[jksander]

MAY 8, 1953 . . . Dee Fondy needed a night off to rest, so I set up Jackson as our lead-off man tonight, with McCullough, Mays, Sauer, Banks and Cavarretta as something of a murderers’ row in the lineup. Preston Ward’s playing right field for his second appearance of the year in the seven spot, while Bill Serena will make his 1953 Cubs debut in the eighth spot in the lineup while covering second base.

The Braves scored a run in the bottom of the first to take the early one run lead, and they added a second in the bottom of the second. Hacker got into a jam in the bottom of the third but was able to strand Milwaukee runners at second and third to get out of the inning safely. But he was going to need run support if we were going to stay in this game, and it wasn’t coming, at least not through four innings. Or five, or six. The Braves added a third unanswered run in the bottom of the sixth, but we got a rally started in the top of the seventh -- Mays got to first on a walk, and then stole second. Sauer walked, sending Mays to third, and then Banks reached first on a fielding error, which loaded the bases with no outs! Cavarretta hit to center but the ball was caught -- but not before sending Mays home to put us on the board! Frank Baumholtz came in to pinch hit for Preston Ward, and he hit safely to right, re-loading the bases. But our next two batters didn’t make anything happen, so we headed into the stretch trailing by two. And we didn’t get another hit the rest of the game, falling to the Braves 1-3 and cutting our NL lead to a single game with three games left in this series.

Warren Hacker pitched a complete game, slipping to 4-2 with a 2.49 ERA with the loss. He struck out two and didn’t walk anyone, but he gave up nine hits for three earned runs. We only had three hits all game, but we walked enough guys that we should have been able to win this one even without the contact. Cavarretta had our only RBI of the day, bringing his total to 11 for the year.

MAY 9, 1953 . . . We have our best lineup available to start today, including Paul Minner (3-1, 4.06 ERA) on the mound, and Fondy / Cavarretta / Mays / Sauer / Banks / Jackson / McCullough / Miksis batting. But it’s been almost two weeks since we left Chicago, and everyone’s going to be glad to get to the off day and a return to Wrigley -- we just need to get some wins in Milwaukee.

Minner struggled tonight, giving up seven runs in the bottom of the second (including back to back homers) to put us in a deep, dark hole with a lot of game left to play. And with four games in three days, I can’t give him the hook too early -- he was just going to have to play through the mess. And the crazy thing is, only two of the seven runs were earned! And the game just went to **** from there -- Minner gave up two runs in the bottom of the sixth, and then Dutch Leonard came in and completely melted the f--- down, and by the time we got out of the inning we were down 14 runs to nothing. This is the Cubs team I think most fans expected to see all year, but it’s frustrating that we played so well in the first twenty games of the year and now suddenly we’re putting up games like this. We got one run on the board in the seventh, so it’s a beat-down and not a shutout, but we still lost this one 1-14.

Paul Minner took the loss, falling to 3-2 with a 5.25 ERA. He gave up 10 hits in five innings with just one strikeout against two walks. Twelve runs wound up counting against him, seven earned. Dutch Leonard pitched three innings and only gave up a single hit, but it was a homer, and he walked three batters with the bases loaded while notching only one strikeout. It was a night we’d all prefer to quickly forget. We had eight hits but repeatedly left men on base in scoring position, stranded and useless. Eddie Miksis got our only RBI of the night, as Jackson scored the lone run in the top of the seventh.

We fell to 16-8 with this loss, leaving us tied with the Braves (17-9) for control of the NL, with the Giants now only two games back at 15-11. Brooklyn is 13-12 and just 3-1/2 games back, while the Phillies (13-14, 4-1/2 games back) are in fifth but still within striking distance. The AL right now is looking like a battle between Cleveland (16-4) and the Yankees (17-7) with everyone else lagging behind.

Tomorrow we’ll play two games against the Braves back to back, and then we can head back to Chicago and try to get things going in the right direction. We’ve lost three games in a row for the first time all season -- and worse, we’ve been outscored 33-5 during that stretch. We badly need to get our bats going again so we can build some confidence. So far on this road trip we are 7-6.