Morning Box Score: Cubs in Spiral Mode, Sox Trying to Hang on
By Tim Bearden in News on Sep 3, 2011 3:30PM
Nevermind losing Carlos Zambrano for the rest of this season -- he's a head case anyway -- and losing Jim Hendry earlier this month, the Cubs are still on a slippery slope of failure this year. Now 20 games behind .500 and losing to one of the least threatening teams in the National League, the Pirates, who are 12 games below .500, makes this one of the worst Cubs season's of recent memory. Normally fans would tout, "There's always next year," but people are starting to get more skeptical of the Lovable Losers.
It's bad losing to a division rival, it's worse when you're trying to keep a "winning-season." And to top it off you helped the division rival's manager, Jim Leyland, go down in the baseball history books with his 500th win with the Tigers, only the fifth manager to do so. Justin Verlander pitched a shut-out into the eighth, but by then it was too late for the South-siders. The Sox are one game above .500, giving them technically a "winning-season" so far, though I'm sure many wouldn't call it that this year.