The Chicago Cubs dropped to 31 games below .500 after a 3-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday night, but the big story of the night belonged to Cubs' second baseman Dawin Barney. He set the National League single-season record with 114 straight error-free games at second base -- even though he did commit an error (at least for a while).
Al Yellon of Bleed Cubbie Blue has the breakdown of what happened and how the course of events broke just right for Barney in the end:
Stolen base, error to Castillo, error to Barney. But wait! Darwin Barney is on a consecutive-game errorless streak and this particular game is important, because if he gets through it without an error, he'd break the National League single-season record for such things; that record was set in 2010 by David Eckstein.
The official scorer, a retired sportswriter named Bob Rosenberg, ruled E-4; Barney's streak was over. Or was it?
It didn't take very long for Rosenberg to change his ruling to E-5, an error on Valbuena for missing Barney's throw. I have watched the replay of this play several times and the second call appears to have been correct; the throw might not have gotten Segura, but Valbuena should have caught the ball. (Thus, the asterisk in this post's headline.)
So there you have it. Barney broke David Eckstein's record under strange circumstances. Welcome to the weird 2012 Cubs season.
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