"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 24, 2003 ::

Glove Affairs

During tonight's Cub telecast I spent some spare moments reading the delightful book "Glove Affairs", by Chicago resident Noah Liberman, who appeared on our Sunday ABC-7 morning news a couple months ago. It's a history of the baseball glove, both from the point of view of major leaguers and just you & me, and the love affairs players have with their gloves. There's also a lot of practical hints about how to choose a glove, and to care for one. It's a quick read, nice for a summer filled with baseball.

Maybe I was just hoping I'd find some solutions to the Cubs' fielding problems there, although today they didn't have any terrible defensive lapses. In fact, an error that had been charged to Alex Gonzalez in the eighth inning was changed to a hit in the ninth. Who knows, perhaps Houston's official scorer took pity on the Cubs' overworked gloves.

Oh, the game? You want to know about tonight's game, I suppose. Well, Shawn Estes threw well, though Dusty let him go a little too long, which made the game closer than it had to be; the bullpen did a fabulous job, particular kudos to Mike Remlinger and Joe Borowski, and the Cubs evened their critical series with the Astros with a nicely played 3-2 win over Houston, which assured the Cubs of two things: first, a winning record on the roadtrip, the longest one I can remember (14 games, with one rainout and currently a 7-5 record); and second, to come home on Monday to face the Pirates in first place, no matter what happens tomorrow, when Carlos Zambrano will face the Astros' tough Wade Miller.

I also want to mention Corey Patterson, who made a terrific running catch in CF off Jeff Bagwell to save a run, and also helped manufacture the first run of the game when he bunted his way on and stole second, his tenth steal of the year.

This club's going to win on its pitching, at least until Jim Hendry decides it's important to go out and get some more offense, and today, that's how it worked. I was about to say "pitching and defense", but, well, you know...

Maybe the Cubs ought to read "Glove Affairs" on the plane ride home. Just a thought.

:: posted by Al at 9:06 PM [+] ::
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Dee-Fense!

That's it. On the next off day -- that'd be next Thursday after the Pittsburgh series -- Dusty Baker ought to order the entire team to the ballpark for a mandatory review of fielding fundamentals.

The Cubs made their 40th error of the season -- better than only the awful Mets and Reds -- and the poor defense, including a misplay by Mark Bellhorn on what could have been an inning-ending DP -- helped the Astros to a six-run first inning (and if they'd charged an error to Bellhorn, all of the runs would have been unearned) and they held on for a 7-5 win over the Cubs last night.

Worse, the Cubs had 12 hits and five walks and left nine men on base, so they're not taking advantage of scoring opportunities. They did manage to get three hits and a run off of Astros closer Billy Wagner. Moises Alou, who has always hit well in the Juice Box, did have two hits and an RBI. But the Cubs so clearly miss Sammy Sosa, who loves hitting in Houston. It now appears that June 1, the potential return date for Sammy, will be met; he took batting practice last night and said his toe feels much better. Good thing, too; the offense needs him.

It'll be up to Shawn Estes tonight to prevent the Cubs from falling out of first place for the first time in three weeks. Incidentally, for those of you watching the game on WGN tonight, the starting time is SIX PM, Central time, not 7 pm as some printed schedules indicate.

TV Telecast Follies: I did catch Steve Stone in a rare mistake last night. In the fourth inning, with Damian Miller on third and Mark Grudzielanek on second, Ramon Martinez singled. Miller scored easily, but Grudz was held at third. Stone said that Grudz almost ran through a stop sign. On the replay, you could clearly see Wendell Kim starting to windmill him around, then hurriedly throw his arms in the air. Grudz stopped about 30 feet past third base and quickly got back, almost out. As it turned out he was left on base when Corey Patterson grounded out. Highly unusual for Stone to miss this. The FSN people also briefly gave the Cubs an extra run for a time in the top of the 8th on their scorebox, then removed the box for a minute and put the correct score up.

:: posted by Al at 9:45 AM [+] ::
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Movie Review: "Down With Love"

I love period pieces. Not just to see what current filmmakers do with old-style film styles, or eras, but to see if they make any mistakes, anachronisms, etc.

"Down With Love" doesn't have any of the latter, and it's a wonderful, sly, winking homage to the Doris Day/Rock Hudson films of the 50's and 60's.

I can't say enough about Renee Zellweger, who has become the leading actress of our time. Now, that's not hype, I don't think: think about the roles she's played, from Tom Cruise's girlfriend in "Jerry Maguire", to "Nurse Betty", to an overweight Englishwoman in "Bridget Jones' Diary", to her Oscar-winning performance in "Chicago", and now a perfect rendition of an almost-liberated Sixties working woman/writer, at the same time doing a real nice sly turn as the Doris Day character.

The script is almost secondary to the costumes, sets and setting of this film, all of which are done perfectly, almost outlandishly so. The primary colors used are nearly blinding; the hats are outrageous, and there's a series of scenes in which Zellweger and her lesser-known co-star, Sarah Paulson (dolled up as a brunette vixen), dress up in a series of ever-more-ridiculous matching outfits. This is Paulson's first major feature film role and I'd expect her to show up in many more films soon. She's a major talent.

Ewan McGregor of "The Phantom Menace" fame is perfect as the sort-of-evil Catcher Block (another ludicrous name), who alternately woos and wants to expose Zellweger's "Barbara Novak", who isn't all she appears to be either. It's a "caper", in some ways, more than a movie, with so many of the sixties gimmicks in it, including perfect representations of the old-style "street scene in the window" while characters are riding in cars, to the credit styles, both opening and closing, and an extremely funny sexually-charged use of the old split-screen that was used so often back then when characters were on the phone. Much of the dialogue, in fact, is sexually charged, in a way that both winks at and exceeds what the Day/Hudson films did. And Tony Randall, now 83 years old, has a perfect role as the head of the publishing firm that's the center of all the action. Nice to see that he still has it.

This film is great fun, a great homage, and a nice story too. Highly recommended.

AYRating: *** 1/2

:: posted by Al at 7:59 PM [+] ::
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Site Of The Day -- Where Is It?

Well, it got too hard to keep finding something that cool every single day, as you may have noticed. Or not.

So I changed my last link on the left to "featured site", and I'll change it whenever I find something interesting. There's something new there now, go take a look!

:: posted by Al at 9:09 PM [+] ::
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Cosmic Things Are Happening, Part Deux

You know things must be going the Cubs' way, when a guy with a .147 AVG (and OBA, and SLG) is given another start, and winds up winning the game with his first home run since last July.

That's what Tom Goodwin did in the 9th inning today, and Joe Borowski closed out the inspiring 3-2 win over the Pirates.

I do love Dusty Baker as an inspirational leader, and he has to be that when he puts Goodwin, Lenny Harris (batting FIFTH??), and Paul Bako in the same lineup, and expects to win with it. Not only that, you'd have expected four automatic outs in this lineup with Matt Clement, normally a terrible hitter, as the starting pitcher. Wouldn't you know it, Clement got three hits (he hadn't had any this year before today), but because of a boneheaded play by 3B coach Wendell Kim, he was thrown out at the plate to end the 7th inning, instead of having the bases loaded and Moises Alou up. Even that wasn't enough to cost the Cubs this one.

The bad news is that this will probably give Tom Goodwin some undeserved playing time. Yeah, it was great that he won the game, but he's really not a very good player any more. The HR was his first extra-base hit of the year. The Cubs don't really need a left-handed-hitting OF on the bench; they should release Goodwin and bring up Trenidad Hubbard, who had a great spring and is hitting great at Iowa. Maybe someone can convince Goodwin that he should retire immediately and have his last ML at-bat be a game-winning HR.

The best news, apart from the win, was that Clement seems to have gotten back on track and threw really well tonight. Once again, the Cubs leave a city with an inspirational win on a Thursday. It didn't have much good effect in St. Louis, but then again, this one didn't take 17 innings to finish. The Astros will be a good challenge; it'll take only one win to come home in first place, and with a winning trip, but I'd love to see the club come out of the Juice Box with a series win, then come home to a 12-game homestand. Mark Prior throws tomorrow.

The Cubs also announced today that they will make up the rained-out game from Mother's Day as part of a day-night doubleheader on Tuesday, September 2; tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 8 am CDT. So they don't lose the date after all, though considering that day, the day after Labor Day, is traditionally a back-to-school date, it probably won't draw as large a crowd as the original date, which was a sellout.

:: posted by Al at 8:56 PM [+] ::
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Stupid Suburban Tricks

Well, they found the people, or some of them, at least, who were responsible for supplying the beer to the beer-brawl hazing in Northbrook.

At first I thought it might be friends of the high school kids, recent grads who are now 21. Nope! Turns out it was a couple of the moms of the kids involved.

I mean, just how freaking stupid are these people? Is this the "oh, they're going to drink anyway, so let's be the ones supervising it" attitude? That's just damn reckless and irresponsible. What if, as Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown noted today, one of the kids had been killed, or worse, killed someone else driving home drunk from the escapade?

No, this is just another sad commentary on today's society, where no one gets taught any rules or responsibility, no one takes responsibility for their actions, and people just dismiss it as "oh, it's just kids".

I must sound like the oldest curmudgeon in the book here, but this kind of shit just has to stop. Someone has to stand up and say "Enough". I hope it's the judge who sentences the two moms involved. Someone has to set an example, or we're all going to go right down this toilet.

:: posted by Al at 9:56 AM [+] ::
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There's Your Score

That was one of the signature lines of Curt Gowdy, legendary broadcaster from the 50's, 60's and 70's, in referring to a score he saw put up on the screen.

I mention this because ESPN is in the process of allowing some blasts from the past to broadcast parts of their Wednesday night games, starting with Gowdy on tonight's Yankee-Red Sox game, appropriate because he broadcast for both teams; weird because ESPN telecasts are blacked out in home markets, which means most Red Sox and Yankee fans won't hear him.

Gowdy sounded pretty good for an 83-year-old man who's been out of the business for 20 years. The problem is, when he was in the business he sounded pretty much the same -- like a bored old man. I never liked Gowdy -- he was NBC's lead baseball and football announcer for a decade, from 1966 to 1975, and he always sounded like he wanted to be somewhere else. I was almost floored when I realized he was only in his mid 50's when NBC put him out to pasture after the '75 season. Hearing him again tonight reminded me of what we haven't missed all these years.

I also mention this because I was trying to avoid talking about the Cubs' really bad-looking 5-2 loss to the Pirates. Jeff D'Amico, tonight's pitcher, has had the Cubs' number his whole career, going back to his Milwaukee days, and the Cubs made some more bad fielding plays, including the sight of Kenny Lofton scoring from third on an infield popup, for cripes sake.

And just when is Dusty finally going to throw in the towel on Tom Goodwin, who struck out pinch-hitting tonight with the bases loaded and nobody out in a ninth inning that appeared it might be going the Cubs' way. Goodwin can't hit, Dusty. Give it up. Then Eric Karros, who probably should have been the pinch-hitter for Damian Miller (if you wanted to hit for Miller -- I'm not sure I would have), hit into a game-ending double play.

Matt Clement, who is a Pittsburgh-area native, will throw tomorrow as the Cubs try for a split. They really need a win -- this is their first three-game losing streak of the season, which is actually saying something.

I guess I could blame it on my son's baseball team again, which as you know is the Pirates. I went to his practice this afternoon; no game, but the team looked really solid. It's sure not baseball weather here though -- low 50's. It's almost June. Time for summer!

:: posted by Al at 9:11 PM [+] ::
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We're Losing Power And I Don't Know Why!!

(headline said with a thick Scottish brogue)

With the Cub game rained out, I spent the time watching the two episodes of "Enterprise" that I had taped last week. I have missed a lot of the third season of the new Star Trek series, and frankly, after watching these two episodes, I haven't missed much, and I sadly have to say that after 37 years, the entire series might have run its course.

First of all, I think the producers made a mistake in the first place by making this series a "prequel" -- the technology looks too advanced to be 200 years "behind" the first ST series. And we know too much about the history and the characters and the technology to start learning it all over again.

But that pales in the face of the poor scripts. The first episode was a "talker" -- all flashback, a story told by Captain Archer to T'Pol about how the first warp spaceship got into space in the first place, piloted of course by himself, after one of his colleagues got the job ahead of him and recklessly wrecked one of the prototypes.

The second one was -- well, it was allegedly about some dread disease that had been brought on the ship, which had trotted out a case of the good ol' Vulcan mating ritual "pon farr", but in reality it was simply a way to put co-star Jolene Blalock in skimpy clothes, muttering vaguely sexual remarks, for an hour, thus appealing to what is apparently the series' new target audience, horny teenage boys. There was a subplot about the captain being kidnapped, but who cared?

It's too bad that the legacy of Gene Roddenberry is being squandered this way. At least we have the old series to watch. I'm still hoping they'll squeeze one more good feature film out of either the Nextgen or Voyager crew since the last two have been so mediocre.

:: posted by Al at 9:06 PM [+] ::
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Rainout

So I turn on FSN at 6 and there's an auto racing show. I figure this is just a screwup, so I turned on WGN radio to find out the game has been rained out. Of course, FSN could have had the courtesy to put a "rained out" bug somewhere in one of the corners of the screen, but I guess that would have been too much work.

First thing I thought of was that this was a reaction to the game played in horrible conditions here a week ago Sunday. So I checked out the Pittsburgh weather forecast and radar. Yeah, there's some rain heading that way, but the temperature isn't that bad (upper 50's), not too much wind, and it appears, since it's not raining there right now, that they could have got five innings in. This would be a good thing, if MLB people are actually concerned about the welfare of players and fans.

Oh -- I forgot. There's not a sellout crowd at PNC Park tonight, is there?

Anyway, this is a good thing for the Cubs. It's one more game that Sammy Sosa won't miss; I doubt the Cubs will adjust the rotation, because doing so would mean skipping Kerry Wood's turn, since he was supposed to go tonight. I guess they could skip Matt Clement, but if Clement throws Thursday, that means Mark Prior could go against the Astros on Friday, and that probably works out better all the way around.

This game will be made up as part of a doubleheader on Friday, September 19. Let's hope both games mean something.

:: posted by Al at 6:41 PM [+] ::
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A Boring Day

I haven't written anything today because, well, i didn't really have anything to say!

We were supposed to tape a show at noon today. Turned out the entire audio board in the other control room (the one we don't use for news) was down. After an hour of trying to get it to work, we moved the entire production into the news studio. When I left work I found out they had the audio board manufacturer's rep on call to come in and fix the problem.

Just another day at ABC-7.

Tonight's a pretty much must-win game for the Cubs. That's about all you can say -- now let's hope they go out and do it.

:: posted by Al at 2:42 PM [+] ::
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Another Monday Note

Forgot to mention that today, for the first time, Fox Sports Net identified the Cubs on their top-of-the-screen scorebox as "CUBS" rather than "CHC".

Makes the game seem more local, and I applaud this move.

Too bad it took them more than two years after they did the same thing for the White Sox. Guess it took that long for them to figure out how to squeeze four characters into the space.

Oh, well.

:: posted by Al at 7:47 PM [+] ::
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Who The Heck Are We Fooling?

Yes, the Cubs are still two games in first place. But after another display of offensive impotence in today's quick (2 hour, 5 minute) 2-0 loss to the Cardinals, I wonder how long we can keep fooling ourselves into thinking we can make the playoffs as the team is currently constituted.

The Cubs clearly miss Sammy Sosa. Indications are that he might be ready to come off the DL when he's eligible to, this Saturday. That'd be great, since he always hits well in Enr -- er, Minute Maid Field, the Juice Box. The club needs his bat; the lineup as currently set is ice-cold. It didn't help running up against Matt Morris, the Cards' best pitcher today.

Still, Carlos Zambrano matched him pretty much pitch for pitch, encouraging news. Between him, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood, the club has three guys who go out and shut the opposition down almost every start. But again, defense did the pitching staff in; the club's twelfth pitcher error (I misspoke earlier when I said it was already more than all of last year -- it's not. Last year's staff had 13, not 11, though this year's club is well on the way to breaking that dubious mark), an ill-advised throw by Zambrano on a bunt, led to the Cardinals' first, unearned, run. Kyle Farnsworth gave up a long home run later, but that didn't matter -- the Cubs weren't going to score off Morris today anyway.

I'm going to continue my soapbox of "GET RID OF TOM GOODWIN, HE'S USELESS" until someone does something. He pinch-hit again today; at least he hit the ball this time (flying out) instead of striking out. He's 5-for-33 with no walks. C'mon, Jim Hendry. Talk to Dusty. Tell him this move didn't work.

I got better news today when I balanced my checkbook; I had inadvertently entered the wrong amount for an automatic payment last month and discovered I actually had a significant amount of money in my account, more than I thought. Cool news to end this gloomy weather and baseball day.

:: posted by Al at 5:27 PM [+] ::
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Stupid Baseball Tricks

On Saturday, Expos pitcher Zach Day was ejected from the Expos/Rockies game for having an illegal substance on his person.

Of course, there's more to this than that, or I wouldn't be writing this!

He had a blister, and used super-glue to hold it together.

Now why would that be cause for ejection? Even the umpires said they didn't really want to do it, but were forced to by a literal reading of rule 8.02, which has to do with illegal substances.

I read over that rule, and surprisingly, a literal reading gives the umpires pretty wide discretion in deciding what's illegal, what isn't, and what the penalty should be. They went overboard here. There's no reason someone shouldn't be able to cover a blister with whatever if he wants to keep pitching. The Expos won the game anyway.

Someone in the commissioner's office ought to set the record straight on this one. When they're not too busy trying to move the Expos franchise.

:: posted by Al at 9:05 AM [+] ::
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Sing Us A Song, You're The Piano Man

So I spent the first part of the afternoon at my son's piano recital.

Imagine spending an hour listening to 25 seven-year-olds playing piano. No, actually, it wasn't that bad and the kids did real well, and they weren't all seven. It ended with a 12-year-old playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise", and quite well, I might add.

By the time I got to the game, Shawn Estes had already had his bad first inning, and though the Cubs did come back to tie the game, bad defense by Antonio Alfonseca allowed the Cardinals to score the go-ahead run, and then, predictably, 6F (and if you don't know what that refers to, don't ask) allowed a two-run homer to Scott Rolen, cementing the Cardinals' convincing 6-3 win over the Cubs.

What bothered me even more than Estes' performance, or Alfonseca's bad throwing error, was the fact that the Cubs had a run in, the bases loaded and nobody out, and the Cardinal bullpen at the ready, and all they could score was a consolation then-tying run on a double play. If the Cubs are truly to be a contender, they've got to do better than that in those kinds of situations.

Steve Stone pointed out that the Cubs pitchers have already made more fielding errors than the 2002 pitching staff did in the entire season. So clearly, there's work to be done here, and no one is exempt, not even golden-boy Mark Prior, who made a couple terrible plays in the field a few weeks ago, costing himself a win.

Matt Morris is the Cardinals' best starter, but the Cubs have actually handled him fairly well the last couple years. If Carlos Zambrano continues on the consistent path he's been on the last few weeks, the Cubs will come out of this wraparound-the-weekend series tomorrow with a split, which would be fine with me.

Pat & Ron spent part of the radio broadcast talking about last week's game and the horrible conditions in which it was played, and saying how silly it was for all the stats not to count, like the seven home runs that were hit. They seemed to be agreeing with me, in saying that any game started should be finished -- but they missed part of the point, which was that the seven homers probably would never have even been hit in normal conditions (remember, there was a 40 MPH wind blowing out to right), and that in the end, the result last Sunday was the same as if the game had been called at 10 am, which I guess was their point. Oh, except that Eli Marrero suffered a serious injury.

This rule has got to be changed, for the benefit of everyone.

:: posted by Al at 4:29 PM [+] ::
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