"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do, I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby

:: Saturday, May 03, 2003 ::

No Costumes

So today I learned that you cannot wear a costume to the ballpark (except, I suppose, on 70's night, which the team sponsors).

I learned this because some guy, apparently as part of a bachelor party, came in wearing a wig that looked like a bad hockey player's mullet. They took it away from him, then gave it back -- I guess maybe they felt sorry for him. So that got me to wondering -- why not ban the human air-raid siren? He wears a Cub uniform to the game, yet he's not a player. That's a costume, right?

I have to work more on this idea.

This is all part of telling you that the game wasn't really worth talking about. The Cubs lost ugly, 6-4 to the Rockies, in a walk-marred 3 hour and 15 minute boredom-fest.

Carlos Zambrano, who had only one major league hit entering this season, hit a windblown home run that Rockies CF Preston Wilson never even saw. Truth be told, I never saw it either; I totally lost the ball in the sun until it landed in the very first seat next to the shrubbery.

Dusty Baker continues to insist that Tom Goodwin can lead off on days when Corey Patterson doesn't start. And since when does it make sense to bench a left-handed hitting CF in favor of another left-handed hitting CF? We need a right-handed hitting backup CF, especially since our other backup OF, Troy O'Leary, hits lefty.

Maybe the Cubs ought to wear costumes -- I mean, different ones -- tomorrow. Oh, and the new cap I bought -- the one with the leather brim that looks like a baseball -- will not be worn to the ballpark any more, since the Cubs are now 0-3 when I wear it.

After the game, which as I mentioned earlier dragged on and on, I rushed to make a 5 pm showing of the movie "Identity". A review will be posted here sometime tomorrow.

:: posted by Al at 8:42 PM [+] ::
...

Doubleheader Split

And you're thinking, what doubleheader? Did I miss something?

Well, after the Cub game, I went to watch my son play in his park district league game, which his team lost 20-13. OK, so it's a bunch of 7-year-olds running after the ball. He's on the Pirates this year -- a distinct improvement over the last two years, when he's been on the Cardinals and White Sox. At least the Pirates aren't a team that I totally detest. Oh, and they lost to the Tigers today. That's news in itself, considering how bad the real Tigers are. I was beginning to wonder if this team of 7-year-old Tigers might have been able to beat the real ones.

Oh, right -- the Cub game. Well, they got in pretty late last night from the West Coast, but put their hitting shoes on and beat the Rockies 7-4. Encouraging signs today included two hits, a walk and 3 RBI from Mark Bellhorn, who hopefuly will come out of his slump and keep his 3B job, and quash all the trade rumors. I'd love to see Dusty hit him leadoff but as long as the team is winning, I can't complain too much. Shawn Estes threw well for seven innings and then ran out of gas in the eighth, but the bullpen rescued him.

Dave and I got into a long discussion on the merits of Hee Seop Choi. I love having a guy like this who'll be patient at the plate. Dave says he's the only left-handed power the Cubs have and as such, he's got to swing the bat. He's got a point, but I still like the fact that a 24-year-old rookie can wait for his pitch. I believe the home runs will come for Choi.

Today's crowd was smaller than the weekday afternoons against the Padres, leading me to believe that the Cubs are screwing around with attendance totals. Could it have something to do with the ticket brokerage they now run?

Sight seen: the dead, painted juniper bushes in CF have been replaced with real, live juniper bushes. And after the rains of the last few days, the grass looks terrific. Now if only it would warm up (it was 45 degrees at game time today).

:: posted by Al at 8:33 PM [+] ::
...

This Could Be The One

Often, when teams go on to make the playoffs, you look back at one particular game and say, "This was the one that started everything, that sent them there."

Today was such a game. Tensely played, benches cleared after Barry Bonds was hit again, well pitched, with great defensive plays through nine innings, the Cubs pounced on two mistakes in the 10th by the so-far-almost-error-free Giants... first, Tim Worrell failing to throw to second on what would have been an easy inning-ending double play. As Steve Stone said on the telecast, he apparently just forgot there was only one out. Then Edgardo Alfonzo made an error, putting two runners on with two out. Now, past Cub teams would have meekly gone out in this inning, but Alex Gonzalez decided to make this the time to break out of his slump with a three-run homer, and then Sammy Sosa homered too, for the exclamation point in the Cubs' exciting 5-1 win over the Giants.

It sounds like hype, I know, but teams get energized over wins like this... it gives them a 3-3 road trip, winning the series over what had so far been the best team in the NL. I'll bet the plane ride home tonight is great fun, and that the players can't wait to get to the ballpark tomorrow, despite the mediocre (55 degrees and windy) weather forecast.

Remember this date. It's the most significant of the season so far.

:: posted by Al at 7:58 PM [+] ::
...

People With Too Much Time On Their Hands

Someone in London's theater community decided it would be a good idea to produce a play about Saddam Hussein.

No, I'm not making this up. Why? Who knows. But anyway, yesterday they held auditions for people who think they're Saddam look-alikes. None of these people should give up their day jobs.

I particularly like this one. Remind you of anyone?

:: posted by Al at 9:52 AM [+] ::
...

People Will Do Anything

Someone sent me a link yesterday showing how a woman has apparently toilet-trained her cat.

I have read over this page several times, and I'd love for it to be an elaborate joke, but I think it's on the level.

Yup. People will do anything. And then, these days, make it into a website.

:: posted by Al at 9:09 AM [+] ::
...

Oh Well.

This is why you can't get too excited about just one win. Tuesday night, the Cubs looked great in beating the first-place Giants in their home park.

But they do still have Barry Bonds, and he hit career homers #620 and #621 in last night's otherwise pretty boring 5-0 Giants win over the Cubs.

Once Bonds homered for the first time, I figured the game was over and went to sleep. Turned out I was right. Plus, Jason Schmidt was throwing lights-out, and sometimes you just run up against a pitcher like that. Matt Clement didn't throw a bad game; once again a Cub starter went six innings, which apart from Shawn Estes' starts seems to happen just about every day.

The pitching staff is the reason the Cubs are where they are, and with Mark Prior scheduled today, there's still a real good chance of winning this series. Glad it's a day game so I can watch while my new Internet service is hooked up today (my current ISP is discontinuing their DSL service, so I ordered new service. Yes, I planned it this way, to have it installed while the Cubs are on the road).

The fourteen wins the Cubs wound up with in April is second only to the 1969 team, who won 16 in April (this year's team, of course, won one game in March).

:: posted by Al at 9:06 AM [+] ::
...

Good News For Men!

I pass along this article, which has good news for circumcised men, without further comment.

Enjoy!

:: posted by Al at 9:56 AM [+] ::
...

Late Night With The Cubs

You know, I swore I'd copy to clipboard before I posted, and once again, the Blogger software swallowed my post before I posted. So I begin again...

I work mornings. VERY early mornings, rising at 3:30 am. So when the Cubs play on the West Coast, starting at 9 pm or so Chicago time, I don't get to see the end of many games. Last night I went to sleep when the Cubs were tied 1-1, so I was pleasantly surprised to awaken and find that they had completed a very nicely played 4-2 win over the NL West-leading Giants at Pac Bell Park.

This could easily have turned into a sideshow, with the media-hyped return of Dusty Baker to the scene of his ten successful years as manager, but the Cubs approached it very professionally, and the game even had some hints of a playoff atmosphere, with the large crowd and as I mentioned, the media attention. Moises Alou, also the subject of attention since his dad is now Giants manager, homered to put the exclamation point on the win.

Many of my friends have been critical of the decision to start Eric Karros, but he's now hitting .294 with seven walks in his starts, and there was a lefty (Kirk Rueter) on the mound. If Dusty doesn't sit Hee Seop Choi too often, this could be a productive platoon arrangement. Current stats for Cub first basemen:

AB   R   H  2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  SO  AVG  OBA  SLG
89  19  24   4   0   6   15  24  21 .270 .425 .517

I'd take that (proportionally) for a whole season, wouldn't you?

It's always good to win the first game of a road series, because now they only have to split the last two games to win the series. And with Matt Clement and Mark Prior pitching those games, there's a fair chance of a sweep, but even a split would win the series and give a .500 road trip, which is all you can ask -- you can win championships by playing .500 on the road and beating up on your opponents at home. That's what a great pitching staff can do for you.

It is still very early, but I like what I see.

:: posted by Al at 8:43 AM [+] ::
...

Blog Mania!

Today, I learned from this Washington Post article that blogging has caught on among politicians, particularly candidates for the Democratic nomination for president.

Since the war in Iraq is winding down, I'm replacing the sidebar list of war blogs with a couple of the political ones. I'll add more as I find them.

(I kind of like Howard Dean as a candidate, but his blog could use a redesign!)

:: posted by Al at 6:28 PM [+] ::
...

SARS

Fearmongering is never past the news media and they did a really good job of feeding it when the World Health Organization decided to treat Toronto like a third-world country and issue a travel advisory there because of a few hundred cases of the deadly SARS virus, which had mostly been contained by the time the advisory was issued.

The fear helped cut about 10,000 off the Blue Jays' ticket sales and a long list of music acts, including Concrete Blonde, Billy Joel and Elton John cancelled recent appearances in Toronto as a result.

I asked a friend who lives there what was going on, and the reply was -- basically, nothing different than everyday life, except they were being much more conscientious about washing hands, which is a good idea for healthy living anyway.

Today, even though they said they'd wait three weeks, the WHO lifted the travel advisory after only three days and a firestorm of criticism from Toronto's political and business leaders. They ought to be forced to reimburse businesses for monies lost for basically no reason.

I'm planning on being in Toronto for the Cubs series there starting on June 13, and I have absolutely no hesitation in going. Toronto's a great town, and now would be a great time to show our support for them.

:: posted by Al at 1:26 PM [+] ::
...

The End

As I mentioned yesterday, today was my last time at my sister's apartment, waiting for the truck to come from The Ark for its donation. Well, they claimed they rang the bell, but I never heard it, so I had to wait more than two hours for them to come back from the near North Side where they had made another dropoff. Then they said they weren't prepared to take as much stuff as I had for them. Never heard of a charitable organization refusing a donation before. After a bit of negotiation they agreed to take everything; I closed and locked the place and left the keys with the landlord, a nice man who had a lot of nice things to say about Ann ("my best tenant -- always paid on time").

The people renting her apartment happen to be the couple across the hall (wanted a larger apartment, apparently), and so I sold them her window air conditioner, and left them her plants, which I couldn't take but couldn't bear to throw away.

And so it goes, on a day off for the Cubs. Tomorrow winds up being one of the handful of games I can't watch all the way to the end, as it starts at 9:15 CDT, just about bedtime for your early-wakeup guy here. So I'll watch the first couple innings, and find out the score when I get up for work on Wednesday.

:: posted by Al at 7:56 PM [+] ::
...

The Best-Laid Plans...

I had arranged for the packers/movers to come to my sister's place today in part because I knew the game was going to be on WGN, and knowing there was no cable there, I could watch on her TV, before The Ark comes tomorrow to pick up the clothes, books, furniture, etc. that I'm donating to this worthwhile organization.

What I hadn't figured on was that we allowed some close friends and family to go there first and take what they wanted. Someone took the TV! Luckily, I'd been there yesterday, so I brought my old JVC portable B&W TV (3" screen) to watch the game. Got there and the batteries were dead, so I had to run out and get batteries.

It was hardly worth the trouble to watch today's troubling 6-3 loss to the Rockies, though when I left her place the game was tied. The offense just doesn't seem to be able to get untracked, and today's lineup selection didn't help. The Cubs are now 1-6 when Eric Karros starts, and though I'm not blaming him (he hit his visiting-player-record 21st HR at Coors today), they've got to get it figured out before they play the best team in the NL, the Giants, and Dusty's emotional homecoming, this week.

The Giants, for their own part, got no-hit today by the Phillies' Kevin Millwood, so maybe the Cubs are heading in there at just the right time. And luckily too, no one else in the NL Central is playing very well these days... the Cubs are the only team with a winning record, and still stand two games in first place.

I did save some things from my sister's place, mostly some paintings of my grandmother's, her original china set (hand-painted from England, probably a wedding gift), and lots of family papers and photos. It's always strange to sum up someone's life in a few boxes, and a sobering thought that someday, that'll be the sum of my life too.

:: posted by Al at 7:16 PM [+] ::
...

Update to Museum Visit Friday

Forgot to mention that I got real lucky when going to the Field Museum on Friday and managed to find a metered space near the Planetarium; my pal Richie has had a lot of the meters pulled out in that area (so that his pals who run the parking lots can make more $), so I saved a few dollars (which I may wind up giving back if I decide to pay the parking ticket).

While walking from the meter to the museum I witnessed for the first time up close, the destruction that Richie has done to Meigs Field. It's even worse in person than it appears in pictures or video, and the bulldozers are still there waiting.

Shameful.

:: posted by Al at 7:40 AM [+] ::
...

It's All Richie Daley's Fault

Once again, the Denver bugaboo hits a visiting team as the Cubs lost a typical 8-5 game at Coors Field. Shawn Estes didn't throw well -- it may be time to think about a rotation alternative -- but even at an 8-2 deficit late, I figured the Cubs would come back and make it interesting, which they did with a three-run eighth, highlighted by Hee Seop Choi's fifth HR of the season. So, if they can come back today, they'll win another series, and the Cubs historically have played well in Denver. And even so, they're still three games in first place, because the rest of the NL Central is in disarray.

I got distracted enough during the early innings to spend some time cleaning out a closet in anticipation of this afternoon, when I'm going to have a few things that I set aside at my sister's place delivered for storage, mostly family papers and photos, along with a few of my grandmother's things that I'm glad have been saved all these years. We don't have a lot of "family heirlooms" so I'm happy to have things like her original china set and some old jewelry.

So, you may be wondering about today's headline. Why was the Cub loss all Richie Daley's fault? Well, I'd pretty much like to blame anything on him, so here's what happened. After the game I went to O'Hare to make a pickup. I hadn't been there five minutes when one of the police officers there started waving her ticket book at me. There were at least 20 other cars sitting there; one guy was reading the paper. So I drove off. After I circled and returned, she walked up and wordlessly put a ticket on my car.

It's an outrage. Here's the bottom line on this. A number of years ago Richie (see, there, I got to him) took parking tickets out of regular courts and set up special "administrative courts" for them. At first glance this sounds good -- take these caseloads off of judges so they can hear more important cases (especially since if you ever went to Traffic Court to get out of a parking ticket, it was nearly automatic). But the new system only allows you certain criteria to "prove" you didn't deserve the ticket -- i.e. you're guilty till proven innocent.

Someone well versed in federal law once told me this is clearly unconstitutional, but that nothing would happen until someone was willing to be a test case -- i.e. pay the ticket, then file a federal lawsuit.

Do I want to be the test case? Well, I dunno. It's no fun getting parking tickets (and I have used the system as it's currently constituted to get out of some), but the time and expense of filing such a federal suit may not be worth it.

So I'm thinking about what to do. In the meantime, folks, watch yourself if you go to O'Hare. The Parking Nazis are lurking, ready to swoop down on you.

:: posted by Al at 5:34 AM [+] ::
...