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 Wow....One game into his Cubs career and it seems that Kosuke Fukudome is going to make me look really bad for everything I said about him.....Fukudome went 4-4 with a game tying 3-run home run in the bottom of the ninth to help the Cubs battle back in their Opening Day tussle against the Brewers. for a 4-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Opening Day.
On a day full of excitement ranging from the Ernie Banks Statue making its debut outside of Wrigley Field to Carlos Zambrano and Ben Sheets being locked in a battle of the aces to Kerry Wood having a rough debut as the Cubs closer to Bobby Howry struggling in April once again.......Fukudome stood out among the rest.
Zambrano, who left with forearm cramps, and Sheets each pitched 6+ innings of shut out baseball on a typical crummy weather Opening Day at Wrigley Field as each team struggled with the bats. Both pitchers were on top of their game as they made opposing hitters look feeble in their attempts at production with scorching fastballs and wicked breaking pitches.
Unfortunately each teams respective closers couldn't do the same as Kerry Wood hit Rickie Weeks to lead off the ninth inning and help lead the Brewers to three runs that looked to be like the end of the game. On came the Brewers new closer, Eric Gagne, and all of a sudden he couldn't find the strike zone with a Garmin GPS Locater. After walking Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez to lead off the bottom of the ninth, Gagne ran the count to 3-0 against Fukudome before giving up the homer on a 3-1 pitch that Fukudome deposited in the right-center field bleachers.
Just when it looked like the Cubs had all of the momentum, Bob Howry came on in relief to pitch the tenth inning and gave up a lead off double to Craig Counsell that led to the winning run for the Brewers. Howry has struggled in the early months of the season during his career so hopefully he can get it straightened out. The Cubs weren't able to duplicate their ninth inning magic in the tenth inning and fell in their first game of the season. All in all it was one game game out of 162....but it certainly was exciting.
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2008 Cubs Preview
I really hope that this game is not a bad omen for the season. Fukudome was impressive in a game where nodoby could really do much of anything until the bullpens came in.
I still don't know how you can cramp up in the crap weather that was out there, but chalk that up to Z I guess. Hopefully the offense can get going. I will be interested to see if Fukudome moves up in the order at all and Soriano moves down, may be an interesting move.
The weather conditions were pretty atrocious so I don't think there will be much carry over...although it would be nice if Z had some carry over. He looked amazing in his first start, he looks in shape and ready to go. They said they are toying with the idea of moving Fukudome to leadoff against lefties and they were saying today on the broadcast that there were rumors around the clubhouse that he would move to the second spot by the end of the season.
I live with 2 cubs fans and was able to catch some of this game in between and after the Sox game. I thought C-Zam looked unhittable for the most part. I expect him to have a huge year.
K-Fuk was obviously great as well, and it was nice to see Cubs fans embrace him the way they did. You could tell he was a little overwhelmed during that curtain call. It seems painfully obvious to me that he should be hitting second and Soriano fifth.