-0 lead heading back to LA in their best-of-five NLDS, but holy crap Chicago made it easy for them. Four Chicago errors led to five unearned runs for the the Blue, the faulty leather wrapping itself around the extremely frustrated neck of Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano like a millstone. Most of the damage came in the second inning.

An accounting of the carnage that made Abner Doubleday cry:

After an Andre Ethier single, Joe Torre put on a hit and run with James Loney, who bounced the ball to Cubs shortstop Ryan Theriot. Granted, he had to change direction, but rather than try to catch a very playable grounder with his glove, Theriot made a stab with the bare hand. No luck. First and third, nobody out. Blake DeWitt then hit a tailor-made grounder to second baseman Mark DeRosa, who kicked it and couldn’t get even one out. Ethier scores. The disease spread with the speed of a cursed goat to Gold Glover Derrick Lee, who followed that miscue with one of his own, kicking Casey Blake’s grounder that surely would have meant one out, maybe two.

Bases loaded, one out, with at least two chances- maybe three- to have bailed out Zambrano gone by the wayside. After Chad Billingsley struck out, Rafael Furcal followed with a brilliant bunt single to score Loney, then Russell Martin cleared the bases with a double. 5-0 LAD, and though it was only the second inning, the game was essentially over.

To his credit, Zambrano not only resisted the urge to beat down his infielders with a tire iron (that’s probably why those aren’t allowed on the field), but actually kept pitching. Pretty well, too, and was rewarded with a nice hand from Cubs fans when he finally left in the sixth.

For the Dodgers, there was another homer from Manny, a great performance from Billingsley, and big nights from Furcal and Blake. But the story of the night was the incredible largess of the home team, who gave and gave and gave to LA until they couldn’t do it anymore. It was a complete and total collapse from the team that won 97 games this year. It was like watching Little League. Bad Little League. Could the Dodgers have won anyway? Sure. They’re playing well, and like I said, Billingsley was very sharp. The point, though, is that they didn’t have to. Chicago served up a two game lead like Misty May-Treanor setting Kerri Walsh at the Olympics.

Easy kill for LA.

There will be Cubs fans who hold out hope for a miracle, and it’s still possible, for sure… but not likely. It’s hard to imagine a loss more demoralizing than this one.

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No Carlos, We Can’t Believe It, Either: Dodgers Beat Cubs 10-3 Thanks to Hideous Chicago Leather

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