"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, April 17, 2004 ::

This Has Got To Stop

Umpires are supposed to be impartial arbiters, favoring neither team.

After two days of having the crew headed by Mike Reilly (including, so as to name all the guilty parties: Chuck Meriwether, C. B. Bucknor, and today's anti-hero, Eric Cooper), I wonder if the Cubs will ever get a break from this particular crew again.

Cooper, today's plate umpire, broke the unwritten code when, after Kerry Wood gave a dismissive wave toward him after a called ball four, actually began to charge the mound after Wood; only Michael Barrett stepping out in front of Cooper stopped a confrontation.

This is ridiculous; umpires are never supposed to do this, and Cooper ought to be severely disciplined for this. Naturally, after Wood was taken out of the game after surrendering the lead in the 9th, he had a few choice words for Cooper and was ejected; I guess he figured he was leaving anyway, so why not say his piece?

I trust there will be a report filed by the umpires and the Cubs on today's fiasco, and that appropriate discipline will be taken against Eric Cooper. Sure, Kerry Wood will be fined, and that's deserved, but what Cooper did is absolutely inexcusable.

The umpiring isn't the reason the Cubs lost to the Reds 3-2 today. Wood was terrific, but his luck ran out in the 9th, and frankly, the pitch count borders on ridiculous at 131. 19 of those pitches were thrown in the 9th, so at 112 after 8, I think Dusty should have taken him out. LaTroy Hawkins, who finally got up in the bottom of the 9th, was available, but no one warmed up at all until a couple of baserunners got on; first, Joe Borowski, who never did get into the game, and finally Kent Mercker, who did get the last out of the 9th by throwing exactly one pitch.

The Cubs seemed to generate enough offense on a day when the wind was blowing in at a stiff pace; three singles in the sixth inning generated two runs, and it looked like a crisply-fashioned 2-1 win was in store even after Adam Dunn homered into the teeth of the wind -- a ball that would have wound up way onto Sheffield on a normal day.

From a 69-degree game time temperature the temp dropped into the 50's and I had to put on the jeans and golf pullover that I brought with me, though Howard and Jeff stayed in shorts & T-shirts. They're here at my house right now changing into nicer clothes before we all go out to dinner for the first stage of Brian's bachelor party, which will continue tomorrow. UPDATE! Had a nice dinner with all our bleacher group, plus about 15 other of Brian's friends and co-workers, at Harry Caray's, which, believe it or not, I had been to only once before tonight. Mike told us some stories of the history of the building in which the restaurant is located, originally built in 1905; we had tons of food, and I know most of the guys are still there; I must get up for work at 3 am Sunday, so here I sit typing about it.

There's another ticket update too. After the scandals of the first few days, when scanned but untorn tickets were re-sold on the street, now security wants to make sure they watch if you hand a legitimate ticket to a friend through the gate, as I did today for Phil. This is totally understandable, and if it helps reduce scalping and fraud, so much the better. I'm still puzzled as to why they are ripping only season tickets, not the single-game variety, but that's the mystery that is sometimes the Cubs.

The operators of the new scoreboard did figure out something else to do with it, but it was hardly useful -- it was a pitch count, which was up for about three seconds, then vanished, and it was the only time I saw it all day, while Cory Lidle was throwing for the Reds in the sixth. The board did attempt to keep the Cubs in the game, showing a 2-2 score even after the Reds scored the third run.

After the umpiring snafu, there was the inevitable beer-cup throwing for the second consecutive day -- but this time, I give kudos to security, who must have thrown 40 or 50 people out of the park afterwards. Good. Maybe doing stuff like that will make people think twice about this stupid action.

I've opened up this forum to Howard & Jeff, since they're right here, but neither of them have anything to add to today's post.

And frankly, neither do I. It's not a crushing loss, but after the excitement of yesterday, it has to be a letdown.

Greg Maddux had better keep the ball down tomorrow, because the wind is supposed to be blowing out at 30 MPH.

:: posted by Al at 4:42 PM [+] ::
...

Freaky Friday

So with the count 1-0 on Moises Alou in the 9th, I turned to Brian's brother Kevin (sitting in Mike's seat today) and said, "How about he hits the next pitch on the street and let's go home."

No, seriously. Just ask him, I really did say that, and darned if Alou didn't do just that, ending perhaps the wackiest day I've ever spent at Wrigley Field with an 11-10 Cub win in front of yet another sellout, 40,173, on a ridiculously warm and windy April day, 76 degrees at game time. In fact, with the temperature and the full house, and the shadows encroaching on the field by the late innings, it felt really September-like.

But here, I'm starting at the end.

The wackiness started before we even got in the park. After three days of not ripping tickets after the barcodes were scanned, security told us they were ripping stubs today. And why is this?

Because they discovered that unscrupulous people were handing the unripped tickets back through the gate to be re-sold by scalpers to people who didn't know that they couldn't be used to enter. This is sound reasoning, and from now on, tickets will be ripped as normal. As season ticket holders, we got back the small portion of the ticket, because that is the only part with the barcode on it.

Then Jeff and I spotted a woman sitting across the aisle who was almost doubled over. She seemed sick or something, but then we realized she had been drinking. Security was called and she and her friend were escorted out. Why? Well, security told us that apparently this woman doesn't drink, but her friend was egging her on, and that she wasn't willing to just sit and drink some water, so they told her she had to go, as they're not babysitters. And this after these two apparently paid $55 each on the street for their tickets. Too bad, so sad.

At one point during BP, Jeff looked up and saw Reds reliever Todd Jones, in full uniform, sitting a few rows in front of us. He has done this before, a couple of years ago when he was with the Rockies.

And it's only the fourth game of the season, and this was all before the game even started!

Once it did start, Sergio Mitre picked up where he left off in spring training, that is, not throwing strikes and giving up line-drive hits to every Red in sight. Somehow he muddled through five innings with only four runs allowed, and Alou and Aramis Ramirez homered back-to-back in the Cub third, so Mitre's 93-pitch outing ended in a 4-4 tie after five.

That's when Brian showed up, having been stuck working at his firehouse late, and promptly, the Reds scored five runs off Mike Wuertz in the sixth, so we were ready to blame Brian. Better we should have blamed Wuertz, who after a great spring and decent start is pitching his way back to Des Moines. Really, the Cubs have to think really hard about the last two spots in the bullpen, because Wuertz and Francis Beltran have been awful, there's only one lefty out there (Kent Mercker) and you simply cannot win every game like this.

It's fun, though, isn't it? Kevin showed up today with his head shaved, and between the two of us we thought we could convince Jeff and Howard to join us. What I should have done was suggest to them that they do it if the Cubs came back and won, darnitall.

And come back they did, even after a goofy lineup snafu, where Dusty did a real obvious double-switch with Ramon Martinez and Kent Mercker, only to discover later that home plate umpire C. B. Bucknor either didn't hear him or ignored him, and Martinez, who had doubled leading off the seventh, was ruled out for batting out of order, because Jerry Narron, managing the Reds after their manager Dave Miley was tossed for arguing a called third strike on Sean Casey in the 4th.

This umpiring crew, which has been in Chicago all week (having worked the White Sox-Royals series earlier), has always had it in for the Cubs, particularly Bucknor, and I know umpires aren't supposed to do this, but some of them do. Bruce Froemming and Joe West are also inveterate Cub-haters. Bucknor did a lousy job of calling balls and strikes today, too, on both sides.

Anyway, this -- whatever it was, mistake or oversight, got Dusty Baker to win this year's cap-toss contest in a landslide; he tossed it almost the entire length of the dugout. I don't think I've ever seen him that angry!

About that time, Mike sent me an e-mail that read, in its entirety:

Now, you HAVE seen #@$!ing everything.

Turned out we hadn't.

Even with this, the Cubs managed a two-run rally in that 7th, and then another two in the 8th on yet another clutch pinch-hit home run by Todd Hollandsworth, who is on pace to hit 48 home runs and have no other hits at all this year. And we have our bleacher buddy Todd Jones to thank for that homer; he singlehandedly kept the Cubs in the game. That set the stage for another sloppy 9th inning by Joe Borowski. To be fair, he should have been out of it with only a walk, because Aramis Ramirez threw a ball away, though I thought the error on that play should have been charged to Todd Walker, who dropped a throw that was right there. After that Joe walked the bases full before getting Ryan Freel to pop up, setting up the heroics in the bottom of the 9th.

That's when Mike sent his second e-mail:

And I sent that first message BEFORE the ninth inning.

Which was completely true, based on the time-stamp on each e-mail.

Lost in the excitement over Alou's walk-off homer was the fact that Sammy Sosa's game-tying homer also tied him with Ernie Banks for the club record, his 512th HR as a Cub, and it didn't miss us by too much, the section over and about 5 or 6 rows down. We hardly even had time to sit down -- in fact, I actually missed ball 1 to Alou, and then made my prescient call to Kevin after glancing at the scoreboard.

A nice 30-ish couple sat down in front of us for the ballgame and after the game-winner, we told them they could come back any time.

And the final word today goes to my devoted reader Stuart Teadley, watching via the web in the UK at nearly midnight UK time, who wrote:

...gimme gimme gimme ...a season of this!...Un-Be-Lievable!!

what a game!...this is the very stuff of baseball, don't you think?...the Reds must be sick, too..imagine scoring 10 at Wrigley..and losing!!

..is it too early to say "believe"?

yyyeeeeehhaa!!

I know what a series full of games like this, last September against the Cardinals, did to me. If we've got a full year of this type of thing, better keep the defibrillators handy.

Postscript: just got another e-mail from Mike, explaining further the batting-out-of-order play (and it's a good thing, too, because neither the scoreboards nor Wayne Messmer told us a thing):

That at-bat in the seventh is charged against Mercker, not Martinez. If Martinez' at-bat had not been challenged, technically the next proper batter would have been Mercker; had Walker followed Martinez, he'd have been improper.

And then he continued...

Wish I'd seen it.

He may have missed this one, but I imagine there will be plenty more excitement and weirdness to see this season.

Bring it on.

:: posted by Al at 8:34 PM [+] ::
...

Notes From Yesterday's Game

* Got an e-mail from Brian Snell, who may have an answer to the "No Rainout Exchange" notation on some of yesterday's tickets:

I just might have an explanation for the "No Rainout Exchange" tickets. I was at the game today, with tickets provided by a beer vendor (I manage a liquor store), and everyone from our group had the same designation. Perhaps it's for group ticket purchases?

This is probably correct -- yesterday was designated as the "Old Style Opener", sponsored by the beer company, and they must have bought several thousand tickets, which, as noted, are not exchangeable, because they all wound up being given away, as was Brian Snell's, in promotions.

* This season's "rookie hazing" has apparently taken the form of making rookies wear silly kids' backpacks during batting practice. The Pirate players are lucky, though; they don't wear shirts with numbers during BP, so the two players hanging around the outfield shagging flies wearing, respectively, a Spider-Man and Tweety Bird backpack, weren't immediately identifiable.

However, checking the roster sheet, I'm pretty sure they were lefthanded pitchers John Grabow and Mike Johnston.

Frankly, this sort of thing isn't nearly as creative as the practice that seems to have been almost forgotten here in Chicago, started years ago by Mike Krukow, a former Cubs pitcher then pitching for the Giants -- painting the nether regions of the horse on the statue of Gen. Philip Sheridan at the corner of Sheridan and Belmont.

It was always fun to go by there after the Pirates were in town and find them painted bright yellow.

Ah, the good old days.

:: posted by Al at 8:40 AM [+] ::
...

Spring Training Redux

Three days after a windy, cold opening day, the wind turned around from the southwest, game-time temperature was 70, and I brought my shorts out, and the Cubs turned their bats on again and mashed the Pirates 10-5, with Michael Barrett having the first multi-homer game of his career, two homers in consecutive at-bats.

Moises Alou and Aramis Ramirez also homered, and the Cubs had either 12 or 13 hits.

Now why would I say that?

Because this box score says 12, but this game log says 13. The conflict seems to be over a play in the second inning, a ball that flew over Raul Mondesi's head in left field, a play I scored a hit for Corey Patterson, but the box score says was an error on Mondesi.

(Checked later for the boxscore on cubs.com and it has the total as 13, which I believe to be correct.)

If you're at the ballpark you'd never know, because the new scoreboards, flashy and colorful as they are, give less information than the old ones. The new boards have no places for hits or errors, so the only place you can find hits is on the main board in CF, and neither does the new board give scoring plays, such as wild pitches. Seriously, I don't begrudge the Cubs this new source of advertising revenue, but these boards are fairly sophisticated, and they could easily be used to give all kinds of information. Instead, batting averages don't get updated, they often don't agree between the side boards and the CF message board, and players are out of position (yesterday, Michael Barrett was a shortstop), and the side boards started today listing the Pirates on top (where a visiting team should be) and the Cubs on the bottom, then as soon as the Cubs took the lead they were listed on top.

And the little "Mini-Tron" boards underneath the upper deck, which used to list updates of out-of-town games as well as pitch speed, now have only pitch speed -- as well as an ad for a company that I won't give any space to here.

I told Jeff and Howard that we'll just use my web cellphone for out-of-town updates this year.

Wayne Messmer, great as he is as a National Anthem singer, was way behind today on lineup changes, and messed up one of the Pirates' double switches completely. I felt like I was back in Mesa, yet another harbinger back to spring training. He also failed to announce Tom Goodwin as a pinch-hitter for Patterson in the 8th inning, and that's when Dusty Baker emptied the bench and the bullpen, to ill effect, as Mike Wuertz gave up a homer and Francis Beltran, just up from Iowa, gave up two, forcing Baker to use LaTroy Hawkins to get the last out.

Todd Hollandsworth spent half of batting practice skying balls over our heads onto Sheffield; I couldn't grab one because they were all way over the fence. Often, on days like this, you'll see that in BP and then the game is 3-2 with no homers. Not today, though Carlos Zambrano got through fairly unscathed, allowing one harmless run in his six innings. Again, Dusty did the right thing by getting him out of there after 118 pitches.

After Derrek Lee doubled in the sixth, Howard accidentally marked him down as scoring a run -- in ink. So Lee and the rest of the team spent the rest of the game trying to get that run in, so Howard's card could be right... unfortunately, Lee was stranded at third in the 7th, and wound up on deck when Aramis Ramirez popped up to end the 8th.

A few people in the RF corner attempted to start the wave in the top of the 7th, something that is strictly forbidden by bleacher code. Fortunately, they were both shouted down, and then the stretch singers (the Illinois HS girls' state champions) came on and they forgot about it.

I saw the inevitable people who ask "Where are our seats" when it's general knowledge that the bleachers are general admission. But in walking by, I spotted their tickets and they were marked "No Rainout Exchange", which puzzled Jeff and me, since none of the extra tickets we bought were marked that way. It's one of two things: either the tickets were sold as all the games were sold out, or the Cubs don't want the $15 tickets exchanged for other seats. Oddly, the tickets I spotted that were sold yesterday weren't marked in this way.

Finally, we had the first foul ball drop into the new seats behind the plate, which would otherwise have been an out in past years. It was hit by the Pirates' Tike Redman, who struck out.

It's supposed to be in the 70's to near 80 the next three days. This is what we used to have in the 1970's. Bring it on.

:: posted by Al at 5:37 PM [+] ::
...

The Shape Of Things To Come

Normally, the second home game of the season is one where you see the "real fans", not the hangers-on and celebrities of Opening Day.

But this year isn't "normally". For one thing, with all the tickets sold, you knew the attendance would be announced as a sellout or close, and it was -- 38,968 (although despite the announced bleacher sellout, it wasn't, at least not when the box office opened today. Each ticket has a date on it indicating when it was sold and I came in behind at least three people who bought bleacher tickets -- TODAY. Explain that.)

The surprise was that probably 30,000 showed up, and it didn't feel like April. First, the weather is finally starting to turn, and though there was a lake breeze today, in the sun in the bleachers it felt summerlike, and I took my sweater off and sat in T-shirt and jeans today. It must not have been over 60, because Jeff says he'll wear shorts if it's over 60, and he didn't (though he said he was thinking about it). With everyone from Opening Day back at work, it was just Jeff, Krista and me on our bench today.

Jeff & I may both wear shorts tomorrow, as the forecast is for the lake breeze to shut off, the wind to blow out of the southwest, blowing out, and the high near 70, though often, on early spring forecast days like that, it winds up pushing 80. Today's forecast high of 62 was exceeded (at least at O'Hare, where it was 67).

Enough weather. There were more differences from a typical April crowd. At the end of the third inning, with the Cubs already up 3-0, everyone was standing yelling for a Matt Clement strikeout when he got two strikes on Craig Wilson. It wasn't quite playoff atmosphere, but it sure wasn't April either. I suspect we may see more of this, all season long.

The Cubs beat the Pirates 8-3 in a game which wound up with Krista harassing me because I actually nodded off asleep for one play -- OK, it wasn't the baseball, it's just the end of my work week and I'm tired! Both Jeff and I missed a play in the bottom of the 8th and we had to walk over and find someone who had scored it (Todd Walker grounded out, first to pitcher).

I knew the Cubs were going to win within a minute of getting to the ballpark, because I kicked over my Super Big Gulp before I even sat down. That's usually a guarantee, and it was today. Jon kicked mine over on Monday, but it didn't spill out. It has to completely spill out for this to work. So today, I had only a few sips of drink. Tomorrow, I'll get it from the same spigot (though I don't think I'll kick it over. Two days in a row is too much!).

Matt Clement didn't really pitch that well; he was actually constantly in trouble, and had to be yanked after six innings, having thrown 103 pitches, even though he had allowed only two infield hits, both of which should have been made into outs. It'd have been interesting had he gone through six with a no-hitter, whether Dusty would have let him finish. So far this year Baker has been very cognizant of his pitchers' pitch counts, not letting anyone go tremendously long, and this is a good sign if it continues.

The Cubs smacked three homers, including two from Aramis Ramirez, and Todd Walker showed both sides of his game -- getting three hits, but also making an error and making some other questionable judgments about which base to throw to. I mentioned to Jeff that it's a good thing he can hit, because his no-field reputation is well deserved. Alex Gonzalez also made an error, eerily resembling the one he made in NLCS game six. Fortunately, it had no impact on the game.

Player notes:

* Kyle Farnsworth got two easy outs, then lost concentration and allowed two singles and then a mammoth three-run homer to Raul Mondesi. Again, the game was well in hand and it didn't matter.

* Tom Goodwin was not only announced in the starting lineup, he actually ran out to CF with the starters, only to be tapped on the shoulder by Corey Patterson, who played the entire game. Other than a nice running catch in the seventh, he shouldn't have bothered -- he struck out four times and was the only starter to not reach base today.

* Andy Pratt was sent to Iowa, thankfully, and replaced with Francis Beltran, who threw a scoreless ninth inning.

* Mark Prior threw off a mound today, for the first time in three weeks. What does this mean? I don't think anyone knows.

The bleachers were awfully crowded today, leading me to believe that they are still overselling them, but we did get a chance to use the nice new stairwell that they installed next to our bench, to exit the ballpark after the game.

Here's to summer tomorrow!

:: posted by Al at 5:33 PM [+] ::
...

Thanks For Proving Me Right

I don't hate the White Sox, really I don't, not like a lot of Cub fans do.

But it has been said, "Sox fans hate the Cubs and Cub fans hate the Sox fans".

And this thread on a White Sox posting board is a perfect example of that.

I go to Sox games occasionally because I love baseball, and yesterday, it was, as I wrote, a nice sunny day and there was a ballgame, and I did enjoy myself. I have had enjoyable days and nights at the Cell and often, I talk baseball there with friendly and knowledgeable people who love their team, and that's not something to be derided, that's something to be admired. All sports fans should be as passionate as Cub AND Sox fans.

But when Sox fans say goofy stuff like they did in this article in today's Tribune, and I quote from it:

"It's an exhilarating moral victory for the South Side," said Rory Ohse, 31, of Chicago. "The Cubs may go further and they may be the better team, but we're 1-0 at the home opener."

... then I shake my head and wonder. C'mon. It's one game. I have heard from some Sox fans that they don't even care if they make the playoffs as long as they beat the Cubs in the interleague games. That's bizarre.

Can't we all just get along?

:: posted by Al at 10:21 AM [+] ::
...

How The Other Half Lives

The Cubs having the day off, and it being a sunny (but still cold) day here, and wanting to forget about yesterday's disaster, I decided to take in the opener at the newly renovated Ballmall on the South Side.

It's different, all right. As most of you know, about a third of the upper deck at the Cell was lopped off over the winter and a cantilevered roof (very similar in design to the roof lines at the old Comiskey Park, though it also evokes a darker Yankee Stadium facade) was put over the remaining two-thirds.

People used to complain about the upper deck, which is why they did this, reducing the capacity by about 6,600 seats. And even so, and supposedly this was a sellout, even though the announced crowd of 37,706 was about 4,000 under the listed capacity, by the third inning the upper deck, you guessed it, was about one-third empty.

One of these days I'll get down there, probably during the Cub series in June, and wander upstairs to get a look. There are now obstructed-view seats as there are support posts every couple of sections, though not many, and they put plexiglass panels behind the upper deck to make it less of a wind tunnel.

This may have had an unintended effect -- making the Cell a hitter's park. The Royals and White Sox combined for six home runs, four by KC, but the Royals got only four other hits, and the White Sox blasted the Royals 12-5.

I was sitting in the LF corner about 10 rows behind the LF foul pole, and that's a pretty decent seat, and right in full sun today, and the wind at that level is blocked, so until the very late innings when the sun's force is lessened, it was actually comfortable. I suspect part of the upper-deck vacating was due to the 22-MPH wind blowing right in their faces.

Other than that, there haven't been too many changes at the Cell since last year. The black steel beams that make up the new upper deck facade go well with the gray paint job on the other facades that was done last year, giving a more coherent look to the place. They have replaced the blue pads on the walls with green pads, like all other new parks. Now if they can get rid of the blue seats and put in green seats, it'll really look like a baseball park. Baseball parks should have green seats, not blue, Yankee Stadium notwithstanding.

Whoever's operating the new scoreboards at Wrigley Field must have migrated south today, because at one point the board there said that new Sox 2B Juan Uribe was acquired from Colorado on January 23, 1997. Either that or I was in a seven-year time warp today, because this is Uribe's first year with the Sox.

Among the ads on the scoreboard is a huge ad for Viagra (Proud Sponsor of MLB!) which we almost wound up putting on the air this morning on the ABC-7 morning show, behind Stacey Baca's left shoulder before I asked the camera crew to move her over a few feet.

One thing about the game. Will someone tell Billy Koch that it's OK to end the ninth inning of a game you're leading by seven runs and it's cold outside, in less than 20 minutes?

I ran into Mike there today, only I stood near his section for about 15 minutes looking before I realized he had been sitting in his seat all along. He hides well like that. He claims he can't be caught on film, but I don't really believe him.

I actually got through an entire game without hearing anyone yell "Cubs suck" there, although the very first T-shirt vendor I saw outside while walking up was selling shirts that said that. Poor South Siders, with their inferiority complex. You'd think they'd just be happy that they won on Opening Day.

And a piece of advice. That "O-E-O-Magglio" chant is getting really obnoxious. And despite the fact that the loudest applause in pre-game introductions was for Ordonez, I got the feeling that the Sox fans' true favorite is Paul Konerko, who obliged today by smacking a three-run homer.

I do have some Cub news today -- I heard from Kasey Ignarski, who was also at the Cub opener yesterday, though on the other side of the park:

I was just reading your blog and you say that the Cubs did not rip your ticket. Well... my ticket WAS ripped. Now maybe they are doing the scanner thing in the bleachers where you were, but I came in thru the front gate - thru the bag line (since I always bring in my backpack) and when I handed the girl my ticket, she ripped it and gave me back my stub.

Thanks for the heads-up, Kasey, and let's get 'em tomorrow.

:: posted by Al at 5:19 PM [+] ::
...

A Few More Notes From Yesterday's Debacle

* The Cubs have finally joined most other sports teams and concert venues and are no longer "ripping" tickets, i.e. tearing off the stub. Instead, you slide your ticket into a scanner, it reads the barcode, and they wave you on in. It actually makes the line move a bit faster.

It also makes me wonder why they bother making the ticket blanks with perforations any more, but that's another story.

* Mike sent me some interesting stats on the Pirates' offensive explosion yesterday. As I mentioned, Jack Wilson had seven at-bats and the Pirates' leadoff man, Tike Redman, also batted seven times (though had only three official at-bats due to a walk, a sacrifice and two sac flies). The Pirates sent 58 men to the plate, and Mike sent me a list of all games where the lineup has been turned over at least six times, that have been played at Wrigley Field since 1975 (the number is the number of BFP, or batters facing pitcher):

56  Pittsburgh vs. Cubs, 7/6/75,  18 runs, 20 hits.
56  New York vs. Cubs, 8/16/87.  23 runs, 21 hits.
56  Pittsburgh vs. Cubs, 4/12/04. 13 runs, 17 hits, 11 walks.
57  Cubs vs. San Diego, 5/17/77.  23 runs, 24 hits.
59  Cincinnati vs. Cubs, 6/13/75.  18 runs, 24 hits.
59  Atlanta vs. Cubs, 8/18/90.  17 runs, 24 hits.
61  Pittsburgh vs. Cubs, 9/16/75.  22 runs,  24 hits.

The last is the game in which the Pirates established the record for the biggest shutout in baseball history, 22-0, which still stands, and Rennie Stennett set another still-standing record, getting seven hits in a nine-inning game.

I note further, that I attended the first three on that list (the 56 BFP ones), as well as the Atlanta game in 1990.

Boy, have I seen a lot of bad baseball.

:: posted by Al at 8:28 AM [+] ::
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Bad Baseball

This goes back a ways, to the old "Saturday Night Live" with Dan Aykroyd, who played a snooty reviewer named Leonard Pinth-Garnel, who reviewed poems, books and films that were awful, then ended by throwing the book, poem or script in a garbage can and saying:

"There, there. That wasn't so good, was it?"

That was today's horrific 13-2 loss to the Pirates, perhaps the worst home opener performance I have ever seen by the Cubs, and you know as well as I do that includes some 95+ loss teams.

There's so much bad to go around it includes more than the players, but let's start there. Greg Maddux was overthrowing again, walking five in three plus innings. He's had trouble locating the strike zone in his two starts, and that's primarily the reason he got off to the bad start last year. Dave said it's because his changeup is his out pitch and pitchers like this have trouble in cold weather, gripping the ball.

But he wasn't the worst. Andy Pratt, who will no doubt find himself on a plane to Des Moines tonight, threw nine pitches, none of them anywhere near the strike zone, walking two batters and hitting the third. Mike Wuertz allowed his first run of the season, and Joe Borowski got pounded for five hits in a garbage-time ninth inning, and maybe those worried about his velocity have something there. I guess Dusty put him in because he hadn't thrown since Friday, and there's the off day tomorrow, but when you put closers in non-closing situations, this is what can happen.

Who else had problems? Well, the flashy new message boards (which had pictures of dancing Pepsi bottles on them when I came in, a very weird sight) were all messed up. First of all, though they keep ball-strike-out and score notations, there is no longer a place for hits or errors on them, as there was on the old boards. So the only place hits are indicated is on the bottom of the main board in CF, and nowhere is there a place for errors, and the Pirates made four of them today, not that it mattered, though those errors led to the Cubs' only runs, both unearned. In fact, till the eighth inning the Cubs had only one hit, a Sammy Sosa single in the first.

The board had so much trouble that the batting averages put on the CF board didn't match the ones on the RF and LF boards (they were always one point off, and at one point Jose Castillo, the Pirates 2B, was batting 1.000 on one board and .1000 on another), and finally there were so many runs scored that the board said the Pirates were winning 46-2, at which point they shut it down entirely.

Except for the advertising, of course.

We had a good representation of our group out there today, but almost everyone rapidly lost interest in anything but making silly Monty Python jokes; Jeff gave up scoring and spent a couple of innings in the men's room; Dave gave me two tickets to sell for later this week and they sold in only a few minutes; and by the fourth inning the upper deck was emptying out, and by the end of the game there couldn't have been more than a few thousand people left in the entire ballpark.

Ran into George, who as I mentioned during spring training still had his ticket wristband on. He still had it on today, even though he said he would cut it off on Opening Day. He said he'd been by the ticket office on Friday and asked if his number had been called yet. They actually laughed.

There wasn't a single good thing that any Cub did today. Nothing. Okay, here's about as good as it gets: there were only three Cub hits in total, but they did hit several fly balls that probably would have been home runs on another day, all to left field, including a Todd Hollandsworth pinch-hit out that would have been well onto Waveland Avenue. I told Howard about the seventh inning, that it's good these only count as one loss, because they sure feel worse than that. About an inning after that some drunks came by and knocked Howard's cap off, but as they were walking away some dollar bills flew out of their hands, and they were too drunk to notice, so Howard made $3 on the deal.

A few statistical oddities from today's game (other than the goofy stuff that was on the scoreboards):

* Jack Wilson had seven at-bats in a nine-inning game, tying a ML record that is "held by many players", according to the Sporting News Record Book. Maybe, but I don't think I've seen it before and Mike says the only one he can remember was in the famous 22-0 shutout that the Pirates (of course) put on the Cubs in 1975.

* Both teams had innings in which they scored two runs on no hits.

* Brian Meadows of the Pirates got a three-inning save, a relative rarity these days. He also had two plate appearances, something you almost never see a relief pitcher get in a game.

Finally, to add (minor) injury to insult, I stabbed myself with my pencil and it started bleeding. I've always said that they're not sharp enough unless they can draw blood, and I proved it today.

We shall try again Wednesday, when it will be a bit warmer, anyway.

:: posted by Al at 5:38 PM [+] ::
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To A Reader

I don't know any other way to do this, so I'll just do it here.

Stuart Teadley from the UK -- you're a devoted reader of this blog. I tried to send you e-mail but it bounced. I must have copied your e-mail address wrong. Could you e-mail me please? I have a question for you.

Thanks!

:: posted by Al at 8:15 PM [+] ::
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A Taste Of Things To Come

I told you this team knew how to hit.

OK, so three of the home runs came off Will Cunnane, and we were used to seeing that when he was a Cub, and I was glad that Alex Gonzalez was one of the homer-happy guys, since he hadn't hit one yet this year, and usually A-Gon is one of the guys who starts out real hot and then fades later. Maybe he'll reverse that pattern in 2004.

And the rest of the team hit as well, including a 4-RBI day from Michael Barrett, who's going to have to hit to justify his less-than-Damian-Miller defense, and the Cubs evened up for the year at 3-3 by destroying the Braves 10-2, and I'll bet a happy plane ride home for tomorrow's home opener.

For which I made more preparations today. Jeff had mentioned he might stop by in the early afternoon to pick up some tickets. So I went out for 10 minutes to get a sandwich and forgot my cellphone and guess when he called? Yup, right then. Anyway, I called him back and he did stop by.

I spent part of the rest of the afternoon talking to a customer service rep at Comcast. Why? Well, I had planned to buy the MLB Extra Innings package. And all week they were having a free preview, which was nice, and so yesterday I signed up.

Upon which, promptly, the games vanished from my cable boxes.

Well, I figured this was a classic cable company screwup. Amazingly enough, I was able to reach a rep who not only spoke good English, but actually told me what the problem was. It wasn't just me, apparently they are having a system-wide outage of some of the pay-per-view channels. She agreed to give me a service credit and promised the service would be back by tomorrow. We shall see.

So I went back to watching the Cub game, just in time to see Kerry Wood tie the club record by striking out seven consecutive Braves. Incidentally, that article is wrong -- the record last set by Mark Prior wasn't on August 5, 2002, it was August 15, 2002. Yes, I remember this stuff. Why? I dunno. It's just what I do. Oh, and Wood also accomplished this during his 20-strikeout game on May 6, 1998.

Enough stats. I was absolutely astounded at the number of Cub fans in Atlanta for an early-April series; by the end of the game all the Braves fans had left and it was like a home crowd cheering for the Cubs. This cannot go unnoticed by the players, and this may be what it'll be like on the road almost all year, except in places like San Francisco where tickets are tough to come by. The Cubs generally lead the National League in total road attendance and this year they ought to by a wide margin. Chip was bleating on and on about how maybe the Braves, who the Cubs will now not play for nearly six full months, till October 1 in Chicago, would "stay on for a few days", meaning a possible first-round playoff matchup. Frankly, I don't think the Braves are a playoff-caliber team this year.

The Cubs have so far played only one game in cool weather conditions: Opening Day in Cincinnati where it was in the upper 40's, about what it will be like here tomorrow. The other two games in Cincinnati were played in 70-degree weather, and it was also comfortable for the three games in Atlanta. It'll be a very different game with the wind whipping off the lake tomorrow.

Finally, as the game was ending Jeff called me again to relate this anecdote that was on the WGN radio broadcast, and if you didn't hear it, it's worth it, and it does translate here.

Pat & Ron, who obviously were looking for material with the game out of hand, were discussing Pat's first Opening Day with the Cubs and how cold it was in the booth that day (Jeff wasn't sure, but I think they must have been referring to 1997, when game-time temperature was 29 degrees, the coldest ever at Wrigley Field), and Santo said, "I couldn't feel my toes that day." Then he paused and said, "I still can't."

Let's hope the rest of the year is this much fun. Bring it on.

:: posted by Al at 3:24 PM [+] ::
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