Take.
That.
The Chicago Cubs put together a solid all-around game to beat down the Yankees and Masahiro Tanaka tonight, despite crazy thunderstorms in the area (through which I drove, thankyaverymuch) that threatened most of the night. Jason Hammel put together a great outing, even though it looked like it might not happen: on the second pitch of the game, he took a hard comebacker off of the back of his pitching hand. To test out whether he was hurt, he threw a warm-up pitch … to the backstop. But he righted himself, and went on to cruise for most of the rest of his night.
On the offensive side, the Cubs lit into Tanaka like he hasn’t been hit yet this year, which was admittedly just four runs, but, yeah, dude’s been that good. It’s interesting that this was the first time Tanaka was facing a team for the second time. Might not mean anything, or it might be an indicator that he’s got some adjusting to do. We’ll see.
Plenty of Cubs had good nights tonight, including Luis Valbuena, Emilio Bonifacio, Mike Olt, and John Baker (John Baker? Yeah, John Baker).
And I just can’t wait to hear the revelations tomorrow …