Suddenly, it's blue thunder at Wrigley Field

Only one deluge was predicted for Thursday at Wrigley Field, and that one never came.

The other deluge turned out to be a bolt out of the Cubbie blue.

Make that about three bolts.

What looked to be another dry day for the Cubs offense turned wet and wild in a come-from-behind 6-5 victory over the White Sox.

The first bolt hit in the bottom of the eighth inning with the Cubs down 5-1. Derrek Lee went opposite field and cracked a 3-run homer to the basket in right-center off Sox reliever Scott Linebrink.

Before the crowd could sit down, Geovany Soto tied it with a homer to left.

But the biggest hit turned out to be the softest, and it provided welcome relief to Alfonso Soriano, who dunked a single into right to score Reed Johnson with the game-winner.

"I think the monkey is off now, and everybody can relax and come back tomorrow with new energy," Soriano said.

That remains to be seen, but there was progress for Soriano, who entered the game in a 14-for-99 slump over his previous 23 games.

He singled to center field in the eighth to help set the table for Lee. And by going to right field, he seemed to take to heart the messages of manager Lou Piniella and new hitting coach Von Joshua, who have been preaching up-the-middle- and opposite-field hitting as a way to break a slump.

And as Piniella noted, this was no ordinary slump.

"Truthfully, he's too talented to have a valley as big as he's been in," Piniella said. "You can have some peaks and valleys, but he's been in a gorge. He's too talented. One thing about the young man, he wants to play. At the same time, he works hard. Those are positives."

Soriano wears a perpetual smile around the Cubs clubhouse, and he said this terrible stretch didn't get him down.

"It's good because I've been struggling for a couple weeks," he said. "I get down if I'm not playing. If I'm playing, anything can happen.

"The more important thing for me is to be playing the game every day. It's going to happen. I'm not a perfect guy, to play 162 games and play perfect baseball. I know the slumps are going to happen, so I have to know how I get out of the slumps."

The speculation had centered on Soriano either being moved out of his treasured leadoff spot or benched as Piniella voiced the need to make changes with the team as a whole in a hitting funk.

If he had Soriano in mind, Thursday's game probably bought some time.

"As frustrating as it gets at times, you've got to give these guys every opportunity to work themselves out," Piniella said. "Sometimes, you've got to get them and sit them down for a few days just to rest your mind more than anything else. Look, for us to be a good offensive team, we need Soriano to hit. Let's be perfectly clear about that.

"And we need a few of these other guys that haven't swung the bats as well as they're capable of to hit. And some of them are starting to show signs."

Lee has been showing signs for a while, as he extended his hitting streak to 15 games. Soto was only 3-for-15 on the homestand entering Thursday, and his homer was just his fourth of the year.

"Obviously, we're not making Lou's job easy," Soto said. "You can't really blame him for saying that (about change). Hopefully we'll just turn it around and be where we're supposed to be and get the team rolling here.

"Baseball goes everything by waves. It goes good for a little bit; it goes bad. You've just got to minimize the time that it's gone bad."

Soriano hadn't been able to do that, but he was taking whatever kind of hit he could get.

"It felt I took all the world behind my back, and I felt like I dropped it," Soriano said. "I hit a blooper. I hit it in the perfect spot. I think the team needed the win like we got today."

No one more so than Soriano.

Bruce Miles' Cubs tracker

Man of steal: Catcher Geovany Soto stole the first base of his major-league career in the fourth inning. He had 2 steals in the minor leagues. "They were probably in Rookie ball or something," Soto said.

Streaking along: Derrek Lee extended his hitting streak to a team-high 15-games with his with his 3-run homer in the eighth. He has reached base safely in 25 straight games. He had 4 RBI to take the team lead, with 31.

The big 4-oh: Carlos Zambrano turned in the Cubs' 40th quality start of the year. That leads the majors. Zambrano has 8 quality starts and 4 in a row.