Adventures in (out)fielding as Cubs' streak ends at five

PHILADELPHIA -- It wasn't so much where Cubs manager Lou Piniella had them in the batting order Friday night.

It was where he had them on the field.

Piniella made his long-awaited switch of Kosuke Fukudome from the No. 5 spot in the order to second. But the bigger switch was moving Fukudome from right field to center and giving the slow-footed Daryle Ward a start in right.

The offense got off to a fast start with Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez hitting back-to-back home runs in the first inning, but pitcher Carlos Zambrano couldn't hold the lead, and the Phillies came from behind for a 5-3 victory, snapping the Cubs' five-game winning streak.

"He didn't really throw the ball all that well," Piniella said. "He wasn't overpowering tonight."

Several hard-hit balls to the outfield were key in determining the outcome of this game. And it looked like Zambrano was on the verge of letting his emotions get the best of him after a few of those hard-hit balls found earth.

Zambrano couldn't blame his fielders in the fourth, when Pat Burrell crushed a 2-run homer deep into the left-field stands to tie the game.

The real adventures started in the fifth. With two outs, Zambrano walked Shane Victorino. Greg Dobbs came up drove the first pitch to the gap in left-center.

Left fielder Alfonso Soriano and Fukudome converged, with Fukudome looking to have made a nice running catch and holding the ball for a few seconds. However, his glove bumped Soriano's body, and the ball came out. The umpires ruled no catch, and Dobbs had an RBI double.

"I did catch the ball, but as I was running past Soriano, the tip of the glove hit maybe Soriano's leg, maybe his torso, I'm not sure, but the ball popped out of my glove," Fukudome said. "It's nothing but my fault that I couldn't hold on to it."

Did he think it was a catch?

"The ball did come into my glove, so I thought I made the catch," he replied.

Soriano remembered it this way: "I don't know where it hit me. I was scared because I saw him running, and I wanted to get out of the way. But he didn't see me. At the last moment, he saw me. I felt contact with him, but I don't know what part of the body."

Like Fukudome, Soriano said he thought it was a catch.

"I think he had it two or three steps after he caught the ball," Soriano said. "I don't know why the umpires called him safe because he was at least five seconds with the ball."

In the sixth, Ryan Howard opened with a double. Burrell followed with a double over the head of Ward in right.

"What can I say?" Ward said. "I'm doing the best that I can. It's been three weeks that I've been in right field. It's tough getting good jumps being that long. There's not really any excuses. I gave it my best effort the ball, and it was over my head."

With all those plays, Zambrano displayed his trademark emotion even as he admitted "something was wrong" with his fastball.

"Always," he said of the emotion. "You're talking with Carlos Zambrano, man."

He denied, however, that the plays upset him.

"Not at all," he said.