It's the middle of the fifth inning, and Doug Davis just drove home Justin Upton - on a freakin' "safety squeeze" (I put it in quotes because I strongly don't believe it's a play) - and the Cubs are down 8-2, and the Cubs are done, and it's 12:30, and I'm going to watch 90 more minutes of this junk. So I'll write, but just briefly.

First, is it too much to ask Michael Wuertz to field his position? I mean, a freakin' safety squeeze, in which there wasn't even a play at the plate. It wasn't even close.

Alfonso Soriano lines a single off the wall to lead off the fifth inning. A single! Eric Byrnes predictably missed the bag by 40 feet, and Fonzy's standing at first. And this after his first actual contact of the series. What a waste.

I think D-Lee popped out on a 2-0 count, and then Aramis swung at ball four and then ball five. Waste a leadoff "double" with a lineout, a popout, and that awful Aramis strikeout.

Doug Davis is terrible, for the record. Mid-80s fastball, 70 mph curve, and nothing. And the Cubs are making him look like...Jamie Moyer. (I mean, he's a soft-throwing lefty, and he's dominating. Soft-throwing lefties suck, so it's tough to find a dominant one to compare him to, you know?)

I guess Flax said that the Cubs struggle with soft-throwing lefties, which I guess just mean they struggle with pitchers who suck.

This is frustrating as hell and, honestly, it's more frustrating because Dick Stockton clearly hasn't watched a Major League Baseball game since the mid-1950s. Myriad errors from the booth. He said "the runners will be going" with runners at first and third. He said "it's obvious what Davis is doing here" in advance of the squeeze, though he didn't actually acknowledge the runner at third and the potential strategy there - it's like, similar to Michael Wuertz, he had no freakin' idea what the situation was. During game one, he referred to Kendall being acquired "in the Michael Barrett deal," which, of course, was three starting catchers prior to Kendall's acquisition. He said the Cubs probably prefer Theriot to Jones in the two-hole, when Jones has been there for a month against righties, and is only down in the lineup because he's starting against the lefty (and Theriot, though we love him, hasn't hit since July).

Let's address the Zambrano thing. It's indefensible, and there's no way around it. It was indefensible the moment the decision was made. If you're playing for the fourth game while it's a a 1-1 tie in the sixth inning of the first game, you're making a grave mistake. (The D-Backs played for the fourth game in the bottom of the inning, then leading 3-1, and that makes sense. They were comfortably on top, based on the Cubs' inability to hit.) If you're not confident that your starting pitcher can throw 100 pitches - low-stress pitches, to be sure, as he had only allowed four baserunners - and come back on three days' rest, then you shouldn't be considering using him on three days' rest.

The real frustrating thing here is that the Cubs have, let's say, the second-best starting pitcher in the NL playoffs (Webb's the best; I don't think Jeff Francis or Cole Hamels are better than Z, at least yet) . The Phillies are a highly-talented but highly-flawed team (Flaw: They can't pitch.) The Rockies have Holliday and Tulowitzki and a bunch of schlubs, and the D-Backs clearly suck. (They're a collection of young talent, but they're two years away from being a good team; they're smoke-and-mirrors right now and, here they are, handing the Cubs their collective asses.)

So, the fact is, nobody in the NL is any good. The pennant's there for the taking. And yet, it'll be the freakin' Rockies and the freakin' D-Backs for the right to go to the series.

(Combined years of existence: 26, I think. Years since the Cubs have been to there: 62.)

Being a Cubs fan has never made me miserable until, say, this exact moment.

God fucking dammit.

(Ward just drove in two with a double to center. I'll watch again. Let's do this.)