Chicago Cubs Baseball Team

This wasn't one of those "Was that an earthquake?" earthquakes. This was a no-doubt-about-it, rocking-and-rolling, shifting-and-shaking, 5.4-magnitude earthquake that shook the Bay Area on Wednesday morning. It lasted almost 10 seconds, which in earthquake time feels more like 10 minutes. Sammy Sosa slept through it. "Good guys don't hear nothing," he said.

After chasing him all season, Sammy Sosa finally caught Mark McGwire--at least for a night. Next up, Roger Maris. Sosa hit his 45th and 46th homers to tie McGwire for the major league lead as the Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants, 8-5, Monday night. Sosa's first homer of the night, a towering blast in the fifth inning into the left-field bleachers, was the first of three consecutive solo shots by the Cubs.

Sammy Sosa insists he's no Mark McGwire. He just hits home runs like him. Sosa hit two homers for the second consecutive day and set a major league record with 16 home runs in June, leading Kerry Wood and the Chicago Cubs past the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday, 9-4, at Chicago. "I've never seen anything like it. The game of baseball hasn't seen anything like it," teammate Mark Grace said of Sosa's hot streak. Wood (7-3) hit his first big league home run and struck out 11 in 7 1/3 innings.

The Chicago Cubs didn't get many hits against Dodger starting pitcher Hideo Nomo on Saturday. But thanks to Nomo, they didn't need many. Nomo walked four consecutive batters and five overall in the Cubs' eight-run first inning, making the biggest contribution in their 8-1 victory over the Dodgers before a crowd of 34,652 at Wrigley Field. The Cubs chased Nomo after only two-thirds of an inning--the shortest outing in his career--and sent 13 batters to the plate in the first.

In Al Leiter, the Mets knew they were getting a quality lefty--hitter, that is. Leiter defeated the Chicago Cubs for the second time in a week with his pitching and hitting, leading the New York Mets to a 6-0 victory Tuesday night over the Cubs. Leiter (2-1) gave up five hits in seven innings and hit a two-run single in the fourth as the Mets won their third consecutive game. Last week, Leiter doubled in two runs as the Mets beat the Cubs, 3-2.

It has been said that the Chicago Cubs live with a negative aura, an unmistakable and inescapable horror. They have not won a World Series in 90 years, have not been to a World Series in 53.

Sammy Sosa's 60th home run didn't receive the fanfare that Mark McGwire's did, but it was much more important to his team. Sosa's three-run homer in the seventh inning Saturday ignited a rally in which the Chicago Cubs scored 10 runs in the final three innings to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers, 15-12. Orlando Merced won the game with a pinch-hit three-run blast, the Cubs' sixth of the game.

In a spectacular conclusion to the regular season, Mark McGwire virtually wrapped up baseball's great home run race Sunday and proved Sammy Sosa right: He is the man. The St. Louis Cardinal first baseman walloped his 69th and 70th home runs in a 6-3 victory over the Montreal Expos, lifting what is probably the most renowned and romanticized record in sports to a Himalayan level that left even McGwire gasping. "I'm in awe of myself right now," he said. "I can't believe I did it.

OK, Frank Chance, you can rest easy now. The record stands. Your 1906 Chicago Cubs still live--in the record book. The 1998 New York Yankees aren't going to make it to 116 wins, as your '06 Cubs did. Of course, the Yankees can still win what the '06 Cubs didn't--a World Series championship. In the history of major league baseball, no team went through a season as player-manager Chance's did, 92 years ago. Those Cubs won 116 times--in 152 games--a record no team has approached.

Before Friday night, Sammy Sosa had hit a home run against every team in the National League but the Pittsburgh Pirates. Sosa corrected that glitch in short order, banging his 57th home run in the first inning and closing to two behind Mark McGwire, who stayed homerless at 59 against Cincinnati.