The Chicago Cubs are now one game ahead of the San Francisco Giants in the National League wildcard race with six games to play. The Cubs beat the Reds 12-5 on Monday and are now 88-68. The Giants didn’t play Monday, they are 87-69 after going down to the Dodgers 7-4 on Sunday.

Recapping on the Cubs’ progress since my last post:

• Chicago beat Pittsburgh 1-0 on Wednesday. Comment by George Kyroudis.
• Thursday, they completed a sweep of the Pittsburgh series with a 6-3 win over the Pirates, Greg Maddux completing his 15th win of the season. Comment from Al Yellon.
• Friday, and the Cubs beat the Mets 2-1 in the 10th after Ramirez earlier hit his 35th home run of the season for his 101st RBI. Here’s the report from Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune.
• Saturday, and the Mets win 4-3 in the 11th. Back to Al for this one.
• Sunday, and the Shea Stadium series concluded with another loss, 3-2. Blame the umpire. Report from Mike Kiley of the Chicago Sun-Times.
• And back to George for his post on Monday’s win over the Reds.

The Cubs are currently 14-1 with PaddyPower to win the World Series, level with Minnesota, Oakland and Los Angeles. Ahead of them are the Yankees (5-2), Cardinals (11-4), Red Sox (7-2), and the Braves (12-1).

Carn the Cubs!

I haven’t had time to write on the weekend, but hearty congratulations to Port Adelaide on their first AFL premiership.

It was good to see an all-non-Victorian grand final for the first time, but even better to see Brisbane, who have prospered under preferential treatment in the salary cap rules, having their colours lowered before winning four in a row.

It was a really classic encounter up till half time, and then the Power ran away with it. Poor Johnny Howard went for Brisbane because they were going for four premierships in a row, just like him. Hopefully that’s an omen.

Let’s do the paper rounds:
Paul Gough afl.com.au
Richard Hinds Sydney Morning Herald
Stacks of reports on The Age’s Realfooty site
Patrick Smith in Monday’s The Australian
unbylined AAP report
And of course there is the Port Adelaide FC website.

I found it amusing that HG and Roy’s call of the game on TripleJ could not be webcast because the ABC did not have the rights to broadcast football commentary over the internet. A sign of the boys being accepted into the mainstream?