Cubs beat Braves 3-2 in 11 innings

On their first day without Alfonso Soriano, their $136 million left fielder, the Cubs won a game with two players they will pay about $600,000—combined—this season.

Waiver-wire pickups Jim Edmonds and Reed Johnson drove in all the Cubs' runs in Thursday's emotional, dramatic, 3-2 11-inning victory over the Braves, their 11th straight at Wrigley Field before they head to interleague play Friday.

The Cubs aren't just winning, they're winning in the most unusual ways. This was their 10th come-from-behind victory in the last 13 and was won in an ironic way.

One day after losing Soriano for six weeks because of a wayward pitch, they won when Johnson was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.

"We've gotten some huge wins and we've come from behind," closer Kerry Wood said after pitching two innings for his third victory and putting the Cubs 19 games above .500 for the first time since the magical season of 1984.

Notice that Wood called the victories "huge," a word that made manager Lou Piniella chuckle when a reporter used it.

"Huge?" he asked. "Boy, if you start playing huge games in June, what are they in September? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's a lot of baseball to be played."

And the Cubs will play the next six weeks of it, minimum, without Soriano because of his broken left hand.

"It was nice to post a win without Alfonso the first time out," Piniella said.

But with Carlos Zambrano allowing two runs over seven innings and the bullpen of Scott Eyre, Carlos Marmol, Neal Cotts and Wood—who tied Rick Reuschel for third all-time in Cubs strikeouts with 1,367—going four scoreless, all it took was three runs.

After Zambrano served up a two-run homer to Jeff Francoeur in the second inning, the Cubs finally got on the board in the seventh when Edmonds' sacrifice fly scored Aramis Ramirez from third.

Then, with one out in the ninth, Edmonds poked an opposite-field homer into the left-field basket, taking Zambrano off the hook and sending the game into extra innings.

"I was just trying to get the ball up into the wind, actually," Edmonds said. "I got lucky. I hit it hard enough to get it out."

Then in the 11th inning, with the bases loaded and no one out, Edmonds was due up again. But when the Braves brought in lefty Jeff Ridgway, Piniella sent up Johnson.

The first pitch smacked him in the right calf, much to the delight of 41,517 fans who stayed through a hot and muggy afternoon at Wrigley Field.

"I saw the replay, and if it doesn't hit me it goes to the backstop, so it might have been over anyway," Johnson said.

Either way, the Cubs will have played more than an entire month without losing at home. Their last loss was 7-6 to Pittsburgh on May 17. Their next home game is June 20 against the White Sox.

"It's tough being the visiting team here," said Edmonds, who spent much of his career as a hated visitor with the Cardinals.

For a while, it was hard to tell which team was visiting. As an homage to 60 years of WGN-TV telecasts, both teams wore throwback jerseys from the 1948 season when the Braves played in Boston.

"I was wondering if those '48 Cubs jerseys were going to jinx us," Piniella said.

And now the Cubs take their newest magic act on the road where they are 14-16.

"When you don't lose," Edmonds said, "you don't want to leave."

dvandyck@tribune.com

Related topic galleries: Atlanta Braves, Aramis Ramirez, Major League Baseball, Carlos Zambrano, Jim Edmonds, Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Marmol

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