Cubs’ Lee bombards Pirates for 7 RBIs in 17-2 demolition

CHICAGO (AP) — For the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, it was flying practice. For the Chicago Cubs, batting practice.

Pilots prepared for the weekend’s Chicago Air & Water Show by zipping their loud jets tantalizingly close to Wrigley Field’s upper deck during Friday’s second inning. The Cubs, meanwhile, were making noise with their bats.

“It was cool to watch, but it’s hard to hit when you’re expecting some bomber to fly over your head,” Derrek Lee said. “It was a little distracting.”

Apparently, not too distracting to the Cubs. They scored 10 runs in their first double-digit inning in more than five years en route to a 17-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And the flyovers sure didn’t seem to complicate things for Lee, whose seven RBIs matched the career high he had set July 2 against Milwaukee.

He had a two-run double and a bases-loaded walk in the big inning to go with an RBI single in the first and a three-run double in the fourth before coming out of the game.

Lee said that when he pulled into second base in the second inning, “they were saying, ’Uncle! It’s too hot for us to be out there this long!’ It was fun. I think this team needed it. We had some built-up frustration the way the Phillies beat on us for three days.”

The victory snapped a five-game losing streak. The Cubs also had lost seven of eight to fall 41‚Ñ2 games behind NL Central-leading St. Louis.

Kosuke Fukudome hit a three-run homer in the first for the Cubs, who last scored 14 runs in the first two innings of a game on June 7, 1906 — 10 years before they moved into Wrigley Field.

The Cubs sent 15 batters to the plate in the second, when every starter scored at least once. Winning pitcher Randy Wells walked, singled, drove in a run and scored twice in the inning.

Wells (9-5) later added a double and also held the Pirates to two runs over six innings.

“I was lucky that the camera wasn’t on me when I walked because I jumped pretty high,” Wells said, referring to the jets that flew overhead at that moment. “That scared me a little. But it just added to the excitement, the buzz around the ballpark. The crowd was great. It just felt a little different than it has.”