Piniella doesn't back down from postgame rant

ST. LOUIS - Politicians often talk of staying on message. Cubs manager Lou Piniella is hardly a politician, but he stayed on the message he sent to his team when he lit it up after Tuesday night's 4-3 loss to the Cardinals.

What's uncertain is whether the players got the message. Piniella was speaking loudly after the game, but many of the players weren't within earshot.

"I don't know," Piniella said before Wednesday night's game. "The message, basically, is the right one. Like it or not like it, it's the right message."

In maybe his best postgame rant in his almost two years as Cubs manager, Piniella told the media his team is "playing like we're waiting to get beat" and that it needed to "kick somebody's (butt)."

"There's toughness involved," Piniella said a day later. "There's confidence involved."

Piniella noted that the Cubs hadn't had a bad stretch this year until now and that "it's coming at the wrong time, quite frankly." Although his tone was softer, he wasn't backing away from anything he said.

"Things we've done all summer to help ourselves, we're not doing now," he said. "You notice my comments last night were 'team.' I always look at team. And when we talk about team, (I am) always included in the team. We've just got to do a little better job of executing. We've got to play a little better defense than we've been playing. We've had a good year. Let's just finish it up. To do that, you can't sit back and expect and wait. You've got to make it happen.

"Kick some (butt). What's wrong with that? What do you put the uniform on for? You put the uniform on to compete and win baseball games. That should be the intended purpose. I didn't get on anybody. I said there was good effort. But you've got to go out and win baseball games. Teams that I played on that won world championships, that's exactly what we did."

Unhappy campers: Although they're going to make their starts this week, pitchers Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden weren't happy when reporters approached them.

"You've got two questions," said Zambrano, who starts Saturday at Houston. "I feel good. Just working on my mechanics. It had been a long time that I had thrown to a catcher. Today, it was back to normal. Thank you, guys. That was two questions."

Harden starts today.

"It feels like it's been a long time, but really, I've skipped one start," he said. "With the days off, it feels like it's been a month, especially with losing a few games, too. I want to get out there. I don't know why this is such a big deal to you guys, why you're so surprised to hear that."

Harden hasn't pitched since Aug. 29, Zambrano since Sept. 2.