Lights Out Performance by Tom Gorzelanny

On Wednesday against the Dodgers, Tom Gorzelanny got rocked by the Dodgers who ended up winning 8-5, their only win and only runs in the series.  However, Gorzelanny performed lights out.  Literally.  A power outage in the top of the 4th inning delayed play for 18 minutes due to an electrical fire that triggered a shut down of a certain power grid, including Wrigley Field.  The power failure, the third at Wrigley Field during a night game (when it actually matters) before two games against the Brewers in 2003 in separate series, was received with the following call by Len Kasper from the WGN TV booth: "...excellent week weatherwise for this homestand against the Dodgers and Cardinals and...the lights are going out...and they've all gone out!  A power outage here at Wrigley Field.  As DeWitt took the walk some of the lights went out, then pretty much all of them did.  There are about-as I can see-eight or nine lights bulbs that are still actually working.  And we see more light from the cameras taking pictures, I don't ever recall a power outage at Wrigley Field."  Len Kasper and Bob Brenly did great improv work as always with unexpected circumstances.

Blake DeWitt, at the plate with a 3-1 count at the time of the outage, took ball four while the lights were going out.  Gorzelanny was disappointed but took what he got.  "The lights went out during the pitch," Gorzelanny said. "It's kind of brutal. You're in the middle of a pitch. The guy ends up walking. There's nothing you can do about it. I begged for the pitch back, but they wouldn't give it to me.  The good thing about that was I actually did well the rest of the inning," he said. "It's one of the uncontrollable things that ballparks do to you."

DeWitt couldn't see the ball after seeing some flash of light and took his eye off it, luckily it was ball four.  "Thinking back, I wish I had hit a pop up," DeWitt said. "It would've been a good time. I would've had an inside the park home run in the dark."  However, the Cubs players were a little worried and confused.  An inside-the-park home run pop up might have been too hard to deal with for some of the players.  Ryan Theriot was asked what he was thinking at the time of the outage.

"Get the heck out and get off the field as soon as I could," Theriot said. "That was a little scary. I didn't know what was going on."

"It was a little crazy," Alfonso Soriano stated.  The Cubs went on to lose 8-5, but shut out the Dodgers in the other two games of the series in impressive fashion 3-0 and 1-0.  Randy Wells didn't record an out through six batters against the Cardinals on Friday, and was promptly yanked after giving up five runs.  James Russell pitched four impressive scoreless innings after that, but the offense could only muster a pinch-hit solo shot from Tyler Colvin, losing 7-1.  Carlos Silva looks to go 7-0 against new guy Adam Ottavino at 3:10 this afternoon on FOX.