Cubs' Bradley screws up on basepaths and in the field

Milton Bradley gave new meaning to the term, "a day in the sun," on Friday.

Bradley's dose of vitamin D didn't exactly have the effect he, his manager or most of the 41,509 fans at Wrigley Field had in mind as they watched the Cubs fall 7-4 to the Minnesota Twins.

The loss was the Cubs' third in a row, and it knocked them back to .500 at 29-29.

Bradley's day was an interesting one to say the least. He had a broken-bat single in the first inning and a 2-run double in the sixth that helped the Cubs rally from a 4-0 deficit.

But that's where the fun ended, and when Bradley's day was done, he was being booed loudly. Things went downhill quickly:

• Right after Bradley's one-out double, he was put out on the basepath on Derrek Lee's groundout. Twins third baseman Joe Crede put the tag on Bradley.

• In the top of the seventh, Bradley lost Jason Kubel's flyball in the sun, and it dropped for a one-out single to put runners on first and third. The Twins scored 1, when Bradley couldn't make a diving catch on Michael Cuddyer's double.

• The coup de grace came in the eighth, when the Twins had runners on first and third with one out. Joe Mauer lifted a fly to Bradley in deep right. Bradley caught it, did a little pose and then inexplicably flipped the ball into the right-field seats.

Nick Punto scored from third on the sacrifice fly, and Brendan Harris advanced to third on Bradley's error. Although no further harm was done, it was an egregious mental mistake.

"I made a mistake today; it never happened before," Bradley said. "I guess I'll be in the bloopers now with (former outfielder) Larry Walker."

So what happened in the field?

"If I could explain it, I wouldn't have done it," he said. "I can't tell you what happened. If a ball's hit to me, my worst fear on a baseball field is losing a ball in the sun.

"The (first) ball was hit. It was like being thrown in the pool - don't panic. I wasn't a great swimmer when I was a kid so the first thing I thought was, 'Just don't panic. It'll come out of the sun.' I tried not to panic. It came out, but it was 20 feet in front of me or whatever.

"The other flyball, I turned the back to try to shield the sun some. I caught it. I exhaled and was still seeing purple and stars because I was looking right into the sun. I sensed that something wasn't right. My heart was in the right place. I tried to give a souvenir. It was messed up."

Managers will excuse physical errors, such as losing the ball in the sun. All Cubs boss Lou Piniella could do about the other play was chuckle, perhaps to keep from crying.

"I hadn't seen that one before, I'll be honest with you," Piniella said. "It didn't cost us a run, but you've got to be in the game and know how many outs there are."

Asked if he'd talk with Bradley, Piniella said: "Do we need to go over math? One, two, three. I don't know what else to say."

As far as the rest of the game, the Twins (31-32) chased Randy Wells in the fourth. They scored twice in the third on a 2-run homer by Mauer and twice more in the fourth.

The Cubs came within 4-3 on Bradley's double and Lee's RBI groundout, with Piniella adding it was a "bad baserunning play" by Bradley to get tagged out.

The Twins added single runs in the seventh, eighth and ninth.

"I was happy to see us put 4 runs on the board," said Piniella, whose team totaled 2 over the previous two games. "As far as Wells, this was not a good start for him, but he's entitled. He's done a heck of job here. We got him out of there. He didn't throw many pitches. Next time out, he should be a lot better."

Bruce Miles' game tracker

Not this time: The Cubs had their streak of 8 straight quality starts snapped. Randy Wells had his own streak of 5 straight quality starts end. He lasted 32/3 innings, giving up 7 hits and 4 runs.

Streaking: Derrek Lee extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a single. He had 2 RBI. Lee is 15-for-44 during the streak.

Twin peaks: Twins starter Kevin Slowey earned his team-leading ninth win and eighth quality start. Joe Mauer hit his 13th homer, matching his single-season high, set in 2006.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=300349">Twins fans, Mauer take over<span class="date"> [6/12/09]</span></a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=300357">Bradley: Cubs need to chill out, have fun<span class="date"> [6/12/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>