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Jeff Bennett starts for the Braves, after the scheduled starter, Jair Jurrjens, slipped on a dugout step following last night's game and messed up his ankle.

I'll bet it was just like that scene in "Pride of the Yankees," where Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper) slips on a pile of bats near the on-deck circle, and a gorgeous girl (Teresa Wright) laughs at him and calls him "Tanglefoot."

Yes, I'm certain it happened just like that.

Braves rookie Jair Jurrjens, who was scheduled to start tonight's game at Wrigley against Ryan Dempster and the Cubs, slipped on a dugout step following last night's game and twisted his right ankle. Jurrjens may be headed to the DL, where he would join fellow Bravos Smoltz, Glavine, and Hampton; Jurrjens definitely won't start tonight. Instead Jeff Bennett (0-3. 3.47) will get the nod.

Paul Sullivan writes in the Tribune that the Cubs will recall Micah Hoffpauir from Iowa as the team begins its interleague schedule with three games at SkyDome this weekend. Lou Piniella's plan is to let Hoffpauir play first base and left field, which will alternately allow Derrek Lee and Alfonso Soriano to "rest" as they see DH duty.

Above all, there was the bullpen. If you didn't outscore the Reds in the first six innings, forget about winning. Rob Dibble, Norm Charlton and Randy Myers constituted the deadliest combination of 95-mph (or better) fastballs, swaggering attitude and occasional mullets in the game. So much so that the trio earned a nickname derived from a pre-wardrobe malfunction Janet Jackson: the Nasty Boys.

— Jonah Keri, espn.com

When Lou Piniella's Reds swept the heavily favored Oakland Athletics right out of the 1990 World Series, his trio of fireballing young relievers led the charge. After combining for 44 saves and a 2.14 ERA over a total 235.1 relief IP during the regular season, the threesome made an indelible mark in Fall Classic history by throwing 8 2/3 innings and allowing the mighty A's no earned runs on just six hits. Dibble won Game 2; Myers earned a save in the clinching Game 4.

(The Boys were no slouches in the NLCS either. Myers, the series MVP, saved three of the four Cincy victories over the Pirates, Charlton had a win, and the Nasty Boys struck out 20 and allowed just six hits and one earned run in 15 2/3 IP.)

Watching Piniella's current club at work and appreciating how his bullpen, particularly young set-up man Carlos Marmol, has contributed to the team's early season success, I thought it would be interesting to see how the three stalwarts in Piniella's Cub bullpen compare to the Nasty Boys of 18 summers ago.

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And so, here we are:

The final, deciding game in the Cubs' and Dodgers' best-of-2,021 game series.

Who'd have thought it would come down to this?

I haven't kept up with the Cubs Hits of the Week lists the past couple weeks, but thought it was worth noting, Fan Graphs-style, Jim Edmonds' apparent revival from a near-death state.

Starting with Friday's breathtaking comeback win over the Rockies, Edmonds has gone 7-for-11, and six of the hits have been EBH's (4 doubles, 1 triple, 1 HR).

By Fan Graph's reckoning, here are Edmonds' five biggest offensive contributions since Friday:

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Former Cub Glendon Rusch makes his first appearance at Wrigley since September 4, 2006. After a none too successful comeback with the Padres earlier this year (6.41 ERA in 12 relief appearances), the Rockies signed him, sent him to Triple-A Colorado Springs, recalled him after two successful appearances for the Sky Sox, and you know now everything you need to know about what a desperate season the Colorado Rockies are having.

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With rain falling and plenty of those intimidating orange and red spots on the weather radar, we could well be looking at a rainout. That being the case, I'm going to save all of my good Omar Quintanilla material for another occasion.

This is the Rockies' only visit to Wrigley this season, and the Cubs have already made the trip to Denver, so a washout would presumably create a doubleheader. I imagine Saturday would be the DH day, so as not to complicate the teams' travel plans. (The Rockies play in Los Angeles Monday night, while the Cubs will be in San Diego.)

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Carlos Zambrano is fresh off that remarkable game in which he stroked four hits off a trio of Pittsburgh pitchers and, oh, yeah, also threw the first seven innings in a 12-3 Cubs win.

Z was 1-1 last year against the Dodgers, including a horrible outing last September at Wrigley. Lowe pitched twice against Piniella's men in '07 and came away with a pair of ND's. Derrek Lee, who is 10-for-22 lifetime (1136 OPS) against the former Bosoxer probably couldn't get to the ballpark today early enough. For his part, Lowe hasn't won a game in more than a month and has a 7.29 ERA in his last six starts.

You are traveling through another dimension...

Having shared baseball's best, regular-season record, the Cubs and the surprisingTampa Rays, making their first-ever trip to baseball's post-season, enter the 2008 playoffs assured of home-field advantage in the first two rounds.

In the NL, Lou Piniella's Cubs, reaching the post-season in consecutive years for the first time since 1908, when they also won their last World Championship, will hope to continue their superb play at Wrigley Field this season as they host their National League Division Series with the NL West champion, Arizona.

Monday's tense victory over the Dodgers might have been much less so if the Cubs had capitalized on a bases loaded/one out situation in the last of the sixth inning. Instead Chad Billingsley turned Kosuke Fukudome's hard groundball back to the mound into a snappy, 1-2-3, inning-ending double play.

In general, the Cubs offense, which remains the highest-scoring in the NL at 5.7 R/G, has held up its end of the workload in 2008. It's certainly been true in the precise situation that Fukudome found himself.

According to numbers presented at Bill James Online (subscription required),

The Cubs followed Saturday night's disappointing loss with one of the agonizing variety on Sunday afternoon. The blown saves by Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol also lowered the Cubs' save conversion rate to 14 saves in 22 opportunities, or an unimpressive 64%. (Marmol's "failure," of course, was due primarily to Alfonso Soriano's work in left field, not a failing of the pitcher's.)

Before Sunday's disaster, here is how the Cubs and their designated closer stacked up to the rest of the National League and the respective teams' individual saves leaders, several of whom have already lost their "closer" tags because of ineffectiveness or injury.

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The residue from last night's 14-inning loss:

• The Cubs need to win today to take the series and finish with a .500 road trip


• After pitching 8 innings last night, the bullpen is all beat to hell, with a Memorial Day home game on tap tomorrow

• The Wood-to-setup-man and Marmol-to-closer discussion can begin anew

• Alfonso Soriano got to play a 4-hour and 21-minute game on that calf muscle which isn't "injured" but sure looks like it when Soriano runs

• Any Cub fan who stayed up until the bitter end will be haunted the sight of Henry Blanco playing first base

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His leg doesn't hurt. His leg doesn't hurt. His leg doesn't hurt. Just keep repeating it to yourself as you watch Alfonso Soriano run the bases and man leftfield tonight. The guy says his leg is fine despite what your eyes and the television cameras may tell you.

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Yes, the Washington Generals host the Harlem Globetrotters yet again.

The Cubs enter the game with an 8-1 record and 69-38 run differential this season against the Pirates. The lone loss occurred last Saturday at Wrigley Field, when these same two pitchers hooked up, and Zambrano, who has been so stellar in the first couple months of the campaign, went completely mental. Neither pitcher figured in the final decision, a 7-6 Pittsburgh win.

Tonight, Fukudome gets the night off, DeRosa moves to right, and Cedeño, who has hit Duke well (8-for-21), gets a start and gets to hit in front of DeRosa, who can't seem to hit at all on the road this year (11-for-62, .172, 530 OPS).