Chicago Cubs defeat Boston Red Sox, 7-6

CHICAGO--Grasping for a positive takeaway from what so far has been a lost weekend in Wrigleyville?

Maybe it is this: Manny Ramirez, who until this season never has taken his capacity to confound into the batter's box, kept the Sox alive with a two-strike, two-out RBI double in the ninth inning. It was not enough to keep the Sox from falling again to the Cubs, this time 7-6, but it offered the latest slight flicker of hope that Ramirez may finally emerge from a mystifyi...

CHICAGO -- Wade Miller gave the Red Sox what they needed (7 innings) and more (2 hits off his own bat), but not even that was enough yesterday.

A team playing with a deck lacking an ace (Matt Clement falls in the queen/king range), the Sox got a decent-to-good start out of Miller. But still they lost, dishearteningly, 7-6, before 39,096 inside Wrigley Field, and hundreds more on neighboring roof decks, on another sweltering afternoon on the city's North Side.

The Sox...