Mister Faded Glory | www.misterfadedglory.com

I’m extremely proud of myself.

Last night, Cubs ace Carlos “The Famous Charlie Z” Zambrano (Give it time) squared off against the 4-A Florida Marlins, and a lefty rookie pitcher who had struggled so far this year, Jason Vargas.

Naturally, as the game began, I had a sinking feeling — this is just the type of game that the Cubs typically wash down their leg. Managers, coaches, players — none of them have mattered, this phenomenon dates back well before the millennium. When did Tony Armas Jr. debut? How about John Smiley?

Any young pitcher that the team hasn’t seen before has almost without fail, inexplicably eviscerated the Cubs (Brett Myers?!). It’s been brutal (Kevin Millwood!). Sometimes they figure him out eventually down the road (Ben Sheets), sometimes not (Livan Hernandez). Last night, through four innings, it was most certainly, “not.”

Vargas owned the Cubs, retiring each batter more meekly than the last during his one-hit five-plus innings of work.

Carlos, meanwhile, was erratic early. And he just cannot walk guys, he really suffers. Z had great stuff, of course, but he clearly was not on the same page as Mike Barrett (I think MB should learn to play first base during Carlos’ starts — Zambrano is lights-out when Hank White is behind the dish. Desipio elaborates.) and was messing around, trying to strike out each and every batter (He did succeed on 12 of them) rather than pound his pitches. It was frustrating. Miggy Cabrera and Josh Willingham weren’t fooled a bit.

So, after five agonizing innings and a 3-0 Marlins lead, I happily turned away. (Happily because I left the excruciating Rick Sutcliffe in the dust. Seriously, he’s baseball’s Joe Theismann. He loves everyone. He’s Captain Obvious, and at one point I challenged Ms. Faded Glory to count the number of words Sut strung together into a facsimile of a sentence. She rounded up, but came up with 437.)

And I didn’t turn back, not till late. I wasn’t going to be a witness to yet another underwhelming performance in which we had to add Jason Freakin’ Vargas to the list. (Joining Marlins starters Michael Tejera, David Weathers (!), and Josh Beckett, when he wore No. 61.).

So, imagine my elation, when I turned back in the top of the ninth, to watch The Ryan Dempster Experience close out the game. A 6-run inning? How many of those have the Cubs had since 1990? Three? And late in the game, to boot. These Cubs keep battling, I’ll credit them for that. It’s served them well so far, and it will keep them in this thing a lot longer than their stats suggest. I’m proud of their maturity, as well as my own — you see, instead of wallowing in a Vargas-induced funk, I moved on with my life. And, in turn, so did the Cubs.

And finally, because our friend The Strap isn’t used to being held accountable for his performance on the field, we’re going to give him an obligatory (if somewhat mocking) shout-out each time he has a good game. He’s probably owed two so far this season (April 9 vs. Cardinals, April 23 vs. Cards, so here they are:

STRAP SHOUT OUT I, II, and III:

Go Jacque, go!