The Cubs staged a thrilling four run,two out 8th inning rally against their former failure LaTroy Hawkins with Kosuke Fukudome capping it and the Northsiders edged the Milwaukee Brewers 7-6 to reach the .500 mark while denying the same for their guests.
The Brewers had the first scoring chance when Prince Fielder led off the top of the second with a double to right,but Casey McGehee flew to right sending Fielder to third,and he was thrown out trying to score on a grounder by Gregg Zaun. The Cubs got one off David Bush in the bottom of the second thanks to back to back doubles by Alfonso Soriano and Mike Fontenot. That 1-0 lead lasted until the top of the 5th.After Randy Wells walked Bush to put two men on, Rickie Weeks tripled into the LF corner to score two and give the Brewers a 2-1 lead that lasted only until the home half of the 5th. Geovany Soto crushed his 1st homer deep into the left field Bleachers to tie it up 2-2. But the Crew got the lead right back in their half of the sixth thanks to consecutive singles by Ryan Braun,Fielder and McGehee, the later of which made it 3-2 Milwaukee.The fourth Brewer run scored thanks to more problems from Soriano in left field. It started with one out and a Weeks single.Corey Hart then launched one off the LF wall that Soriano misplayed,allowing the ball to bounce past him in the direction of the infield for a triple which permitted Weeks to score as the boo-birds awakened. Later in the inning when Lou Piniella brought in Justin Berg to relieve Wells, he also sent in Tyler Colvin as part of a double switch. As Soriano ran back to the dugout,the boos got much louder. The Cubs got that run back in the bottom of the 7th on a Fukudome sac fly, but the Crew thought that they had put the game away with a pair off Jeff Gray(1-0) as Carlos Gomez tripled in Zaun,and scored himself on a three-bagger by Alcides Escobar to make it 6-3 and send about half of the sellout crowd of 39,565 heading for the exits-most shaking their heads in disgust.What they missed was former Cub Hawkins(0-1) reminding them of what he used to do here in 2004 and 2005-and that is to SUCK!  In the Cub 8th, with two gone and nobody on base, Jeff Baker singled,and Hawkins walked both Soto and Colvin to load the bases. Ryan Theriot then singled to RF to score two and send Colvin to third. Fukudome woke the remaining fans up when he bounced his game winning single past Weeks into RF to put the Cubs back in front to stay. Carlos Marmol fanned Hart,Braun and Fielder in the ninth for his 3rd save.

NOTES—The series finale Thursday will pair up Carlos Zambrano(1-1)and Jeff Suppan(0-0)who is fresh off the DL.

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