Ominous forecast as Silva, Cubs sputter

Just past the midway point of Friday afternoon's 7-6 loss to the Los Angeles Angels, the public address announcer at Wrigley Field issued the first notice that something was brewing.

He told the nearly 40,000 on hand on a hot, humid - and at that point sunny day - in no uncertain terms that a storm was headed to the North Side.

He was right.

The first wave - this one on the field - started in the bottom of the sixth when Cubs starting pitcher Carlos Silva made the last out on a grounder, and a cramp in his leg which acted up earlier, acted up again as he jogged down the line.

"It was coming and going," Silva said of the cramp, "coming and going."

Soon, so was Silva.

He went out to the mound to pitch the seventh, but as quickly as you could say Doppler radar, Cubs manager Lou Piniella was out of the dugout, pulling Silva (8-2) in favor of Bob Howry.

"He said it grabbed him and he couldn't run," Piniella said. "And we're not going to send a pitcher out there under those circumstances.

"I don't know what the confusion was, but I told the home-plate umpire that we were going to bring in another pitcher. Howry already had been warming up."

Howry came on with the Cubs trailing 3-2, but thanks to a pair of throwing errors by third baseman Jeff Baker and a 2-run home run by Howie Kendrick, the Angels had a 6-2 lead as the storm clouds amassed in the west.

"I just didn't make good throws," said Baker, who committed 2 errors in the same inning for the first time in his career. "It's about winning. It doesn't matter what the mistakes are ... it's about winning."

It was the third time in four games that a Cubs player has made 2 errors in an inning.

"I don't have an explanation for it," said first baseman Derrek Lee, who added a throwing error of his own in the eighth, allowing the Angels to make it 7-2. "We definitely need to tighten up the defense. When you give a good team extra outs, a lot of times they're going to score some runs."

But just when the heavens opened up and the fans were making their way to shelter, that's when the Cubs' bats came alive.

Tyler Colvin's 3-run home run in the ninth got things going, and Lee's second homer of the game cut the lead to 1 run, but that was as close as they would get on a suddenly soggy afternoon.

"It was good to see us battle back like that," Colvin said. "It's a good sign. Everyone here wants to win."

"They're a very aggressive team; that's why they've been a good team for a lot of years," Lee said of the Angels, as thunder rumbled overhead. "They play the game the right way.

"We fought back, but they shouldn't have had that big of a lead in the first place."

<p class="factboxheadblack">Mike Spellman's game tracker</p>

<p class="News">Angels 7, Cubs 6</p>

<p class="News"><b>Home cooking:</b> Tyler Colvin recorded his ninth multihit game of the season and second in his last four games. He is batting .353 at Wrigley Field this season.</p>

<p class="News"><b>Been a long time:</b> Carlos Silva, despite throwing his fourth no-walk game of the season, has now lost back-to-back outings for the first time since August 2008 when he was with Seattle.</p>

<p class="News"><b>Boom goes the dynamite:</b> Derrek Lee recorded his first multi-home run game of the season and the 23rd of his career. Six of Lee's 10 homers have come at Wrigley Field, while 4 have happened in his last eight games.</p>

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<li><a href="/story/?id=388918">Colvin goes 2-for-4 with HR in leadoff debut<span class="date"> [6/18/10]</span></a></li>

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