If Kerry Wood were in Oz, he could have closed his eyes and tapped his shoes together three times.
Instead Wood was in the Cubs clubhouse trying to explain his dead-arm problem wasn’t the reason he was belted around Wednesday in a 10-7 loss to Arizona.
“There’s nothing wrong with my arm,” Wood said. “There’s nothing wrong with my arm. Print that. There is nothing wrong with my arm.”
The sole bright spot for the Cubs on Wednesday was Sammy Sosa’s 43rd home run, the 250th of his major-league career. Sosa now trails Mark McGwire by two heading into the weekend series in St. Louis.
But Sosa’s homer couldn’t overshadow the continuing saga of rookie phenom Wood, who said he had a “dead” arm on Monday and hasn’t stopped hearing about it since.
Wood’s perfect record at Wrigley Field came to an end after eight straight victories in his most unimpressive outing since his third start April 24 in Los Angeles. He gave up seven runs on nine hits in six innings Wednesday, including a Sheffield Avenue home run to Andy Fox in the second and a two-run homer to Tony Batista in the sixth.
“I thought I threw the ball well,” he said. “They just hit me.”
Did all the talk about Wood’s arm affect Wood’s performance?
“We went through that with (Kevin) Tapani earlier in the year and that came up with (Steve) Trachsel,” manager Jim Riggleman said. “They’re going to pitch through those situations and it probably affected some of their performances. It’s not unique.”
Riggleman, who has flip-flopped on whether Wood would make his next scheduled start, confirmed Wood would get the nod Tuesday in San Francisco.
The Cubs wound up going 3-3 on a six-game homestand against Arizona and Colorado, who are a combined 41 games under .500. They head to St. Louis Friday to begin a nine-game road trip against the Cardinals, the Giants and Houston, a probable fork in the road of the ’98 season.
Wood started poorly, giving up a bloop RBI single to Devon White and a two-run triple to Karim Garcia in the first. The Diamondbacks followed with four straight two-out hits in the second, including Fox’s homer and another run-scoring single by White.
Before you could say “dead arm,” the Cubs trailed 5-1.
Sosa took Andy Benes deep into the left-field bleachers in the third to pull the Cubs to within two, putting him back on a 61-home run pace in the chase to break Roger Maris’ record.
“I gave up a bomb to McGwire earlier this year and now one to Sammy,” Benes said. “So there’s no prejudice from me as to who breaks the record.”
Sosa ran his league-leading RBI total to 111.
“A couple of (media) people say I’m not going to hit any more,” Sosa said with a grin. “I’d be happy with two more.”
Wood settled down after the second until Batista’s homer in the sixth made it 7-3. But when Matt Karchner allowed three runs in the eighth to make it 10-4, the Cubs were cooked.
Wood threw 96 pitches in six innings, walking two and striking out six for the third straight outing. He never located his fastball consistently, giving up a career-high seven runs for the second time.
“Some days you just get hit,” Riggleman said. “They hit him hard today, but he battled through it.”
Wood obviously is annoyed at all the talk about his arm.
“I am surprised,” he said. “I’m not worried about it.”
Wood’s fellow starters also had a hard time understanding why there is so much commotion about a common malady for pitchers.
“When haven’t I had a dead arm?” Tapani said.
Trachsel said he believes it’s wrong to blame one bad outing on Wood’s arm and shouldn’t put so much pressure on him to excel every time he takes the mound.
“It’s not fair to him,” Trachsel said. “His performances have brought expectations that are just unfair. That was me three years ago. I had to take Greg Maddux’s place, and it wasn’t fair to me.”
