And it's ONE....TWO.......

.....THREE Strikes You're Out!!!!

A great end to 3-day 4th of July weekend....going to a Cubs game. The Milwaukee Brewers were in town for a 4 game series. This was game 4. The Brewers are one of our more favorite visiting teams.
Derek Lee hit a 2-run dinger in the bottom of the 1st inning to get the hitting started. The Cubs had 13 hits on the day. Milwaukee had 11, so there was a lot of action to pay attention to. In the 5th inning, Jake Fox, up from the minors where he has been having a good season with the Iowa Cubs, hit a 2-run homer also. He has been playing well in the 26 games he's been up. That may be part of the reason he survived the return of 3 players off the D/L and didn't get sent back down to make room for the returnee's.
One of our favorite Brewers, Prince Fielder (his dad played ball too, but first name is escaping me at the moment....I'll remember AFTER I post) hit a powerful line drive solo home run to straight away center field. Cecil........HAH!!, I remembered before I posted !! : ) Prince is built like his dad, a big, strong, fireplug of a man. Since he is in the National League, he must play a field postition. He's too big to be able to run in the outfield, not quite agile enough to play 2nd, short or 3rd. I tell you what though, he does a reasonable job at 1st base.
We went with a friend of Pam's from work, Laurie D., and Kerrie, a friend of Lauries. Had a blast. Talking and laughing all the way down to the park, discussing the nuances of the game (even with neighboring fans...Hey Grant!!), and visiting in the car all the way home while finding the least 'traffic'd' route.
Weather was BEAUTIFUL. Typical Wrigley Field day baseball weather. Sunny, low humidity, temps around 80, but a light breeze coming in over the right field wall from off the lake. Shade caught up from behind us around the 7th inning, so we weren't baking in the sun quite all day. Seats are field level, 10 rows up, behind the Cubs bullpen on the 3rd base side.
Cubs in red hats? Yup. All MLB teams wore red hats during the 4th of July weekend. Actually if you think about it, good marketing ploy by MLB. Gives the fans another item to purchase.

Go figure, a pack of Cubs hanging out around 3rd base during warmups.

Starting pitcher, Ted Lilly, warming up. He had a good, solid day. Pitched into the 7th inning, 0..zero..walks (actually there was not 1 base on balls all game by any pitcher), and if I recall Pam's scorecard correctly, Lilly had 7 K's (strikeouts). He started struggling in the 6th, but got out of the jam. Came back in at the top of the 7th, but got in trouble again, so was lifted for a relief pitcher. Many of the fans, including us, entering at the beginning of the game got blue 'Cubs' t-shirts with Lilly's name and number on the back.

Closer Carlos Marmol getting lose to come in and finish the game.

Cubs are winning !! (You can see the White Sox vs KC across from the Cubs score.....the Sox did not fare out as well.) We're at the end of the 6th, at 3:20 p.m. First pitch was 1:20. The game moved along well.

Having a good time at Wrigley.....Gene, Pam, Kerrie and Laruie. Had a blast !!
(Thank you Laurie and Kerrie for letting me attend even though I showed up with a WHITE SOX hat on when we picked you up!! : ) I later changed hats. )
And the Cubs won, so we got to stay a few minutes after the game to sing 'Go Cubs Go' with our other 40,000+ friends hanging out at the Friendly Confines.
Notice the full blown ivy on the outfield wall behind us. If you look at posting photos from the Cubs game we attended in May, they are all brown as the leaves hadn't broken out yet.