Ryan Braun

Despite the fact that we all knew Braun wasn't comfortable at the plate and was swinging all over the place, we now officially know that he hasn't been feeling the same at the plate since he strained the muscles around his rib cage.

Thankfully, that didnt' matter, as Braun hit a walk-off grand-slam last night in the 10th inning to keep the Brewers tied with the Mets for the NL Wild Card.

As crazy exciting as the walk-off was last night, I'm not even sure it ranks in my top 3 best moments in the ballpark, which I just kind of realized as I'm writing about it. There just wasn't as much of a buzz, I guess. It's hard to explain. The Russell Branyan homer earlier in the season as well as the comeback, bottom of the 9th win against the Cards were more heart-stoppingly exciting, for some reason.

That's not to say that it wasn't a killer win, but for some reason it didn't pack the oomph - weird, since this game had so many more implications.

Either way, it was great fun to see another one of our sluggers break out of a slump in the best possible way. I had 4 tickets last night - I took my mom and a co-worker bought the other two. The lense popped out of his glasses as he was celebrating and so I lost out a bit of the post-game rucous, so maybe that has something to do with it. The bleachers went absolutely nuts.







For the ladies. Who knew that was under there. Seriously.
<--- This is what I want for Hanukkah!

EDIT: I apparently wasn't at all paying attention to anything, so it turns out it wasn't Soto.

I don't think we could have asked for more from the Cubs than 2 out of 4, but I happened to be up getting the mom a soda when the play at the plate happened in the 8th inning and I'm still a little in shock.
It was a soft hit that fell in front of Kosuke Fukudome in right field. Church attempted to score from second. Fukudome's throw was pretty right on. The catcher got the ball a few steps up the third base line, but he was directly on the basepath. Church was still a few steps away and I totally thought "They've got him dead to rights." Church did what you see over on the left there, the catcher basically fell over, Church scrambled back to touch the plate and the catcher kind of fell over again, trying to get him at the plate. It was not pretty.