The Final 9

CHICAGO -- The Cubs can't make up for 100 years without a world championship just by winning the National League Central, but it's a start.

Alfonso Soriano drove in two runs and Ted Lilly executed a perfect suicide squeeze to lead the Cubs to a 5-4 victory Saturday over the St. Louis Cardinals and clinch the division for the second consecutive year. It was time to party in Wrigleyville.

Saturday's sunshine-splashed crowd of 41,597 pushed the season home total to a club record 3,259,649. And that's just a fraction of the championship-starved Cubs fans Lou Piniella has encountered in his second season in Chicago. He's tried to harness the expectations. Yes, this is the longest drought in professional sports, but Piniella wants the 2008 Cubs to be judged on what they've done this year, not carry the burden of what they haven't done in the last century.

Lilly (16-9) set a personal high for wins, giving up four runs, six hits, and two walks over seven innings. Carlos Marmol pitched the eighth, and Wood handled the ninth for his 32nd save.

The Cubs loaded the bases with one out in the second, ignited by Jim Edmonds' leadoff double, and one out later, Soriano hit a single off Joel Pineiro (6-7) that left fielder Brian Barton overran for an error, allowing all three runs to score.

Geovany Soto reached on an error by third baseman Troy Glaus in the fourth and scored on Mark DeRosa's double off the left-field wall to make it 4-0. DeRosa advanced on a groundout and scored on a suicide squeeze by Lilly.

But the Cardinals rallied with a four-run sixth, highlighted by Glaus' three-run homer, his 25th.