baseball

Look, this has got to be the baseball story of 2004!

The Cubs drew level with the Giants in the NL wildcard race on Tuesday night. However, as I am writing this, the Giants are about to nudge in front again.

The Cubs have been whizzing around the place this week. Milwaukee on Sunday, Miami Monday, Pittsburgh Tuesday and Wednesday. They split Monday's double-header against the Marlins, made up of games postponed because of the plethora of hurricanes in the past few weeks.

So Cuban national baseball teams don't win every tournament they compete in. Venezuela's best ten year-old beisbolistas defeated the Cuban kiddies 4-1 in the final of the V Mundialito Preinfantil at the Jose Antonio Casanova stadium in Caracas on Saturday.

It's on, or should that be off. There will be no professional baseball in Japan this weekend. Talks between the Japan Baseball Players Association and the owners broke down on Friday night.

At issue is the planned merger between the Orix BlueWave and Kintetsu Buffaloes. The association, concerned about player redundancies, opposed the merger then offered a compromise of deferring the merger till 2006 so that another club could take its place. The owners refused.

Three home runs by Aramis Ramirez as the Cubs beat the Reds 5-4 on Thursday night. Blog reportage from Al Yellon.

Whew. Corey Patterson smashed two home runs on Tuesday night as the Cubs beat the Pirates 3-2. In twelve innings. Corey's second homer finished the game.

The Cubs are now 78-64 with two wins so far in their home series against Pittsburgh, but they are still half a game behind the Giants. San Francisco beat Milwaukee 3-2. Bonds is still on 699.

Oakland beat GWB's former plaything, the Texas Rangers, in a ten-inning thriller on Monday night. But it was Frank Francisco's chair-throwing antics that captured all the headlines.

Barry Bonds hit career homerun number 699 on Sunday as the Giants beat the Diamondbacks 5-2 in Phoenix. He's now 15 behind George Herman Ruth and 56 behind Henry Aaron. For those who care, it was also his 100th home run scored in the month of September. Another centennial in the game: Arizona's 100th loss of this season.

Cuba has won the gold medal for Olympic baseball. That's three gold and one silver in the four Games since baseball was introduced in Barcelona 1992. They did so by defeating Australia 6-2 in the final on Wednesday night. It was Australia's first medal in olympic baseball competition.

If there's anything that makes me immensely patriotic, it's the way we Australians place our imprint on the world stage. It doesn't matter whether it's David Wenham being Faramir, Jimmy Little doing U2 covers, Steve Waugh snubbing GW Bush, or the Puppetry of the Penis simply existing. And then there's the Australian baseballers beating the Japanese Dream Team.