Jason Bere (AP photos) | ZOOM |

        Jason Bere rarely gets many runs when he pitches, so there was a temptation to ease up when the Chicago Cubs handed him a 7-0 lead.

        He resisted it.

        Pitching as though he had no margin for error, Bere took a bid for his first career shutout into the ninth inning Friday night before settling for a complete-game, 7-1 victory over the bedazzled Reds.

        Bere (5-4) gave up eight hits — half of them to Dmitri Young, whose one-out homer in the ninth ended the shutout. Bere got the third complete game of his career and his first since 1995, before elbow injuries got him sidetracked.

        “In a perfect world, everyone would like to go nine innings and give up no runs,” Bere said. “My mindset was to go out there and keep going hard, and if I get the lead to hold it.

        “It was hard with the big lead. I started pitching to the lead and told myself I still had to be aggressive.”

Sammy Sosa | ZOOM |

        He was that, and more.

        “Nasty,” said Reds first baseman Sean Casey, who singled in the ninth. “He was throwing any pitch anywhere he wanted. The pitch would come in looking good and the next thing you know, it would drop off the table. I don't think too many teams would have hit him tonight.”

        The Reds haven't done much against him all season. Bere has won only twice in his last 12 starts — both times against the Reds.

        Part of his problem has been a lack of run support during the dozen starts. That wasn't an issue Friday night.

        Sammy Sosa homered into the Reds' new ballpark, Gary Matthews Jr. also homered and Matt Stairs drove in three runs with a pair of doubles as the Cubs emphatically ended their offensive slump.

        Sosa's impressive homer set the tone for a breakout game. The Cubs had lost five of their last seven because of a dormant offense that managed only 16 runs during the slump.

        “Nobody in here had any doubts it was going to come around,” Bere said. “It's not like they were sitting back.”

        Matthews homered in the first inning off Brian Reith (0-6), Stairs had a run-scoring double in the third, and Sosa hit the longest homer this season at Cinergy Field in the fifth.

        His solo shot cleared the concrete flood wall for the new ballpark under construction beyond the left-field wall, landing amid piles of dirt and metal bars about 438 feet away.

        “That was a mistake,” Reith said. “I shouldn't have thrown him a slider there. I thought it was a decent pitch, but I shouldn't have thrown it.”

        The Cubs essentially put the game away with four runs in the sixth, highlighted by Eric Young's two-run double and another by Stairs.

        The only drama left involved Bere, who had never thrown a shutout in his 167 previous big-league starts. One bad pitch to Young took care of it.

        “It was a slider down the middle,” Bere said. “They're down by a bunch and he's not giving any at-bats away. That's the kind of player Dmitri is. He hit me around all night.”
       Cubs Notes: Bere, who lost his other two complete games, needed only 103 pitches to wrap up his third on a hot, muggy night. ... SS Ricky Gutierrez was out of the lineup, a day after he dove for a ball and landed hard. ... Reliever Courtney Duncan went on the 15-day disabled list with a strained muscle in his back. Corey Patterson was called up from Triple-A.        

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