Come to Think of it...Cubs MIA in Pirate Victory at Wrigley Field

LOST: One baseball team, previously dominant in series against Brewers.  Lots of solid, clutch hitting.  Home runs flying all around.  Brilliant pitching.  Strong defense.  Base stealing. A team that is truly alive.  Answers to the name of Chicago Cubs. REWARD IF FOUND.

Has anyone seen the Chicago Cubs? This team of impostors that showed up at Wrigley Field today certainly couldn't be the same team, now could it? I mean, this team played a clearly inferior Pittsburgh Pirates team at home, and was shut out, producing only five hits.

That doesn't even remotely resemble the team we last saw dominating the Milwaukee Brewers in an exciting four-game sweep completed Thursday.

Yet these ballplayers, whoever they were, lined up against a Pirate team that had just traded two of its top players in Jason Bay and Xavier Nady.

And they faced a pitcher making his first start of the season in Jeff Karstens, who came over from the Yankees in the Nady deal. Three Pirate relievers held the impostors hitless over the final three innings.

Someone call 9-1-1, we've been robbed. Someone stole the real Cubs. Those Cubs lead the league in hitting and scoring.  But the team that showed up today stranded eight runners, leaving the bases loaded in the fourth inning.

Another sign this couldn't be the real Cubs is that the real team had enjoyed a 9-3 record against these same Pirates going into today's game.

But, in the end, 41,340 fans went home sundrenched yet disappointed following the 3-0 loss.

So where was the real team?

Local police say to be on the lookout for a gang of 25 men wearing blue uniforms, and brandishing sticks. They are armed and dangerous, police cautioned, unlike the impotent bunch that somehow took their place this afternoon.

Let's hope the real Cubs can be found in time to win this series.  It would be a shame to work so hard, and play so well, only to give it all right back against a losing team like the Pirates. Imposters, indeed!

Come to think of it, isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?