What a finish to a shortened series

There's no such thing as a hurry-up offense in baseball. You can't force things to happen just by doing them faster.

Or, in the case of the slumbering Cubs, you can't force bad things to stop happening by doing them faster.

Or can you?

Consider the curious case of Cubs captain Derrek Lee during Thursday's "Fight for .500" at Wrigley Field.

In his first at-bat against White Sox starter Gavin Floyd, he swung at the first pitch and flew out to right.

In his second at-bat, he hit Floyd's first pitch for a double play.

In his third at-bat, he hit Floyd's first pitch for an RBI fielder's choice that nearly became another double play.

You'd think Lee would have noticed his pattern of failure - a pattern echoed by his teammates as the White Sox built a 5-1 lead going into the bottom of the eighth.

So what did Lee do when he came to the plate against reliever Scott Linebrink with two runners on base in the eighth?

He swung at the first pitch. This time, though, he powered it through the wind and into the right-field basket for a 3-run homer.

Throw in Geovany Soto's homer a few pitches later - and Alfonso Soriano's game-winning broken-bat single in the ninth - and it was the Cubs who danced in the Wrigley Field grass to the tune of an unexpected 6-5 victory.

"Hopefully a game like today springs us loose," said Cubs manager Lou Piniella.

A Cubs win? Or a Sox loss?

One of the refreshing things about Ozzie Guillen's regime is the way the White Sox don't censor their feelings.

The record books show that reliever Matt Thornton took the loss, but nobody minced words over which Sox reliever deserved the loss.

Setup man Scott Linebrink allowed 4 unearned runs in the eighth, including the back-to-back homers by Lee and Soto, to allow the Cubs to pull into a 5-5 tie.

"I think the reason they win is Linebrink (did) not throw the ball over the plate," Guillen said. "And when he (did) throw the ball over the plate, it was a home run."

Your turn, Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski:

"Bad location to Lee, up," Pierzynski said. "Bad location to Soto, down and in. Not where we're trying to throw the ball, but those things happen and we have to get up and get ready for tomorrow."

It had been how long???

Until the Cubs piled up 4 runs in the eighth inning on Thursday, they hadn't scored so many runs in one inning since a 4-run outburst on May 14 against San Diego.

Put another way: It had been 27-plus games between such prolific innings.

No wonder the Cubs went 10-17 during that span. On the plus side, they fell just 3 games farther behind in the National League Central standings.

Just second-guessing

It shouldn't matter whether Alfonso Soriano has 1 hit in his last 16 at-bats or 16 hits in his last 16 at-bats.

When you have a base open in the ninth with two outs and Ryan Theriot on deck, why do you choose to pitch to the seven-time all-star instead of walking him intentionally?

But Ozzie Guillen let Matt Thornton pitch to Soriano and he delivered the broken-bat single that won the game.

Cubs manager Lou Piniella can understand the factors Guillen had to weigh.

"Truthfully, he's too talented to have a valley as big as he's been in," Piniella said of Soriano. "You can have some peaks and valleys, but he's been in a gorge."

More tension to come

The 40,467 inside Wrigley Field's gates seemed much more animated than the crowd for Wednesday's snoozer.

Perhaps that's because Carlos Zambrano and Gavin Floyd matched zeros for the first five innings. Or because the lead finally changed hands. Or because Cubs fans were getting fed up with their side's inability to score runs.

Since the Cubs ended this abbreviated two-game series with their remarkable comeback, that should stoke the fires for next weekend's series at The Cell.

The first pitch comes at 3:05 p.m. June 26.

See you on the South Side.