Rather than a complete game, Kevin Foster gave the Cubs a complete performance Tuesday. So score his 8-1 victory under “CP,” if you please, an invisible category to which more pitchers should aspire.
Besides restricting Florida to one run on two hits in his five innings, Foster had a two-run triple, a double and a sacrifice bunt. He was pitching with two days’ rest, leaving him more winded for a change than his fickle friend Wrigley Field, where the scoreboard flags hung limp without a breeze.
But he still remembered the one pitch that almost left the park, one that Gary Sheffield yanked foul to left. Even the near-misses grab Foster’s attention after he led the majors last year with 32 homers allowed and spent the last three months in purgatory, otherwise known as Iowa, paying for his sins.
“I was like `whoa’ on that foul ball by Sheffield,” said Foster, recalled Monday from the minors. “But I got it back. I was getting tired out there after all the excitement of being here and running the bases and everything.”
Foster’s last victory for the Cubs was April 19. He was 3-0 then and the team 10-6. It has been downhill for both ever since, though Foster (sent down May 13) returned the Cubs to .500. They have another chance Wednesday to move to the winning side of the ledger for the first time since May 5.
Foster’s two-run triple was part of an eight-run first inning in which Mark Hutton, an Australian, went down under in a hurry by walking four batters and hitting Sammy Sosa before exiting.
“I got my second wind in Iowa,” Foster said after his earned-run average slackened to 7.00. “I may have been tired coming out of spring training.”
Always better to peak later than too early.
