By Curt Hogg

They say baseball is still a kid’s game, even at the Major League level. After Friday night’s events, Ryan Braun would concurrently agree.

Trailing 2-1 in the 5th, Braun doubled off the right field wall on a ball that, at first, appeared to be a three-run home run. Instead, he hustled into second base, and ended up scoring on Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney’s errant throw that went into the crowd at Miller Park.

“I don’t know if it was a home run or not. I think it ended up being a Little League home run, but either way, same result for us,” Braun said. “We scored three runs, so it worked out well.”

The play was much like one you would witness at your 10 year-old’s first game of the season–a well-struck ball by a star player followed by errors that lead to a skewed inside the park home run.

Barney’s two mistakes in the inning may have cost the Cubs the game.

After a single by Corey Hart to open up the 5th inning, Barney missed the tag of first base on a Nyjer Morgan sac bunt attempt, allowing Tony Plush to reach base as the go-ahead run. Then came the Braun double and two-base error that allowed Morgan and Braun to score, giving the Milwaukee a 4-2 lead.

The Brewers are now 48-16 at Miller Park, improving on their MLB-best home record, and remain 9 1/2 games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals atop the NL Central. With wins by both the Brewers and Cardinals, the Magic Number drops to 21.

Starlin Castro hit the first lead-off home run of his career off Randy Wolf to open up the scoring and Jeff Baker’s RBI double in the third extended Chicago’s lead to 2-0, but that was all they would get off Wolf (11-8), who won his fifth straight game.

Wolf exited the game with two out and a man on second with a 4-2 lead. Takashi Saito struck out Castro to end the threat, and Prince Fielder added an insurance run with his 101st RBI on the season. Francisco Rodriguez pitched a perfect eighth with a strikeout, and John Axford held on to pick up his 35th consecutive save, 38th overall.

Cubs starter Rodrigo Lopez gave up four runs in six innings, all on two swings. George Kottaras’s solo home run into the Cubs bullpen got the Brewers on the board in the 4th before Braun’s big hit.

Chicago had a chance to tie the game late with Blake Dewitt facing Axford representing the tying run. After a prolonged at bat, DeWitt grounded out sharply to Fielder to end the game at almost the exact same moment that the Packers game ended on a Mason Crosby field goal.