Five: Congratulations to Tom Glavine
Sure, him beating the Cubs today cost the Cubs a half game in the standings during a pennant race. But if you love baseball, you have to applaud great players and great people achieving great things (the second criteria explains why we aren't making a fuss over a certain home run record). And 300 wins is a true milestone, something we may never see again. Pitcher use patterns being as they are, it's hard to imagine who could honestly hope to approach that number. Carlos Zambrano, for instance, projects as having just a 19.8 percent chance. So here's to Tom Glavine and his 300 wins. And may the Mets never, ever beat again for the entire rest of the pennant race.

Sox in Five

Oh, Inverted World!
by Steve Gozdecki

One: Caring Is Creepy
It's interesting... a Chicago White Sox team that hasn't done much of anything all year goes and sweeps the Tigers of Detroit on the road, and suddenly all kinds of crazy talk wells up about how this team is back in the race. Let's see... there are eight weeks left to go in the season. The White Sox are 52-59, 10 games behind the division-leading Cleveland Indians. And Detroit and the Minnesota Twins also sit between the Sox and this illusory goal. But what of the Wild Card? In that race, the Sox are 10 games behind the Tigers, with six other American League teams ahead of them in the race. Meanwhile, you've still got Ozzie rolling out the Sunday lineup of scrubs more than once a week, a pitching rotation that includes a floundering John Garland, a tired-looking John Danks and the Ghost of Jose Contreras. (Full disclosure: Contreras may/may not still be a member of the rotation. Or alive.) And a still-troubling bullpen, though Ryan Bukvich looks like a keeper for middle relief. To win 90 games, which would appear to be the price of possible admission to the post-season, this Sox team needs to go 38-13 — that is, win three out of every four games. If they do it, I owe you each a Coke.

Two: Still in the Cellar
Also, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the White Sox offense continues to be bad even though it seems like every time you look up, Jim Thome or Jermaine Dye or Paul Konerko is sending one over the fence. But their production is offset by the suckitude from the Grinder Twins, the catcher, the since-departed second baseman and (egads!) the shortstop. The Sox still rank dead last in the American League in a number of key categories, including on-base percentage (it would be good to have more men on base), doubles (it would be good to clear the bases without having to clear the fence now and then) and total bases (need to touch four of them to score a run), and second to last in a few others, including runs scored and slugging percentage.

Three: Danny Richar Controls the Universe
Who, exactly, is Danny Richar? Acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks a few months back for outfield prospect Aaron Cunningham, Richar was anonymous enough that he didn't even rate coverage in this year's edition of Baseball Prospectus. But the Sox scouting staff saw something they liked in the minor league middle infielder after he worked on shortening his stroke, and the Tadahito Iguchi trade cleared up space for him on the big league roster. The numbers aren't dazzling through his first seven games, but Richar seems to be able to control the bat well and have a good eye (four walks, one strikeout in 25 plate appearances) and decent speed. His defense also looks to be pretty good, and he may well end up as the 2008 starting second baseman and second-place hitter.

Four: Bye Bye, Robby Mac
Well, that didn't work as well as we'd hoped. As part of Operation Repeat World Championship, the Sox dealt left-handed reliever Damaso "Ozzie Hates Me" Marte to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for hometown boy Rob Mackowiak, who was expected to bring some power off the bench and versatility to the infield (his career includes major league appearances everywhere but catcher, shortstop and pitcher). Oddly, he was used almost exclusively in the outfield during his 10 months of Sox service time, and he proved to be very streaky at the plate. At age 31, Mackowiak didn't look like a good use of salary for the $3 million or so that he's going to get next year (his upside is Ryan Sweeney's downside), so the Sox shipped him off to San Diego for nondescript minor league relief pitcher John Link, who trails a composer, an anti-establishment artist and a cancer researcher of the same name in Google hits.

Five: Oye, Me Duele La Muñeca!
Speaking of Sweeney, both he and fellow AAA outfielder Brian Anderson are currently out of service due to wrist injuries. Anderson is almost certainly out for the remainder of the season, while Sweeney may yet get back onto the playing field. Talk is that both will be asked to play winter ball down South of the Border to make up for their lost development time this year.

Fire in Five

Patience
by Steve Gillies

One: Our First Look at a Fully Operational Strikeforce
There has been a tangible buzz about the Fire this week. With Blanco looking like he's for real, Chris Rolfe finally recovering from that ankle injury and Paulo Wanchope joining the team the Fire's offensive problems looked to be a thing of the past. It wouldn't be going to far to say that for Saturday night's game against Columbus, a crowd of over 20,000 showed up expecting to see history made, as the Fire had a real shot at toppling the scoring record set by Australia when they put 32 past American Samoa in World Cup Qualifying. OK, that actually would be going too far. But people were hoping for goals. They got a 0-0 tie. In truth, it was a good performance by the Fire and it's a reminder that there aren't any miracle cures in MLS and it takes a little time for players new to each other to gel.

Two: Will We Run Out of Time This Season?
The question is will the Fire get that time? They dug quite a hole for themselves early in the season, and if we're going to get to the playoffs, Columbus is the closest of the teams in the standings that the Fire need to leapfrog to finish in the top eight and earn a playoff spot. Beating Columbus would have put the Fire within three points (one win) of the post-season, with an extra game to play. As it stands now, the Fire are six points (two wins) out and still looking at quite an uphill climb. There is plenty of soccer left to be played, and things should get better as Wanchope shakes off what looks to be considerable rust, Rolfe gets match-fit, and everybody develops a better understanding of each other. But if the Fire falls short this season, they might be looking at August 4th as a missed opportunity.

Three: Get Used To It, Blanco
Cuahtemoc Blanco got suffered from a very physical approach from Columbus. How physical? He got fouled 11 times. I've seen plenty of games where whole teams haven't been fouled that much. I just checked the stats, and Blanco's shot up to number seven on the team for fouls drawn. After two games. To his credit, he kept his head, and while he wasn't able to influence the game to the degree he did in Toronto, he still played well. Clearly Blanco will get more of this treatment as the season goes on and it's key that the Fire find a way to capitalize on all the set plays he's drawing.

Four: The Defense
All this talk about the new-look strikers, and one thing has been overlooked: the Fire has defended very well over the past few games. CJ Brown is marshaling a backline of quicker, younger, energetic defenders in Dasan Robinson and Gonzalo Segares has looked solid. Robinson, in particular, has looked like a beast since being moved back into the center of defense. Props should also go to Matt Pickens, who some people were ridiculously blaming for the amount of unstoppable shots he wasn't saving earlier in the season. He came up big a couple of times on Saturday night, including stopping a point-blank shot with what my special ladyfriend refers to as his handsome, handsome face.

Five: Why 20,000 People Are More Fun Than 10
Zero-zero games are boring. I know this because I'm constantly being reminded of it by sports writers who have never been to one. So I was kind of surprised that I actually had a lot of fun at the game on Saturday night. Maybe checking out the pre-game concert featuring a pale-white, tracksuit-wearing guy rapping in Polish managed to erase my memory of the standard 20-minute wait for the box office to figure out how to redeem my season ticket vouchers. Maybe the fact that I didn't drive meant I didn't that post-game parking lot disaster hanging over my head. But mostly it was the jam-packed and for once really noisy crowd that made it feel like a real soccer game. There was a lively contest over which language to use when yelling rude things at opposing team's goalkeeper (Spanish eventually won), Blanco got a huge roar every time he went near the ball and Chris Rolfe got a standing ovation when he subbed on after his long injury layoff. Despite the lack of goals there were plenty of controversies, chances on goals, and pretty intense play to keep the crowd involved in the game rather than just entertaining themselves with silly things like the wave, except for the idiot that threw a vision-impairing, security-enraging smoke bomb behind the goal while the Fire was defending a free kick.

Sky in Five

by Anne Elizabeth Moore

...is off this week.