For the second day in a row, the Cubs won a game with a hit in their last at-bat.  Two days ago, the victory came against the White Sox when Alfonso Soriano drove home Reed Johnson for the winning run on a bloop single into right-center field in the bottom of the ninth.  Yesterday, the Indians were the victims.  In the bottom of the 10th inning, Soriano walked and stole second base.  With two outs, Ryan Theriot hit a single into right field off the end of his bat to score Soriano and the good guys won 8-7.

What was so impressive about the win against the Indians was that the Cubs spotted the Indians a 7-0 lead, but kept fighting to come back.  Rich Harden looked bad, giving up all seven runs in the first four innings.  However, the Cubs bullpen looked unusually good, giving up just one hit and no runs over the final five innings of the game.

Derrick Lee was the hitting star for the Cubs.  He smacked a solo shot in the 6th off Cliff Lee, and then tied the game with a homerun in the bottom of the ninth off former Cub Kerry Wood.  Lee’s ninth inning heroics gave way to Theriot’s in the 10th.

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Milton Bradley continues to struggle.  It’s clear to see that he is pressing at the plate, trying to hit a five run  homerun every at-bat.  It’s not for lack of effort that Bradley’s hitting line stands at .242/.345/.386.  He’s trying hard, but just not getting the results.

I found this article profiling Bradley in 2003 while he was playing for Cleveland.  It details the tough childhood Bradley had and explains why he has such a “me against the world” mentality.  Even though we look at Bradley sometimes as fiery, angry, and maybe even a head case, I was struck reading the six-year old article with how much Bradley has mellowed.  That’s not to say he is mellow.  Just more mellow than he used to be.

After reading the article, I find myself looking at Bradley more as an underdog and cheering for him to turn his season around.  I was cheering for him before, but I’m cheering even more now.

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The sale of the Cubs continues at a snails pace.  The Ricketts family had exclusive negotiating rights to purchase the team up until this past week.  Now that the exclusive period has passed, Cubs owner Sam Zell and the Tribune Company have re-open negotiations with a group led by Marc Utah and Leo Hindery.  The Utay/Hindery group had the second highest bid behind the Rickett’s $900 million offer.

The sticking point at the moment for the Ricketts is the value of the Cubs television contract with WGN.  The Ricketts feel that WGN is paying too little for the broadcast rights and is looking to decrease their offer; some say by as much as $50 million.  It appears that Sam Zell is not budging.

An earlier report indicated that the sale was not moving forward because the Ricketts could not borrow the money they needed due to the current economic conditions.  However, a spokeman for the Ricketts family indicated that this was not true and that they had already secured the financing they would need to purchase the club, Wrigley Field, and 25% of Chicago Sports Net.

The sale of the Cubs would be nothing more than an interesting story if it didn’t also impact the team’s ability to add payroll at the trade deadline.  Crane Kenney has indicated that the Cubs could take on some “small” contracts, but it appears that Jim Hendry’s hand will be at least somewhat tied in doing anything more than tweaking the team.