The 45,311 fans that had Miller Park bursting at the seams got a taste of playoff baseball Monday night.

For those cheering the Brewers, it came with a case of acid reflux.

At its highest level, baseball is a game of matchups, mistakes and minutiae. In the biggest regular-season series in Milwaukee's collective memory, the Cubs scored technical knockouts in all three categories and took a 6-4 victory that extended their lead to two games in the National League Central Division.

The matchup of the night pit Brewers starter CC Sabathia against Cubs leadoff man Alfonso Soriano. Sabathia, indomitable and unbeatable in his first four outings for Milwaukee, took the mound without one of his most important weapons - a devastating cut fastball that dives at the back foot of right-handed hitters.

"I didn't really have my out pitch," he said before invoking the name of a former teammate who once pitched for the Brewers.

"That was my Dave Burba approach; if you don't got it, fake it."

There was no faking with Soriano. In the first inning, he jumped on a changeup and hammered a ball off the wall in left-center for a double. (Soriano hit the ball so hard, he broke into his home-run trot and had to scamper to second).

In the third inning, Soriano got a low fastball and drilled a home run.

"You can't say (they were) mistakes; he's a good hitter," Sabathia said. "He usually seems my stuff pretty well."

Sabathia, who allowed nine hits and four runs (three earned) in 6 2/3 innings, didn't make the biggest mistake of the night.

That distinction belonged to Rickie Weeks.

Stymied by Ted Lilly for five innings, the Brewers took a 3-2 lead in the game when J.J. Hardy and Ryan Braun hit back-to-back homers in the bottom of the sixth.

The Cubs responded in the seventh. Ronny Cedeno opened the inning with a single and took second when Weeks couldn't backhand a tough grounder from pinch-hitter Kosuke Fukodome.

With the runners moving on a 3-2 pitch, Sabathia struck out Soriano for the first out but Cedeno beat Jason Kendall's throw to third on a close play. Sabathia's final mistake of the night, a walk to centerfielder Reed Johnson, set up a classic confrontation with Derrek Lee.

Lee, one of the more dangerous hitters in the league, hit what appeared to be a perfectly tailored double-play grounder to Hardy. Weeks, who has struggled in the pivot for much of his career, received a perfect feed and threw wide of first - his error allowing two runs to score.

"I tried to turn it the best way possible," Weeks said. "It just got away from me. ... It's not a mental thing, it's going out there and making a play. I made a mistake. I haven't had too many of those in clutch situations. That's the way it goes."

Weeks made no excuses, but Hardy offered one. "I asked Rickie what happened, (and) he said he never really got a great grip on the ball," Hardy said. "But, it's a tough play."

Manager Ned Yost, who protects his players beyond the norm, called the play "a double play that has to be made."

"What he did in that situation was he took the throw from JJ, which was a perfect feed, and there's numerous ways -- you can come across the bag, you can go through the bag or you can push off the bag backwards. Rickie pushed off the bag backwards and kind of made a sidearm throw and just pulled his throw."

The Brewers tied the game against Bob Howry in the bottom of the inning on a pinch-hit homer by Russell Branyan, whose frustration at the plate seemingly grew in recent weeks as both his playing time and production dipped.

As so often happens in tight games, the game turned into a battle of the bullpens and the Cubs prevailed. Chad Gaudin struck out the side in the eighth and Carlos Marmol was on pace to do the same before Gabe Kapler flied to left with a man on first for the final out of the game.

In between those performances, Brewers closer Salomon Torres turned in a rare rocky outing. He walked Soriano and Johnson and served up a run-scoring double to Derrek Lee and an infield hit to Mark DeRosa that swung the game in the Cubs' favor.

"In games like this, there's so much energy and you've got two pretty well-matched teams playing in front of a crowd like that, it's fun," Brewers manager Ned Yost said. "But the team that makes the least amount of mistakes is probably going to win.

"You have to make the opposition earn it by hitting their way on, not walking guys and having defensive miscues in the field. That's what ended up getting us tonight."

Though he was unhappy with the result, Yost did enjoy seeing his team tested under high-pressure conditions and learning how minute plays -- a swing pitch, a false step, a tough call and a momentary mental lapse -- can be the difference between victory and defeat.

"My only instinct after the game was, 'Wow,'" Yost said. "It was so much fun being in a game in the end of July with that much intensity, that much action, that much excitement and electricity. I was thinking in the sixth inning that this was so good for our players to go through something like this at the end of July to get them a sense to play deep, deep into the season.

"This was all of that. I've been through a lot of playoff games, a lot of World Series games, and seen the intensity of the crowd. This matched it."