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  Thursday, Jun. 1 1:05pm ET
Tapani solid except for Galarraga HR
 
  RECAP | BOX SCORE | GAME LOG

CHICAGO (AP) -- Tom Glavine thought for sure the ball was going to drop. No way Damon Buford hit it hard enough to put it over the fence.

Glavine was wrong. Buford hit it plenty hard enough with the wind blowing out, and his two-run homer helped the Chicago Cubs beat the Atlanta Braves 5-3 on Thursday in a makeup game for Wednesday's rainout.

Eric Young
Chicago's Eric Young, putting down a sucessful bunt in the fourth inning, finished 4-for-5 with three steals.

"It was worth coming to the ball park on the day off," Cubs manager Don Baylor said.

Glavine (7-2) and the Braves probably wish they could have just stayed in bed. Glavine, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, gave up four runs and six hits in five innings, his shortest outing of the season.

At least there weren't that many people there to see it. Only 5,267 fans showed up, the smallest crowd at Wrigley since Sept. 23, 1986, when 4,684 showed up for a game against Montreal.

It also was the first time the Cubs drew fewer than 10,000 fans since April 23, 1992, when 9,086 showed up to see a game against Philadelphia.

"Glavine had good stuff, but he had a lot of pitches after five innings," Braves manager Bobby Cox said. "Still, one of them was just a wind-blown home run. We forgot to cover second on another one and we dropped the ball on another one at second.

"The linescore looks bad, but he could've got out of there with two runs, tops."

Kevin Tapani (3-6) had a two-hitter going until the seventh inning, when Andres Galarraga hit a three-run homer. Tapani gave up three runs and five hits in seven innings.

Rick Aguilera got two outs for his 10th save.

"With the lineup they have, they've got guys on their bench that are All-Stars," Tapani said. "Being able to limit them as I did, I felt pretty good about it."

Glavine had lost only one start dating back to Sept. 22, going 10-1 in 14 games. But he didn't look as sharp as usual against the Cubs. Though he struck out seven, one shy of his season high, he walked five and threw a whopping 114 pitches in only five innings.

One of those walks cost him in the fourth inning. After Willie Greene led off with a walk, Buford hit his two-run homer to left, giving the Cubs a 4-0 lead.

"I didn't think Buford hit it hard enough to get out of the ballpark," Glavine said. "I saw Reggie Sanders go after it and it just kept going. I really only made one bad pitch, and that was to Joe Girardi."

It was the ninth homer of the year for Buford, who is 8-for-11 in his career against Glavine.

"I don't have any secrets against him," Buford said. "I just try to see the ball and hit the ball."

The Cubs got their first two runs in the third thanks to the one pitch Glavine didn't like. Girardi hit an RBI double, and then scored on Mark Grace's RBI single.

Girardi drove in another run in the sixth with an RBI double off Kerry Ligtenberg.

"I've been getting behind in the count too much," Glavine said. "It's not much more than a one-to-one ratio on balls and strikes. I need to improve on that."

Tapani gave up a single to Brian Jordan in the second and another to Rafael Furcal in the third, but he shut down Atlanta from there. The Braves went down 1-2-3 until the seventh inning, when Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones led off with singles.

That brought up Galarraga, who hit a 1-2 pitch to left-center to cut Chicago's lead to 5-3. It was his third homer of the series, and his 15th of the year.

But the Braves couldn't get anything else going, getting just one more hit the rest of the game. The loss kept them from sweeping the Cubs for the first time since July 28-30, 1997. Atlanta hasn't swept a series at Wrigley Field since 1994.

"The way I look at today is we didn't come to play. We were all in slow motion," Brian Jordan said. "It was just one of those sluggy days where we didn't have anything going."

Game notes
Glavine has a 6.03 ERA in his last five starts. ... Grace was back in the lineup for the first time since going on the disabled list May 11 with a strained left hamstring. ... EricYoung stole a base in his first three at-bats. He now has 20 this season. ... Tapani has worked at least seven innings in his last seven starts.
 


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