Piniella fumes after Cubs hand Cardinals a victory

ST. LOUIS - Cubs manager Lou Piniella was fuming right after Saturday's 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals and for a good half-hour afterward.

Piniella had just watched his team blow a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning, when surefire closer Kerry Wood walked the first two batters of the inning. The Cardinals scored a run and had the bases loaded with nobody out, and Wood nearly survived it by getting two outs.

But Rick Ankiel's single to center ended it, sending the Cardinals fans in the Busch Stadium-record crowd of 46,865 to the nearby watering holes happy.

The stunning loss dropped the Cubs to 52-35 and cut their first-place lead over the Cardinals back to 2 games.

"You walk the first two hitters of an inning, you get yourself in trouble right from the get-go," said Piniella, who stood and sometimes paced during his postgame news conference.

After Wood walked Ryan Ludwick and Yadier Molina to open the fateful ninth, the Cubs played Adam Kennedy to bunt, but Kennedy yanked one past first baseman Derrek Lee for a run-scoring double. The Cubs walked Chris Duncan to intentionally load the bases, and Wood got Skip Schumaker on a forceout at home and Aaron Miles on a pop out before Ankiel ended it.

"You get that first guy on, and that never works out well," said Wood, who is 22-for-27 in saves. "I made some pretty good pitches after that and gave us a chance to get out of it. Hung a slider (to Ankiel)."

The Cubs had a 2-0 lead for starter Ted Lilly by the sixth inning on Mark DeRosa's third-inning homer and Ryan Theriot's RBI single in the fifth to score DeRosa, who tripled with one out.

The Cardinals tied it in the sixth and the Cubs had chances every inning late in the game to bust it open, and that's also what had Piniella hot.

The big play came in the eighth, after Derrek Lee doubled and Aramis Ramirez broke an 0-for-28 slump with a 2-run homer.

Jim Edmonds walked and went to third on Geovany Soto's single. DeRosa followed with a fly to medium-deep right, and Ludwick gunned Edmonds down at the plate.

Edmonds became indignant when asked if he was confident about scoring.

"He threw me out," Edmonds said. "I don't know how you can be confident you can score. You run hard and try and get to the plate. What kind of question is that?"

When the reporter told Edmonds it was a "legitimate" question, he retorted by asking if the reporter had ever run the bases.

"How do you know if you're going to score or not?" he asked, perhaps rhetorically.

Piniella seemed to feel strongly Edmonds could have and should have scored.

"I thought the ball that DeRosa hit to right field, I thought we were going to score on that flyball," was all Piniella said for public consumption.

The optimistic points for the Cubs were Ramirez's home run and the 1-2-3 eighth inning worked by reliever Carlos Marmol, who had been struggling.

"It was good to see Aramis hit that homer," DeRosa said. "He had been scuffling. It was good for him to come back and get that big knock for us. Woody's been nails all year for us. It's a tough loss, but we move on."