"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 01, 2004 ::

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Today was one of those Chicago spring days where you step outside and say, "Say! It's a nice day... for DECEMBER!"

With the temperature about 45, a biting wind, and off-and-on rain, several of my co-workers told me this morning that their kids' baseball games out in the suburbs were cancelled.

So were the games at Hamlin Park here in Chicago, not far from my house.

But Mark's league? Welles Park's league? (today, scheduled to play at Winnemac Park) Nope. They played. And you could tell how nasty it was because Mark, who loves to play, said he was "freezing" and his hands were numb, and besides, his Diamondback team lost 19-12, so all he came home with were shoes and pants covered with mud.

And then I spent part of the rest of the afternoon worrying about whether I'd even be able to watch tonight's game, because the cable at my house was out for most of the day. Then I went out and saw no fewer than eight Comcast trucks parked about two blocks away, working on the problem.

The world really must be coming to an end. A cable company fixing an outage quickly? And putting an accurate announcement when you call so that you know what's going on?

With the cable fixed, I sat down to watch the game. That's when I found the end of the White Sox/Blue Jays first game on both CLTV (which is the Fox Sports Net Plus channel on my system) and FSN. Couldn't figure it out until they finally -- about 15 minutes after the scheduled starting time -- said that the Cub game was rain-delayed. Obviously, the weather wasn't much better in St. Louis tonight, but the Cubs slogged through it and won anyway 4-2, evening the first series with the Cardinals at a game apiece, keeping pace with the Astros, who beat up on the Reds.

Really, the last three innings of this game should never have been played. It was raining very hard -- not quite as hard as it was here in Chicago last Mother's Day, when the wind was blowing at 40 MPH and the rain was falling sideways and the umpires forced the same two teams to play a joke of a four-inning "game" before they called it, after Eli Marrero got seriously injured and it didn't count anyway.

You know, I guess I should thank the umpires for that, because that rainout became part of that memorable five-game series at Wrigley Field last September.

I know, I know, I'm digressing.

And really, I shouldn't, not tonight. This game was over in a heartbeat -- the time it took for Aramis Ramirez' three-run homer to fly over the LCF fence in the fourth inning. The Cubs added an insurance run in the ninth, but the real hero was Matt Clement, who threw yet another terrific start. Last time he started on Sunday I compared him to Kerry Wood. Today, he seems to have turned into Mark Prior, the guy who steps up and shuts the opposition down before a losing streak can begin.

He gave up a run in the first, but after that -- nothing. Clement allowed a total of five hits and one walk in his 104 pitches, despite pitching with rain dripping off the chin hair that's become so famous that there were dozens of shots of Cub fans in the crowd (a season high 49,505 at Busch Stadium) wearing the fake Clement-beards that became so popular during last year's playoffs.

In fact, after it started raining, it seemed that all the Cardinal fans went home and there were nothing left in the park but Cub fans; you could hear the yell of "ALOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU" each time he came up. As the season goes on, I think this will become even more noticeable than it already has -- for example, the Cubs can almost count on ten extra "home" crowds this summer, the ten games in Milwaukee, where the season ticket base is only about 9,000 and Cub fans started snapping up tickets for those ten games as soon as they realized how sold-out Wrigley Field was all year. I'd expect all ten games to be sellouts and for the crowds to be at least half, maybe two-thirds, Cub fans.

There were a couple of discordant notes today, but maybe you could chalk these up to the weather -- Derrek Lee hesitated while thinking about stretching a single into a double, and got thrown out easily, but that might have been because of the muddy infield, and the same mud caused Michael Barrett to slip on a leadoff from second, whence he was easily picked off.

No matter. Joe Borowski has decided he'll be Mr. Heart Attack this year, allowing two hits and a walk for a run in the 9th, but nevertheless finished it off for Clement's fourth win of the year, and Matt (no longer Haz-Matt) lowered his ERA to 1.95.

Finally, I want to say again how terrific an announcer Steve Stone is. Not only does he show you each time the catcher puts his taped fingers down, what the pitcher is going to throw, but I note specifically the occasion on which he said "If Clement throws a slider where Barrett wants it, Lankford will swing and miss for strike three." And darned if he didn't do just that.

And then Stone pretty much called pitch-by-pitch on the game-ending strikeout of Reggie Sanders. For the true baseball fan, Stone is a joy to listen to, every day.

:: posted by Al at 9:25 PM [+] ::
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An Imperfect Night

I've got the MLB Extra Innings package.

So before the Cub game started at 7 pm CT, I was watching portions of some of the earlier games. And they were, for once, moderately interesting.

I wouldn't normally bother watching a Tampa Bay game, but their starter, Doug Waechter, retired the first 13 batters he faced. Hey, I thought, maybe something special will happen. Nope. Scott Hatteberg singled with one out in the fifth. Worse for Tampa Bay, they lost the game.

So then I flipped over to the Yankees/Royals game. Guess what? Yankee started Javier Vazquez was doing the same thing. Right at the same point, the fourteenth batter, he lost it in even more dramatic fashion -- Ken Harvey homered. Not that I love the Yankees -- I don't -- but at least Vazquez won the game.

And the Cub game -- well, it started out looking like Kerry Wood might do what Vazquez and Waechter failed to do. He retired the first eleven batters before Albert Pujols singled.

Wood pitched perhaps his best game of the year, walking no one and striking out ten.

And if you haven't heard what happened, you're probably thinking this is a happy game story, a happy day with the Cubs getting the leg up on their arch-rivals (though much as I'd like to think so, it's not the greatest rivalry in baseball, as Chip Caray breathlessly said on the air last night -- I think Yankees/Red Sox is, only because the stakes have so often been higher between those two, than between Cubs/Cardinals)... but no.

A massive bullpen failure gave the Cardinals a 4-3 win over the Cubs, as LaTroy Hawkins walked Mike Matheny with the bases loaded after getting him down 0-2. The Cubs maintained a first-place tie with the Astros, even though Houston also won last night.

It shouldn't have even gotten that far. The Cubs had ten hits and three walks and squandered several really good scoring opportunities. Michael Barrett hit a ball about two feet foul, that originally was called a home run, but ruled foul after the umpires conferred. Much as I hate to say it, they got it right. If you didn't see the game on WGN or highlights, the replays were clear, and the ball passed to the left of the foul pole, definitely foul. It would have been a two-run homer, with Alex Gonzalez on base.

Barrett finished this at-bat with a double, which would have been great, except that two pitches after the foul ball, Gonzalez got himself picked off, otherwise he'd have scored and maybe they'd have had a larger rally and Woody Williams might have been taken out of the game.

OK, there's one run lost.

Another was given away by Wood, when he threw away a pickoff throw and Tony Womack ran all the way to third, later scoring on a sacrifice fly.

But the bullpen must do a better job. I can always tell when Kyle Farnsworth isn't going to have a good outing; he was standing on the mound taking deep breaths and hunching his shoulders. He threw four pitches, none of them anywhere near the strike zone.

It might have worked out OK if Hawkins had been able to throw strikes to Mike Matheny. I hate games that end this way. Hey, if you throw a strike to Matheny and he hits it, then so be it. But to give a game away on a bases-loaded walk, I think that hurts even more.

Nevertheless, I think we can view this as a successful Cub month. They finish 13-9, in a first-place tie with Houston. The Astros won last night too, 6-1 over the Reds, and I think that's the last time you'll see the Reds anywhere near first place. I note that Roger Clemens went to 5-0 with this game, and that's great for him, but that also makes the Astros 8-9 without him. A 13-9 pace for the whole season will get you 95 or 96 wins, and that will almost certainly be enough to win the Central. Barrett and Moises Alou, two of the biggest offensive question marks coming into the season, have both hit well, and despite last night's implosion, the bullpen has been solid, as has the starting rotation.

Hey, yesterday may not have been a total loss. I spent part of the day driving down to Indiana (30 minutes from my house) to get some tickets for tonight's $145 million Powerball drawing.

:: posted by Al at 9:16 AM [+] ::
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Movie Review: "I'm Not Scared"

No, this isn't what Kerry Wood said about tonight's start against the Cardinals in St. Louis.

And this has nothing to do with it either, but my dad, who was supposed to go to Sicily on vacation, had to return to the US through London today due to aftereffects from a nationwide strike by Alitalia workers in Italy yesterday.

That notwithstanding, with the off-day Thursday, I decided to take in this film, an Italian film for which I'd seen the trailer seemingly about two dozen times in the last few months.

It turned out to be nothing like what I had expected.

Michele is a 10-year-old boy living in southern Italy in 1978, in what seems to be little more than a dusty crossing of a couple of roads. His family is clearly pretty poor, and he spends his summer days with his sister (who nearly steals the show several times) and friends, exploring the wheat fields nearby.

I'm not revealing too many critical plot points when I tell you this: at one point, alone after his friends go back home, he discovers a pit in the ground in which is a small boy his own age, apparently being held captive.

What Michele learns about him, and about his own father and family afterwards, are the things that I cannot reveal, and so will not. There are times when this ten-year-old seems to have the wisdom of the ages, and other times, such as one where he reveals this secret in exchange for what you might think is something so small and not valuable, that he seems like a child again.

The characters are well-drawn and especially the father and various other relatives and friends, that despite the fact that the movie is mostly about Michele and his friends, you feel you know and understand their motivations well.

Near the end of the film something happens that is so shocking that it rocks the world of nearly everyone in it. This is why I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying, because it leaves so many unanswered questions, and since the film makes a point of saying it's 1978, why didn't it, as so many films of its type, let you know what happened to the characters in the present day.

The director, Gabriele Salvatores, also directed the 1991 film Mediterraneo, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, about a group of World War II soldiers who find themselves in an unexpected world when they find that an uninhabited island which they are expected to hold, isn't, and the story of the people they find there is truly delightful.

"I'm Not Scared" is a little darker, but also has some valuable lessons about human nature. Well worth your time, despite the not-great ending.

AYRating: *** 1/2

:: posted by Al at 3:29 PM [+] ::
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This & That

* Chris Jenkins, author of The Northside Report, another member of the Cubs Blog Army, weighed in with some comments today on what I wrote Sunday about CurseBreaker, yet another silly attempt to cash in on the goat curse idiocy.

Chris is kidding. I think.

* It wasn't Steve Finley's first three-homer game yesterday, it was his fourth, but first since 1999. Thanks to Carole who e-mailed me and reminded me that I had misread the game story.

* Some comments from John Aldrich, who stayed away from the BOB last night, thus leading to the Cub win:

I guess it was me, after all.

If you didn't see [Richie Sexson's injury], you can rest easy. There is NO chance Sexson will play any time soon. He checked his swing and you could hear his shoulder pop out of its socket. The sound it made caused a lot of people to think he (or the bat) got hit with the pitch. But no, it was his shoulder popping out. It was most uncomfortable to see.

A couple of observations about [Greg Maddux]... He has walked about 14 batters already this year. He walked only 33 batters all of last year. A couple of times last night, it was obvious he had no clue where the pitch was going. He did that thing where he yells at himself just after he throws the pitch.

But then on the other hand, there were moments of vintage Maddux. One strike out he had with the bases loaded was a thing of beauty. He's a real pro and a class act. But, it is obvious he is struggling to find his groove.

The Cubs will be fine offensively. They got a run last night that to me, is the hallmark of a good offensive ball club. A double to lead off an inning, a ground ball to the right side to move the runner to third and a then a sac fly from Sammy. Now, that's baseball. And in a game that wound up being a one run game, you could make the case that it was the run that won the ball game.

Cogent analysis, and a good way to pass today's off-day. Thanks, John.

* The Cubs made a minor deal today, trading Felix Sanchez to the Tigers for pitcher Jon Connolly and a PTBNL.

Yawn. Sanchez used to be a prospect but has been hurt and pitched poorly so far this year at West Tenn. I know nothing about Connolly other than what was in the article -- he was Tigers Minor League Player of the Year in 2003.

:: posted by Al at 2:09 PM [+] ::
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Deja Vu

Just about this time last year, Alex Gonzalez was winning games left and right with late-inning or walk-off home runs, including a 3-run homer on May 1, 2003 in San Francisco, in the 10th inning, to beat the Giants.

He's at it again. Despite Steve Finley's first career 3-homer game, Gonzalez' homer off D'backs closer Matt Mantei in the 9th (and boy, are the fans there down on Mantei, after giving him a huge ovation on Opening Day) gave the Cubs a 4-3 win over the Diamondbacks and they avoided being swept for the first time since the Reds did it in September 2002.

I missed it again. I had hoped to be able to watch all of this one, but I got called into work today, Thursday, which is normally one of my days off, so once again I had to get some sleep, after being at a meeting of the Chicago Coordinating Committee of the Directors Guild of America last night. I'm also running for election to the DGA's Eastern Directors Council, of which I was a member from 1999-2003. I doubt that any of you are DGA directors in the Eastern region, but if you are, hey! I'd love your vote. Ballots should be in the mail soon.

Back to baseball: the fairly fast pace of the game in the early innings gave me the opportunity to see the first six innings. Greg Maddux wasn't quite as sharp as he was last Friday against the Mets; some of the pitches that he was getting strike calls last week were either just a bit outside or called a little bit outside by plate umpire Ed Rapuano. Nevertheless, he managed six decent innings, allowing two runs (the first two of Finley's homers) and only two walks in his usual efficient number of pitches (eighty).

Joe Borowski finished up the ninth after Gonzalez' homer and seems to have his season back on track now with his fifth save, and third in his last three appearances.

All that and the fact that my new friend John from Phoenix didn't go to last night's game after attending the first two. He must now be banned from the BOB whenever the Cubs are in town.

Which gives me a chance to talk about the suspensions handed down to Dusty Baker and Kerry Wood yesterday.

Baker's was no big deal, and he served it last night (leading to the obvious question -- do we need him? Stop that. Of course we do!). I learned, however, that there is no appeal process for coaches or managers who are suspended, and that some fans sitting in the new dugout seats had complained about Baker's apparently profane language.

Oh really? You mean major leaguers SWEAR??? What a shock. I guess Baker will have to tell an umpire when he comes out to argue in the future, "Let's go out near the pitcher's mound, so no one hears us!"

This is ridiculous, of course. I can't believe that anyone at a baseball game wouldn't realize that they might hear stuff like this, if not on the field, then in the stands. I hear it all the time. Maybe this is another reaction to the Janet Jackson incident and the newfound prudity we seem to have as a nation these days.

Or maybe those were just Reds fans who wanted to hurt the Cubs.

Wood, for his part, is appealing his suspension, as expected, and so will make his scheduled start on Friday in St. Louis. Steve Stone, on last night's telecast, said that he expects the suspension will be reduced on appeal so that Wood won't miss any starts, so the penalty will simply be the Cubs forced to play with a 24-man roster for probably four games. Wood will also be fined, which should be the only penalty (along with the ejection he got, which wasn't that much of a penalty since Dusty was going to take him out of the game anyway) for something like this.

With yesterday's Brewers win, 10-9 over the Reds, the Cubs move back into first place by themselves. This game, the largest comeback in Brewers history, ought to prove to everyone that the Reds are no threat this year. The Brewers aren't a very good team, and for them to come back like this simply proves that the Reds aren't a very good team either. Brooks Kieschnick, of all people, threw three shutout innings in relief last night.

Nuff said. Bring on the Cardinals.

:: posted by Al at 9:16 AM [+] ::
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An Afternoon At The Ballmall

And we thought the Mets were bad.

It being 80 degrees today and that, as you know, is unusual for Chicago in April, I decided to take in the Indians-White Sox game at the Cell.

No, I won't say anything about the Sox fans today. Well, except how few of them there were, 12,189 announced, and it looked like about half that many in the stands.

The game was enormously entertaining. I ran into Dave (who has Sox as well as Cubs season tickets), and Brian and Kevin there, along with Mrs. Dave who I think I've only met twice before, even though I've known Dave for 25 years. She was there mostly because the entire family is close friends with Indians OF Jody Gerut, who grew up in the area and played high school ball at Willowbrook High School. Dave said that Jody's almost like another son to the family.

Anyway, I sat with all of them and watched a crazily-mismanaged game, won by the White Sox 9-8 with one of the weirdest bottom-of-the-9th rallies you'll ever see.

The Sox have little pitching apart from Mark Buehrle and Esteban Loaiza and they proved it again today, blowing a 2-0 first-inning lead, and giving up six in the fourth, including a rare error on Magglio Ordonez allowing a couple of the six to score. Ozzie Guillen either fell asleep in the dugout (I was nodding off myself for a bit) by leaving Schoeneweis in for 113 pitches, or maybe it was just his bullpen being run ragged in the 10-inning game they played last night.

Meanwhile, Eric Wedge was doing just about anything he could to give the game back. Jason Davis threw pretty well for six innings, but when Juan Uribe homered and then Frank Thomas doubled, Wedge lifted him. At 106 pitches, this is understandable, but Cleveland's bullpen is awful. They managed to muddle through the 8th only giving one more back, on a solo HR by Joe Crede.

The Sox bullpen, strangely enough, was holding on. Shingo Takatsu, the Japanese import, befuddled Cleveland hitters and Mike Jackson shut them down for two innings.

Bottom of the 9th, the fun started. With a four-run lead Wedge was forced to bring in his "closer", David Riske (only in that spot because the real closer, Bob Wickman, is out till at least July). Uribe singled and Ordonez homered, and after an out and a double, Riske was removed for the charmingly-named Rafael Betancourt, who immediately got Paul Konerko to pop up to Ben Broussard, who had come in for defensive purposes.

He dropped it. In fairness, it was very windy today, and it was not an easy play. But still.

That totally unravelled Betancourt. Two singles later, the game was tied and Sandy Alomar drove in the winning run with a sac fly. Betancourt is now 2-3, and that's an awful lot of decisions for a middle reliever in April.

That was the first four-run, bottom-of-the-ninth lead blown since... well, since the White Sox blew one on Opening Day in Kansas City only three weeks ago.

I said "entertaining". I didn't say good baseball.

That is what we hope to see tonight as Greg Maddux rights the ship. I have learned that the two losses are the fault of the guy I met through the Cubs newsgroup, last month in the Phoenix area. He lives there and attended both games and rooted for the Diamondbacks, the traitor. OK, he lives there. I guess that can be excused, but he will stay home tonight.

UPDATE! I have just learned that Kerry Wood has been suspended for five games due to his tirade against Eric Cooper on the 17th. This is absurd, as there was no bumping the umpire, and the calls were ridiculous. I assume Wood will appeal.

Dusty Baker was also suspended for a game as a result of the lineup snafu the previous day, and the tirade he went into on the field. Baker will not appeal and will sit out tonight's game against the Diamondbacks.

:: posted by Al at 5:26 PM [+] ::
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Surrealism

Just two days ago, the Cubs were riding a six-game winning streak, their pitchers were barely allowing hits, much less runs, and the parade of runners across the plate for the ballclub seemed never-ending.

What happened to that team? Did they forget to get on the plane to Phoenix?

It's a good thing Dusty decided to give Todd Hollandsworth a start yesterday (Derrek Lee feeling a bit off after being hit in the foot by a Randy Johnson pitch on Monday), because otherwise, the Cubs would have been shut out for the second day in a row. Hollandsworth's homer in the 9th off Jose Valverde was the only Cub run in an otherwise depressing 10-1 loss to the Diamondbacks.

Luckily, the Brewers came back and beat the Reds 9-8, so with a 12-8 record the Cubs maintain their first-place tie with Cincinnati.

Last night's Sergio Mitre reminded me of the guy who I saw throw in spring training. He looked tentative, and he screwed up a fielding play by failing to cover first base on a grounder to Hollandsworth, allowing a run to score (in fairness, the run would have probably scored anyway if the out had been recorded and no other runs scored in the inning).

I fell asleep not long after that, woke up just in time to see Luis Gonzalez' three-run homer off Mike Wuertz (who may have surpassed Francis Beltran in the "Who-Gets-To-Go-Back-To-Des-Moines-When-Mark-Grudzielanek-Comes-Back Sweepstakes) land in the RCF seats to make it 6-0, and it being well past 10 pm and having to wake up at 3, I said to myself, "That's it!" and turned the TV off.

This makes it even more imperative that the Greg Maddux of last Friday, shows up tonight. He'll face Casey Daigle, who in three starts has walked more than he's struck out and given up 20 hits in 13 innings. The Cubs weren't swept all of last year and this would not be a good time to break that streak.

Having said all I really can about this game, I pass along the wisdom of Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly, as quoted in Dan Bickley's column in the Arizona Republic (and Bickley is a former Chicago sportswriter):

I try not to look in the stands when the Cubs and Giants come to town. It can be a little irritating. I understand the lifelong, blueblood Cubbie fans - great-grandpa, grandpa, dad and the whole deal. I certainly understand that as well as anybody. God bless them, but I'd wish to hell they'd go to Wrigley and stay out of our ballpark.

You know, those could be inciting words. Cub fans, from the look and sound of it, might have made up as much as 20% of the 33,781 last night and 33,564 on Monday. Naturally, the blowout wins took them right out of it, and on last night's telecast, Steve Stone pointed out that Brenly had told him that one of the things the D'backs wanted to do was "take the crowd out of the game early". That's an unprecedented thing for a manager to say about the fans in his own ballpark.

That's also a testament to Cub fans, who have been in evidence in amazingly large numbers at every road series so far this year, and who ought to be there in big numbers this weekend as well, as they always are when the Cubs visit St. Louis.

So not having anything else to say about baseball, I pass along this amusing story. My passport is expiring, and as I qualify for renewal by mail, I was filling out the form when I came across the box for "hair color".

Hmmm.

Since I normally shave my head, and that's what the photo will show, I wondered what to put there.

So I called them, and wound up giving the rep her laugh for the day. She put me on hold while she checked with a supervisor.

"Put your normal hair color," she said.

OK, maybe I'm dumb for not figuring this out, but I wanted to be sure, especially these days.

:: posted by Al at 9:17 AM [+] ::
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Late Night With The Cubs

The first day after a homestand is always one of catching up with stuff that I let go while the Cubs are in town.

So I spent the afternoon taking both cars to get an oil change, paying some bills, running some stuff over to the post office, and then with anticipation, flipped on the TV to see if the Cubs could hit Randy Johnson all over the yard for the second time this month (they did it on April 1 at Ho Ho Kam Park).

I fell asleep in the fifth inning with the score 4-0, and this was a good thing, as it only got worse from there, winding up in a 9-0 loss to the Diamondbacks, the first time the Cubs have been shut out this year, only two days after the pitching staff put up its first blanking of the season.

This included the longest home run ever hit at Bank One Ballpark, a 503-foot shot by Richie Sexson off of Francis Beltran, and despite Beltran's talent, I think he's still not quite ready for the majors, and is likely going to be sent back to Iowa when Mark Grudzielanek comes off the DL, which still may be another week.

Speaking of "Bank One Ballpark", I wonder out loud if the name will be changed to "J. P. Morgan Chase Ballpark" after the merger of these two huge banks is finished later this year. That would be a silly name for a baseball stadium, and frankly, if I were the Chase people, I'd keep the Bank One name as a marketing tool, since Bank One is a well-established name in the Midwest and Southwest, and Chase, being a New York bank, might be seen as an interloper.

It's the same thing that happened in San Francisco after SBC took over Pacific Bell. You'd think that a large corporation like this would figure out that they could not only keep the goodwill of the name of Pac Bell, which has been a fixture in California for decades, but could save money by not having to re-do letterheads, logos, etc. Further, the name "SBC" means nothing to most people in San Francisco, but many had a fondness for "Pacific Bell", and at least the name had some regional flavor to it.

"Bank One" doesn't have the same feeling in Phoenix, but at least it lends itself to a catchy nickname for the place -- "the BOB", after its initials.

Yes, I'm digressing, because there's not much good to say about last night's game. Nevertheless, I shall persevere.

Dusty sent Jose Macias out there last night to start at 2B, his first start of the year, but he might as well have sent last year's version of Lenny F. Harris. No one could hit Johnson -- he had ten strikeouts and allowed only two harmless singles; the Cubs got three hits off reliever Randy Choate, including the only extra-base hit, a useless pinch-hit double by Ramon Martinez in the 8th.

On the telecast, Steve Stone mentioned that someone (and I was sleepy, I forget who!) was mentioning to Randy Johnson that he was tipping his pitches by either flapping his glove open or closed, depending on what kind of pitch he was throwing. Apparently, that worked, because this looked like the old Johnson, not the one who gave up nine runs to the Cubs in five innings in that exhibition game on April Fool's Day, and not the one I saw get pounded all around the BOB on Opening Day against the Rockies. That day, he couldn't find the strike zone. Last night, his slider was sharp and he was pushing 95 MPH with his fastball. Good thing the Cubs will not likely face him again this year (the only other series vs. the D'backs being next week at Wrigley Field).

One of the reasons, I think, that the Cubs beat up on Johnson in Mesa, but were not able to only three weeks later in Phoenix, is that the Mesa game was a day game in bright sunshine, and the Phoenix game last night was at a huge stadium at night, and having been at the BOB several times, I don't think visibility for hitters is very good there. This is a real benefit to a hard thrower like the Big Unit.

Tonight, the Cubs face Brandon Webb, who they also beat up pretty good in an exhibition game at the BOB on April 2. Sergio Mitre, who has thrown very well this year, will face him, and Todd Walker will be back in the starting lineup after sitting out the last two games against left-handed starters, the first two games the Cubs have played against lefty starters this season.

:: posted by Al at 4:30 AM [+] ::
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Stuff I Forgot Yesterday

* Sunday morning, on our ABC-7 morning show, among the guests was someone showing off interesting items that had been created by local entrepreneurs.

Among them were things from CurseBreaker, an outfit that's making cute little goat stuffed animals and keychains, in yet another silly attempt to break the "goat curse".

Now, I think that stuff has absolutely nothing to do with baseball. And if they really wanted to break the curse, they'd do what Billy Goat Sianis wanted to do in 1945 -- let the goat come to a game with a ticket and sit in a seat. Parading a goat around the infield isn't going to cut it.

But anyway, I took one of the keychains and put it in my backpack.

Since the Cubs won yesterday, I'll leave it in there for the rest of the season.

Can't be too lucky, you know.

* On an actual baseball-related note, one thing that's kind of gotten lost in looking at the club this year, and the great hitting and outstanding pitching, is the terrific defense the Cubs have been playing.

The club is tied for first (with Colorado and Cincinnati) for fewest errors, with only seven (for some reason ESPN.com's fielding stat page lists the Cubs with 19 games played, rather than the correct 18), and they have allowed only one unearned run thus far this year.

Revel in this, my friends. We are in uncharted waters.

:: posted by Al at 1:39 PM [+] ::
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An Unexpected Day

Well, this one came out of the blue.

Or more accurately, out of the gray, since when I left the house there was some blue sky and I thought it might stay at least partly sunny all day, and the temperature was tolerable. Game-time temperature was 60 degrees, but it wound up dropping through the 50's and the sun only peeked out for a minute or two at a time all afternoon. I at least had several layers on and it wasn't too uncomfortable; Jeff wore shorts -- big mistake -- but claimed it had been much warmer when he left the house.

And, we can no longer say it hasn't rained during a game, though it wasn't much more than about five minutes worth of horizontal sprinkles.

Meanwhile, during BP the wind was howling out right in our faces at 25+ MPH, so much so that one of the bombs that Mike Piazza hit wound up breaking a windshield of a car parked on Kenmore Avenue. I tried to read the Sun-Times during BP -- too windy. Tried to do the Tribune crossword puzzle -- nope, even that had pages fluttering all over the place.

So we might have expected a slugfest, like last weekend, with homers flying out of the yard all afternoon.

Instead, the Cubs threw their sixth straight pitching gem, this one perhaps the best of all, and won their sixth in a row, 4-1 over the Mets, and have outscored the opposition 39-5 during that streak (five games allowing one run and the shutout yesterday). This is the first three-game sweep of the year (and first at home since... another three-game sweep of the Mets last September), and puts the Cubs in first place by themselves, with the losses by the Reds and Astros today.

Matt Clement, who began this streak with a terrific game on Monday, suddenly turned into Kerry Wood today. He got quick two-strike counts on just about everyone, and took a no-hitter one out into the seventh, with only two walks, when Karim Garcia, who had just about knocked himself out of the game in the fourth when he collided with the RF wall chasing Alex Gonzalez' foul popup (which he hung onto for an out), smacked a solo homer into the suddenly-turning-brown shrubbery in CF. I expect, as last year, that it'll be painted green during the road trip.

Clement also struck out 13, a career high, and threw 115 pitches in his eight innings. He only went to a three-ball count on three batters -- the two walks, and a 3-ball count on Piazza in the 7th. Oddly, during one of Piazza's at-bats, the scoreboard showed an ad for Connie's PIZZA, leading us to wonder if Piazza had gone so far as to be sponsored. Didn't help. He had a miserable weekend here and hardly looks like the Piazza of old. At 35, he may be on a steeper decline than the Mets would like.

And, let's give credit to Joe Borowski, whose confidence-building appearance on Friday, translated into a quick 1-2-3 ninth today, throwing only 13 pitches. Perhaps Joe is back on the right track.

Neither of today's homers -- the Garcia HR and Aramis Ramirez' 2-run shot -- needed any help from the wind, by the way, and Ramirez' was welcome considering the way the Cubs were running the bases in the first couple of innings, running into an out at third in the first, and an out at second (with no one out) in the 2nd. I think both runners went on their own, so don't blame Wendell Kim for this one.

The Cubs have eschewed most regular giveaways this year in favor of prize giveaways where you get a scratch-off card for a small number of winners, today 100 winners of a 1958 Ernie Banks jersey (Banks was in attendance, and presented an award to Sammy Sosa for breaking his club home run record last Sunday, before the game).

Anyway, in addition to the scratch-off winners (I won two autographed balls last year, but have yet to win this year), they are announcing several "second-chance" winners based on a number on the card. So Jeff and I took turns scouting out the concourse and ramps for discarded cards, of which we found about a dozen.

On one of these forays, I came back with only one card, but then announced to everyone that I had found something much better: a $20 bill, which was just lying by itself on the floor, with no one standing near it. So, no winning jersey, but an unexpectedly profitable day anyway!

Here's what'll tell you that our little group knows each other just so well. Right after Garcia's homer, Mike said to me, "So, when is Phil going to say 'Get the pen up!' C'mon, time it!"

I said, "No. You'll have to wait until there's another hit."

Sure enough, two batters later, Eric Valent singled and as if on cue, Phil yelled, "Get the pen up!" Mike shook his head in near disbelief. Phil, despite working for DeVry University, has never been all that technologically oriented, and up till now has never read this blog. But tonight, he's getting an e-mail showing him where it is. I asked him how long it will take him to read the e-mail, and he claims he'll read it right away. We shall see.

Before I go back to comments on the game, I have to pat myself on the back a little for beating Howard and Jon at their usual game of really bad puns.

When Jeff Duncan came up in the 9th, Howard said, "Here's the donut heir."

I said, "No, isn't that Krispy Karim?"

I've been hanging around these guys waaaaaaay too long.

For Jon's birthday, Jessica, in from New York, passed out some cookies she'd been given by one of her mother's clients. They were in the shape of a ballplayer, a baseball and a glove.

Well, that gave us the opening to have our own scoreboard race, when the scoreboard had what is perhaps the lamest race they've ever put on. I can't even remember the sponsor, and isn't that the point? They put up a glove, bat and ball and call it "Batty", "Bally" and "Glovey".

Howard took a real baseball out of his backpack and raced it against the cookie glove. The ball won the scoreboard race. The end result is that the cookie glove got broken up into pieces and eaten. Yes, even me, Mr. Low-Carb, had to have a bite. After all, it was Jon's birthday!

A quick comment on the war of words that Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has started about the disparity in attention that the two teams in Chicago get. Ozzie, put a sock in it. You played here long enough to know it's a Cub town, and the Sox do get the attention that the Cubs do, when they win. And if Frank Thomas had the personality of Sammy Sosa, he'd own this town the way Sosa does.

Mike said to me during the off-season, that hiring Guillen was either the smartest thing the Sox ever did, or the dumbest.

The jury's still out on that one.

Finally, the last two teams the Cubs have played can't by any stretch be put in the upper echelons of baseball this year, so perhaps their dominance isn't representative of what's to come. On the other hand, teams that want to put in a claim to be top contenders, ought to dominate the weaker teams in this way and the Cubs have made a statement this week.

The Diamondbacks, who are next on the agenda, have also gotten off to a poor start, and already have one of their starting players (Roberto Alomar) out for several weeks.

Tomorrow, Carlos Zambrano faces Randy Johnson, a pitcher who's owned the Cubs for most of his career, but whom this Cub team beat up pretty well in the last game played at Mesa in spring training.

Bring 'em on.

:: posted by Al at 5:53 PM [+] ::
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Kaz Matsui

Yesterday, I wrote about the Mets' Japanese-import shortstop, Kazuo Matsui:

And while Kazuo Matsui was great in Japan, he's been decidedly average so far in the USA...

which prompted this response from reader Josh Reyer:

Matsui is 3rd among NL shortstops in OPS (844), and 5th among all Major League shortstops with 40 AB or more. He's 2nd in OPB (.402), and 6th in SLG (.441) using the same cut-off. 2nd and 4th respectively in the NL. The current average for OPS for the entire league is 765. For all of 2003 it was 754, with average OPS for starting shortstops (with at least 400 AB) at 747.

Sure, it's early in the season. Matsui may later tank. But right now he's hitting as well as Corey Patterson, and from the shortstop position. The one thing Matsui has not been in this first month is "decidedly average".

To which I responded, OK, but it's definitely "small sample size", only seventeen games.

And that prompted this response from Josh:

I don't want to make it seem like I'm giving you a hard time, but 4 for 8 (1 double) off Greg Maddux and Kerry Wood bringing their A-games is "pretty much nothing"?! I guess you're a "glass-half empty" kinda guy.

I'm kidding, of course. I am certainly not saying Kazuo's performance is representative of how he'll do in the Majors. I really have no idea how the numbers will look when all is said and done. I can imagine him ending with a 750 OPS just as easily as I can an 850 OPS. I'm just referring to his performance "so far", which was what you had written. And of course, whether Matsui has played well or not doesn't really change the main (and correct) point of that section, which is that the Mets line-up sucks, and will suck only marginally less so when Floyd and Reyes return.

Well, exactly. But thanks, Josh. I had also been trying, though apparently badly, to make the point that unlike previous Japanese position player imports Ichiro, and unrelated namesake Hideki Matsui, Kaz Matsui has been almost under the radar so far in his US career.

But that's maybe because the Mets are pretty invisible anyway. Let's hope they stay that way today.

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