Morning Box Score

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Sep 9, 2009 3:00PM

Cubs Knock Around Pirates
The Cubs offense, impotent for so much of the 2009 season, took out its frustration on the lowly Pirates last night, smacking eight straight hits to start the game and give starter Ryan Dempster a 7-0 lead before he threw a single pitch; the Cubs won by a 9-4 final. Skipper Lou Piniella echoed the thoughts of most Cubs after the game when he asked, "Where's that first inning been all year?" Elias says the feat of opening a game with eight straight hits has been done five times before last night, once before by the Cubs (against, who else, the Pirates in 1973). Aramis Ramirez, Geovany Soto, and Kosuke Fukudome each had two RBIs and Mighty Micah Hoffpauir had a homer in the fourth. Dempster surrendered all four Pirate runs over the course of his 6.1 innings in the winning effort while four pitchers from the bullpen - none of them Kevin Gregg - held the lead. The Cubs and Pirates finish their series with an 11:35 matinee today (CSN).

A's Wallop Sox
While it wasn't quite as impressive as the Cubs' explosion, the Oakland A's still jumped on top of the White Sox early - seven runs over the first two innings - and didn't relent on their way to an 11-3 thrashing of the White Sox. The Sox offense came on a two-run Mark Kotsay homer in the fourth and a Paul Konerko solo shot in the sixth. Sox rookie Carlos Torres, who stymied the Cubs last week, didn't even make it a full inning before being yanked with two outs in the first, having already surrendered fiver runs. The rest of the Sox bullpen didn't do much better, allowing six more runs. Said Sox manager Ozzie Guillen of Torres, "I didn't see any life in his fastball, and he was locating really bad. It's a shame in five days how people can change." The Sox and A's tangle once more tonight at 7:11 (CSN).