"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 08, 2004 ::

My Big Fat Baseball Game

This one just sat there like a lump. Waiting, waiting, waiting, for one of the Cubs to drive in somebody who got on base. Mike mentioned it to me as early as the third inning, when Todd Walker homered and Corey Patterson singled, that "they have to start getting these runners in."

Not that inning. Not in the fourth, either, with runners on first and third with two out. And even in the ninth, down a run, the Rockies tried to give the Cubs the tie when closer Shawn Chacon threw a ball away and Tom Goodwin went to third with one out.

Nope. The Cubs lost to the Rockies 4-3, and it was made even worse by the fact that two Colorado runs scored on a homer by pitcher Jason Jennings, with two out, the second of his career, at the time tying the game at 3.

That was about the only really bad mistake Greg Maddux made today; he was locating his pitches quite well and at one point retired 12 in a row, but this is something that we saw alarmingly often in 2002 -- the first two quick outs, then hits from the bottom of the order, and that's what happened when Jennings hit the homer.

The weather was weird today -- the wind blew from every conceivable direction. It started blowing in off the lake, with temps in the 50's -- I wore a sweatshirt, jacket, t-shirt and jeans, and brought shorts. By gametime it was much warmer (though the official gametime temperature was reported as 61), so I ditched the sweatshirt and jeans for a while and put on the shorts. Then I realized it would be much harder to carry all the stuff home, so I put everything back on by the 9th.

The three Cub homers would have been out any day (all three made the street), and the Cubs should have had Jennings out of the game by about the fourth (after all, this is a guy who came in with a 10.57 ERA) but they simply could not push any further runs across. With eight men left on, and three times with a runner in scoring position, twice with less than two out, there's no excuse for not scoring, especially against a team with pitching as poor as Colorado's. The wind might have prevented a fly ball by Moises Alou in the 8th inning from leaving the park; Jeromy Burnitz caught it on a dead run near the wall, but didn't crash into the wall this time. One of the monster homers was Sammy Sosa's eighth of the year (now, he needs one to tie Mike Schmidt for ninth place on the all-time list), but the rest of his day could have been phoned in -- three strikeouts, which put him past the 2000 mark and past Andres Galarraga for second place on that all-time list, behind Reggie Jackson (2597, about five seasons away).

Unlike most milestones, I wear this one like a millstone. I have missed so many big ones over the last 25 years.

I was in St. Louis in 1979 one day before Lou Brock got his 3000th hit. I was in Milwaukee one day before Robin Yount got his. I had a chance to make a plane stopover in Minneapolis the day Dave Winfield got his, but I passed. Why? He needed four hits, and I figured he wouldn't do it. They played 13 innings and he got the four hits. Sammy Sosa couldn't wait till he got home last year to hit his 500th HR (though Jeff saw it). Also last year, Roger Clemens got beat by the Cubs going for his 300th win (though I'll certainly take that win, thankyouverymuch!).

So, I get a milestone. Yes, a negative one. Perhaps Greg Maddux' 300th win will come at home later this summer.

Today was the first time that I saw evidence of the "drunken beach party" that is the bane of our existence. It didn't get really bad till the 9th, when some young women decided it was better to stand up than to sit down and watch the game. Curiously, right at that time I spotted a young man who bore more than a passing resemblance to Mark Grace. Pointing this out to no one in particular (and Jeff did a double-take when I said it), that distracted the young women and let us watch the end of the debacle in peace.

I'll give these young women credit for this: they told Jeff that they agree with us that the human air-raid siren, who shall not be named, is a "slimebag". (Their quote)

New lefty Glendon Rusch has been spotted several times this week jogging around the ballpark before the gates have opened.

This makes the Cubs 3-5 so far against the Western Division, and these are teams that they ought to be cleaning up the floor with. This does not bode well for the upcoming road trip to Los Angeles and San Diego, and it makes a win from Mr. Meat Tray imperative tomorrow.

Even so, with 17 wins in 30 games, the Cubs are playing at a percentage pace that will get them 92 wins, which is better than all but three seasons in my lifetime. It will probably have to be a bit better than that, to make this year's postseason.

Oh -- one positive thing I can report on the team performance today. For the second straight game, Cub pitchers didn't walk anyone. Yes, that includes Kyle Farnsworth -- even though a guy who was a dead ringer for him (with a much weirder haircut) sat down next to us when Brian didn't show up.

:: posted by Al at 4:43 PM [+] ::
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Nearly Perfect

Today was the day that Carlos Zambrano really arrived as a force in baseball.

Up to now, we've seen flashes of brilliance. But today he was indeed nearly perfect -- the only blemishes were two harmless singles, a hit batsman (leading off the ninth inning), and an error by Ramon Martinez, with the runner promptly erased on a double play. Another double play ended the game, so Zambrano, who also walked no one, faced only two over the minimum, and the Cubs' bats exploded for the second day in a row and they annihilated the Rockies 11-0. It's Zambrano's second career shutout and the lowest-hit game of his career.

The Rockies, for their part, are a really bad team, having now supplanted the Mets and the Indians as the worst team I've seen so far this year. They started only three players who could be classified as competent major leaguers -- Todd Helton, Charles Johnson and Jeromy Burnitz, who is way out of place in center field, considering he's wearing his age (35) on his back.

Anyway, they came in only three games under .500, but that was 4-9 on the road, and 8-7 in the rarefied air of Coors Field, which is pretty typical for a Rockies team. It may be true that the Rockies, due to the differences between playing at altitude and not, might never be much better than a .500 ballclub.

One of those four road wins was on Opening Day in Phoenix, when Shawn Estes outpitched Randy Johnson.

Rockies manager Clint Hurdle must have been waiting for that Estes to show up today, because he left him in for 70 pitches in a little over two innings, and had Sammy Sosa, the last batter he faced, scored, Estes would have allowed ten earned runs. As it was, the nine he did allow put his ERA up nearly two full runs, from 5.60 coming in, to 7.34. He walked five and struck out nobody and reminded all of us of the Shawn F. Estes we came to know and loathe in a Cub uniform last year.

I don't want to seem overconfident, but there's absolutely no reason the Cubs shouldn't sweep this series, and they could use a sweep heading out to the West Coast next week, and then to a tough stretch of games which includes series with the Giants and Cardinals, and then the first visit to Houston this year.

Dave said today that sometimes a team that hits like the Cubs do will do it in streaks -- they had a great hitting homestand in April, then got cold on the last trip, now have scored 11 runs on consecutive days, and with the wind likely to be blowing out the next two days with forecast highs in the 70's, we could see a lot more offense, especially against the terrible Rockies pitching staff. Today was cold again, with the wind blowing in, though some predicted rain for the afternoon passed the area by, making it now an unheard-of 14 consecutive games in April and May without a single rain delay. Oddity: today's crowd of 37,307 was the smallest announced attendance of the season, and due to the cold weather, there were a fair number of no-shows. It appeared that there were around 30,000 in the park, but many left after the 7th inning.

Today's 12-hit attack featured only two extra-base hits -- doubles by Michael Barrett and Corey Patterson, and I am going to take Patterson to task for his. He smacked a ball to left-center with the bases loaded that Burnitz ran down but dropped as he slammed into the metal doors (and it's amazing that he suffered absolutely no injury making this play). Patterson's a bit lazy. He pulled into second after realizing that he had driven in three runs. Had he been running, he could have at least had a triple, and maybe even an inside-the-park homer.

While I'm in the criticism business, let me also give a little gentle chiding to Wayne Messmer, who has a great voice and sings the national anthem beautifully, but was woefully behind on keeping up with the lineup changes today. Several Colorado changes were made and he missed a couple entirely and didn't mention a double-switch that was made. He missed it too when the Cubs put Todd Hollandsworth and Damian Jackson (wearing #19, in case you are interested) in the game.

Paul Friedman, who is the PA announcer for weekend and night games, always gets these things right, not only announcing the replacements, but their batting order positions as well. Look, there are those of us who like to keep score, and without a scoreboard that gives these changes (and no, I'm not suggesting I want one!), we rely on the PA. There was so little help today I thought I was back in Mesa, where you can't even hear the announcements, when there are any at all.

My friend Mike from Los Angeles called me just before the game to ask about last night's tragic shooting death across the street from the ballpark at Clark & Addison, just outside the Cubby Bear. Unfortunately, breathless news reports make it seem like it's now "unsafe" to hang around the ballpark after games, which is simply not true. Things like this could happen anywhere, sadly. It was a traffic altercation that escalated, and with the wide availability of guns, that's how these kind of things sometimes end. I don't want to get on too much of a political soapbox here, since this is about baseball and the Cubs, but there has to be a way to eliminate this kind of mindless violence. If these two were armed with knives or fists or even the kind of miniature baseball bat that started the whole thing, instead of a gun, a young man would not be dead today.

Sermon over. Now, we root for the Braves this weekend to beat up on the Astros. In a baseball sense, of course.

:: posted by Al at 5:49 PM [+] ::
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Movie Review: "The Return"

It's not often that a Russian film will even come to the US, much less get theatrical release, but this one got such good reviews that I decided it was worth a try.

This film is playing at the Music Box Theatre, a thirties-style old-fashioned movie theater with the little twinkling lights on the ceiling that make you feel like you're sitting outside -- and if you haven't been there you really should experience a film somewhere that's not one of the cookie-cutter, 200-seat megaplex boxes.

The plot of this film is as simple and spare as the film style and dialogue. Two adolescent boys (one appears to be about 16, the other 13 or so, but it's never made clear) live in a small town somewhere in Russia, with their mother and grandmother. The father left 12 years ago, and one day after the boys are out playing, the father is simply "there". He's "sleeping", according to the mother, and the scene in which the boys first view him sleeping, is a portent of a scene much later in the film, which I will not reveal.

Suddenly, the father insists on taking the boys on a fishing trip. They are excited, but the father doesn't really seem to know much about fishing, or taking trips with boys -- there are scenes where he appears to treat them with great cruelty, and others where he genuinely teaches them things about being in the outdoors.

It's never really made clear why the father was gone, but we suspect sinister motives, particularly when he leaves the boys alone to make a phone call (which we cannot hear), and they are robbed of the wallet the father has left them with. They get it back, and lessons are learned by everyone, including the father. I got the impression that the 12 years were spent in prison.

Eventually they wind up on an island, where the boys actually do some fishing and the father is up to something. He goes to an abandoned building and retrieves a mysterious box that has been hidden there. Roger Ebert's review of this film says that the boys witness him doing this, but I didn't see that, and if they had done that, I'm certain they would have retrieved the box later, after something that I won't reveal occurs.

Every shot in this film has been composed with great care. There are shots of the grandmother, who has no lines and is referred to after we see her only once, which convey the idea that she has seen great tragedy in her life. There are shots of the two boys that say the same, as well as others that show the bond that is obvious between them, that they have had to grow up pretty much by themselves, without a father, though they do have great love for their mother, who we do not see again after they leave for the fishing trip.

Much is left unanswered by the ending, and normally that would bother me, but unlike many American films, this film actually makes you think about what's happened, a great credit to the director, Andrei Zvyagintsev.

Well worth seeing, though it's not in wide release and you'll probably have to rent it.

AYRating: *** 1/2

:: posted by Al at 10:44 AM [+] ::
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Wow, They Actually Listened!

After the firestorm of criticism (over 80% negative reaction in some online polls) about the MLB marketing agreement with the major Hollywood film (I still won't mention it; why give it free PR, even here?), the deal was cancelled late today.

MLB's CEO (why do they need a CEO and a commissioner? Oh, never mind. The commissioner is asleep most of the time) Bob DuPuy said:

The bases were an extremely small part of this program. However, we understand that a segment of our fans was uncomfortable with this particular component and we do not want to detract from the fan's experience in any way.

Well, DUH!

And this was after DuPuy tried to justify the campaign by saying:

It's part of our effort to market the game in a holistic style, but mostly to market it to a whole demographic: kids. I don't think this portends a significant trend to where promotional opportunities or advertising might be going with baseball. We went through a period, after a century of outfield signage, where we went 20 or 30 years with no outfield signage, and then gradually the outfield signage has come back. It adds a unique flavor and color to each of our individual stadia, which are each unique in their own way.

As Rob Neyer wrote on ESPN.com tonight:

The argument that signs on the outfield walls somehow make baseball stadiums better is so over-the-top offensive, not to mention dishonest, that I really don't understand how anybody would believe, ever, anything else that DuPuy says.

You said it, Rob.

But wait, there's more, from Geoffrey Ammer, head of marketing for the movie company:

We listened to the fans. We never saw this coming, the reaction the fans had. It became a flashpoint -- the reaction was overwhelming. We don't want to do anything that takes away from a fan's enjoyment of the game. Some people thought it was a great idea, but others saw it as sacrilegious.

DUH! again!

Do we have to teach these people everything?

Yes, I already know the answer to that question.

:: posted by Al at 9:45 PM [+] ::
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Congratulations, You Are A Winner

I'm acquiring quite the collection of Kerry Wood autographed balls, having won one last year and again today with the scratch-off card. There appears to be a trick to doing this, but I'm not telling!

It's also always a good sign when I win, or Jeff wins, because the Cubs always win on days that we get prizes, and they came through again today, with an impressive 11-3 win over the Diamondbacks, avoiding a sweep yet again. The Cubs have not been swept since September 2002.

Everyone contributed today, including Todd Wellemeyer, who I thought was dead (since he hadn't pitched in over a week, and it showed, with several of his pitches to the first batter he faced going way over his head; he settled down and got out of the 9th inning with no further trouble).

Matt Clement is rapidly pushing his potential salary for next year way up, with his fifth straight win, and he didn't have his "A" game today -- he struggled through the first three innings, yet with some fielding help he managed to keep the Cubs in the game until the offense finally exploded in the fifth. Clement threw 100 pitches and lasted seven innings, which helped rest the bullpen for the weekend series against the Rockies.

Before the game, Al the Media Whore got interviewed for an article that's apparently going to appear in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times; I'll provide a link here if it is in fact printed. The article isn't about me or our group, it's actually about Holly, who sits in RCF and is a teacher and who is working on an academic book that's about the sociology of the community of the bleachers, which when you think about it is quite an interesting topic. If this all works out for her it'll be a college textbook.

So part of what she is doing is interviewing all of the regulars during the season on how we view the community, and I think many of you who are regular readers here know what I've written over the last couple of years about what my friends at the ballpark mean to me. Today, Holly talked to Jeff and me, and then Dave Newbart, the newspaper reporter (who as it turns out went to high school with our weekend morning anchor Kevin Roy, and he asked me to say hi to him), talked to Jeff and me about that interview and how we viewed what goes on in the bleachers, and there was also a photographer who took about 100 pictures, so maybe there'll be a picture of us in the paper too, including perhaps one of me snagging a BP home run, my first of the year.

Derrek Lee finally showed today the reason we were all so excited about getting him -- his best day as a Cub, 5-for-5 with a homer (the only extra-base hit among the 15 Cub hits today) and 5 RBI, raising his average 39 points, to .295. Just about everyone else hit today too, and by the time it got to the 8th inning, we were just silly. I wanted Matt Mantei (who's been so awful you can see why he's been removed as Arizona's closer) to strike out Sammy Sosa so he'd get the 2000th strikeout of his career (his next one) out of the way in a meaningless situation. Sosa singled. Howard wanted Tom Goodwin, batting for the pitcher, to get on base so that Todd Walker could bat again and thus bat in four consecutive innings. Nope on that one too -- Goodwin flew to center for the last out.

Alex Gonzalez apparently broke his hand on a ball pitched to him last night that was ruled a foul ball; he'll be out several weeks and tomorrow, Damian Jackson, who was signed at the end of spring training and had a decent year as a backup for the Red Sox last year, will be recalled from Iowa tomorrow. This article says that as a result, Mark Prior will be placed on the 60-day DL. Do not worry about this -- it's strictly a procedural move. Players on the 60-day DL don't count against the 40-man roster limit and this move allows Jackson, who was not on the 40-man roster, to be called up.

It started out warm with the wind blowing out which is why I was able to grab a BP ball, but by game time the wind had shifted off the lake, though it still wasn't cold, it definitely cooled off. Lee's homer was a line drive, and would have been out no matter what the wind. Game time temp was reported as 77, but it felt cooler, and it's going to be all weekend, with predicted temps in the 60's and a chance of rain each day -- it sprinkled for about five minutes again today, but I don't think we are going to be so lucky over the weekend. Again, they'll do everything they can to get the games in, as this is the only visit by the Rockies this season to Wrigley Field.

I don't have much to say about the absolutely idiotic decision by MLB to put a movie logo on the bases for a series next month (I won't even give that movie publicity here) -- only to say that I agree with this column by ESPN.com's Eric Neel -- it's a complete embarrassment. You mean there's not one person in the MLB office who'd say, "Uh, guys -- this is a pretty stupid idea?"

Guess not. And based on what I hear, it's not even making that much money -- anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per team, chump change for most, and the logo won't be visible to most of the fans in the ballparks, and certainly not on TV.

Bud Selig ought to be ashamed of himself.

Got an e-mail from my Phoenix friend John Aldrich, who clued me in on Jennie Finch:

You missed the whole Jennie Finch thing altogether. Not only is she the #1 softball pitcher in the world today (currently on the Olympic softball team), but she was also voted the hottest female athlete in the most recent ESPN poll, handily beating out Anna Kournikova.

Casey Daigle, who pitched last night, has heard all the cracks about how his fiancee throws harder than he does. She has struck out Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Luis Gonzales in exhibitions and none of them got so much as a foul ball off her.

Speaking of Daigle, he certainly has progressed from his debut a few weeks ago against the Cardinals when he gave up 5 HRs in 2+ innings of work. I bet he was glad to see the wind blowing in last night.

Trivia: Who was the last NL pitcher to give up 5 HRs in less than three innings pitched? That would be Cub broadcaster Steve Stone, 30 years ago, in 1974.

Finally, sign seen today, held up by a very large guy in the next section over:

Don't have the baby yet! I'll be home in a couple of hours!

:: posted by Al at 5:33 PM [+] ::
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I Hate Steve Finley

Now, I know what you're thinking. Finley's never done anything to me, he's never done anything "wrong" in baseball terms, and Jeff, who went to SIU and was a senior there when Finley was a freshman and even knew him a little bit, says he's a nice guy.

But man, does he kill the Cubs. He's been doing this for years, all the way back to his time in Houston and San Diego, up to and including last week's games in Phoenix, and tonight he was pretty much a one-man wrecking crew, driving in both D-back runs in a boring 2-0 Cub loss to Arizona, and note the headline on that ESPN article:

Jennie Finch's fiance scatters four hits

Do I care who Jennie Finch is? If you don't know, and I didn't, she's a star college softball player who is engaged to tonight's Arizona starter, Casey Daigle, who got his first major league win by indeed "scattering" those four hits over five and a third innings, though he got some help from his infield defense in the fifth, when Alex Gonzalez hit into a DP, and from that darn Finley, who was everywhere, including after Daigle was long gone, in the 8th in the moment that Mike described as "the moment you get even in a rather boring game", when the Cubs loaded the bases and Moises Alou sent a shot to left-center that Finley ran down.

Apart from that, Finley hasn't done anything against the Cubs this year, other than hit six home runs with eight hits, eight RBI and nine runs scored in the five games played. And he turned thirty-nine two months ago.

After tomorrow, the Cubs don't face the Diamondbacks any more this year. Good riddance.

The most interesting thing about tonight was a young couple who sat down in front of us, with a sign playing off the "Mastercard" theme. Most of those are pretty trite, but this one, I thought, was clever and charming (and I'm paraphrasing because I pride myself on writing these posts without taking notes and even though I asked the young woman about four times to show me the sign, I can't remember the precise wording):

Cost of bleacher tickets: $100

Cost of losing scholarship due to failing a midterm: $10,000

Getting to see the Cubs play tonight: priceless

OK, so it's not Shakespeare, but I thought it was nice. Even more interesting was the back of her sign, which was a large blow-up of a newspaper article about a baby girl who was born at the precise moment that the Cubs clinched the division in 1984, at a hospital in the south suburbs.

Took me a minute, but I realized -- this was that girl. Anyway, she and her boyfriend were nice people, but left disappointed like the rest of us.

The blame goes to Jeff, who had forgotten his light-up cap last night. He found it today but the battery was dead, and of course this cap takes some kind of specialized camera battery which he didn't have. Now, he's got two weeks to find one before the next night game.

Or, I could blame Joe, the gate chief in the bleachers tonight, who told me before we went in that the Cubs were 1-4 on days that he worked. Nothing against Joe, who's a nice guy, but I hope he's not there tomorrow!

So, the little voodoo doll that the group in RCF had, brought back by one of their number from New Orleans, had no effect. There were white pins stuck into it, and from my understanding those are supposed to be for good luck (they'd be black for bad luck), but the two pins stuck in for good luck for Kerry Wood had no effect on the rest of the team.

And thus we reach the real guilty parties, and blame the Cub offense, which simply could not move runners along tonight. No one reached till the fourth, and then it was all singles and walks; the Cubs left seven on base including that bases-loaded eighth, and to blame the cold weather would simply avoid the truth, that the ballclub seems overanxious (although somehow, Mr. Overanxious, Corey Patterson, actually drew a four-pitch walk tonight), swinging at everything and hitting it pretty much right at people. There was once again a foul ball (hit by Derrek Lee in the 9th) into the new seats behind the plate, but he flew out to center. The half-dozen or so balls that have gone into those seats have so far all resulted in outs, so the effect 12 games into the season is negligible.

The bottom line is this: when your starting pitcher throws seven innings of three-hit ball with eight strikeouts, at home, you ought to win. Oh, and Kyle Farnsworth got a sarcastic cheer when he threw a first-pitch strike to Luis Gonzalez and wound up striking him out. Then after walking Shea Hillenbrand and a force play by Finley, Farnsworth nearly blew an easy pickoff play by falling asleep while Finley got hung out to dry between first and second. Eventually he woke up and completed the pickoff. Kent Mercker also threw another efficient scoreless inning.

Dusty almost fell asleep too, because until the Cubs got a couple of runners on in the bottom of the 8th, Farnsworth was the only pitcher warming up. If Sammy Sosa had hit a three-run homer for the second night in a row, Farnsworth might have had to come in to close. Joe Borowski hurriedly got up, but didn't get into the game.

Tomorrow will be very different, and that's guaranteed because it's supposed to be near 80 degrees, with the wind blowing out, and a chance of storms by the end of the afternoon.

:: posted by Al at 10:21 PM [+] ::
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How To Amuse Yourself When Your Team Doesn't Show Up For The Game

Well, of course they "showed up", in a physical sense, but not in the metaphysical sense. About the sixth inning I told everyone this was just the practice game and the real one would begin about 9:00.

That's how it seemed, anyway, in tonight's listless 6-3 loss to the Diamondbacks, which was only that close because Sammy Sosa smacked his 546th career homer and 7th of the season with two men on base in the 8th. After that, their newly minted closer, Jose Valverde (who replaced Matt Mantei, who's been booed out of the BOB after starting the season with an 11.88 ERA), struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth to end it for his first save of the season.

So, it was pretty much all Diamondbacks. We were hoping that after Matt Kata singled, tripled and doubled in the first four innings, maybe he'd hit for the cycle and we'd see some history. No such luck, as he grounded out in the sixth and struck out in the 8th, though the scoreboard said "3 for 3 Triple, Double".

A triple-double? It only seemed like basketball, and maybe that's where the Cubs were tonight, watching an NBA playoff game or something. They sure didn't show up to play, despite the wind blowing out and balls flying out of the yard during BP, the two homers today -- Sosa's and Steve Finley's (and doesn't he love tormenting the Cubs?) needed no help from the wind.

So here's how we amused ourselves. Tonight was another scratch-off card giveaway -- a Mark Prior jersey.

Howard and I went dumpster-diving and found a few cards for the second-chance drawing. Well, a lot of cards, actually. Seventy of them, discarded along the way, including three that weren't scratched off at all. No winners. I even spotted one on the stairs on the way out, and called Howard to ask him if he wanted it.

Then Jon, Howard and I decided, since Robby Hammock was the starting catcher for Arizona, to figure out our All-Furniture Team. After Jim Davenport and Sammy Sofa, we gave up. OK, you can groan now.

Sergio Meat-Tray is rapidly pitching his way off the team; he couldn't get out of the fourth inning, and allowed five extra-base hits, including two doubles to Chad Tracy, who easily made up for the two errors he made in the field, and the Cubs wound up running their way out of the second one when Derrek Lee inexplicably took off with nobody out. Yes, there was no score at the time, but still.

Glendon Rusch (Limbaugh? OK, we were running out of puns) made his Cub debut, wearing the #33 that has been disgraced by such Cubs as Bill Bonham, and he was better at the plate than on the mound, singling in his first Cub at-bat. I suppose that he might be considered as a replacement for Mitre, but he balked in the sixth Arizona run.

And if he hadn't done that, maybe Sosa's 8th inning homer might have meant something, bringing the game to 5-3 instead of 6-3. This homer also followed a Todd Hollandsworth pinch-double, to the delight of four shirtless guys in the LF bleachers holding up a "Hollandsworth Fan Club" sign. We figured, yup, that's probably all of them.

If this is the worst the Cubs play all week, then that's OK. It's a good thing that Wood and Clement are pitching the next two days against more of the dregs of the D'backs pitching staff. About the third inning Mike asked me, "What the heck is he (Steve Sparks) throwing?"

I had to remind him that this was the same knuckleballing Sparks that used to pitch for the Tigers. It's been a while. This was his first win as a starter in almost two years.

I'll give the Cubs scoreboard operators credit for learning a little more about the new message boards. Today, before the game, they showed league leaders and the starting lineups. I said to Howard, "But I bet we still won't get hits or errors." We didn't.

But here, let me finish with something nice. The ivy's almost completely grown in, which is very unusual for the first week of May -- usually it takes till nearly the end of May for the ivy to be as full as it was tonight. I credit the unusually warm and sunny weather we've had all spring, which continued tonight, a pleasant evening despite the wind. This nice weather is supposed to continue all week, and even though there's a chance of scattered storms, it may be in the 80's all weekend.

Enough nice. Let's see the real Cubs, the ones who have been winning all year, show up tomorrow night.

:: posted by Al at 10:02 PM [+] ::
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Another Thought On The AC Sign

From blog reader Jonathan Rivet:

Yes, the sign is wrong.

But the 00 is correct. It has been 0 years since they won the division. At least, it hasn't been 1 full year.

The 59 and 96 are the numbers that are wrong. In order for it to say 96 now, it would have said 01 during the 1909 season. This is against their stated policy. Unless they're going to change 00 to 02 if the Cubs fail to win the division this year.

In any case, hopefully it says AC000000 (or AC010000) next year.

Point taken, and amen to that last statement.

:: posted by Al at 7:50 PM [+] ::
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This Sign Is Wrong!



Think about it logically. This well-known sign, on the roof of the Lakeview Baseball Club on Sheffield, just about directly behind where we sit in the RF bleachers, indicates how many years it's been since the Cubs have won a division title, NL pennant, and World Series.

2004 is 59 years since the pennant of 1945, and 96 years since the World Championship of 1908.

But in the LBC's weird math, it has been zero years since the division title of 2003.

They posted the "00" right after the division clincher last September, and it was indeed correct until 2003 ended.

Now, to be consistent, it should say "01". So I e-mailed them about this today and got the following response (and I'll bet they get this all the time, because it was addressed "To Whom It May Concern"):

The first set of numbers will read 00 until the Cubs fail to win the division championship. The year for the purpose of the sign, begins November 1st.

OK, that makes some sense. So it should have changed over on November 1, 2003, right?

Wrong, apparently. I stated that in a follow-up e-mail and got this answer:

The first 2 didgets will remain 00 until the Cubs fail to win their division. Thank you for your interest.

And yes, they did spell "digits" that way.

So I guess they'd rather be stupid than right. Hey, why not fill up their e-mail box? The e-mail address is lvbc@lakeviewbaseballclub.com.

I'm not the first member of the Cubs Blog Army to mention this, either. Brian Hipp of Cubs Now! wrote about this back on April 15. Maybe a concentrated CBA effort can change this mathematical error.

Having gotten this silliness out of the way, the Cubs completed their road trip today with a satisfying 7-3 win over the Cardinals. Sure, they should have won at least 3 of 4 in St. Louis, but given the dearth of wins there in recent years (5 of the last 31 before this season), we'll take it.

Greg Maddux finally looked like the Maddux of old today. Sure, he gave up a home run to Albert Pujols, but lots of good pitchers have done that, and there was no one on base, at least. Maddux didn't walk anyone, scattered six other hits (five singles and a double), scored twice, and stole his first base in two years (he's got six for his career, tops among all active pitchers). His second win of the year gave him 291 for his career, and he lowered his ERA to 5.05, throwing only 84 pitches in seven innings.

In fact, an oddity today -- both starting pitchers stole bases, but there was some bad baserunning otherwise on the part of the Cubs, who might have had even more than the seven runs, given the 11 hits and four walks this afternoon. Instead, the long ball was the weapon today, with Todd Walker, Derrek Lee and Sammy Sosa (#545, three short of Mike Schmidt for ninth place) all hitting two-run homers. Lee also singled and is showing signs of coming out of his usual April slump.

Sosa also struck out once, the 1998th of his career, and with two more will become only the third player in history to strike out 2000 times (Reggie Jackson, the career record holder with 2597, and Andres Galarraga, with precisely 2000). But you have to swing to hit the home runs, and at least for the last seven seasons, since 1998, Sammy has made many of the swings count.

Joe Borowski pitched an efficient ninth inning today, though not in a save situation. Perhaps he's finally getting back in last year's groove. I still wonder where Todd Wellemeyer has been, because he has pitched only once in the last 11 games. And we need twelve pitchers exactly why?

Pending the result of the Houston/Cincinnati game tonight, the Cubs will either be tied with the Astros or still a game behind, but at this stage, that really doesn't matter much. And even with the 3-4 road trip, the Cubs are 8-7 for the season on the road, and now coming home to play two teams with suspect pitching staffs, and the weather supposed to warm up between now and Sunday, this homestand could look a lot like the last one.

And maybe by then the LBC will see the truth in changing the number to "01".

:: posted by Al at 4:34 PM [+] ::
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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

This is a really simple concept, you'd think.

Throw strikes. The basic tenet behind pitching.

The failure to do so has now cost the Cubs two of the last three games, and Kyle Farnsworth in particular has to be sent back to the drawing board. Farnsworth is an enigma. He's got tremendous talent. He has a really bad haircut. OK, that's another story. You don't believe me? Look here:



Someone give that man a buzzcut! NOW!

Anyway, today, he threw 20 pitches, only six of them for strikes, and that's Rick Ankiel/Andy Pratt territory. Today, the winning run didn't get walked in, but a loss is a loss, and after Farnsworth walked the bases loaded, Scott Rolen singled, and the Cubs had a frustrating, 1-0, 10-inning loss to the Cardinals, which, coupled with Houston's 6-5 win over the Reds, put the Cubs a game out of first place, and hoping to gain a series split tomorrow. I think I'm really glad that Greg Maddux was moved up in place of Sergio Mitre to start tomorrow.

The bad pitching in the 10th ruined an absolute gem of a performance by Carlos Zambrano, who struck out a career-high twelve. Yes, he walked three, but that was in seven innings and a rather alarmingly high 122 pitches, rather than the 20-pitch travesty that was Kyle Farnsworth today.

Matt Morris, who said last fall that he would "lay down" for Houston because he hated the Cubs so much, let his own pitching talk today, allowing only four harmless Cub singles. The last two innings turned into a bunt-fest, with of all people, Derrek Lee laying down a bunt -- the first sac of his career. This is silly. You've got a guy with 30-HR potential and he's laying down bunts?

And I have to lay part of the blame at the feet of Sammy Sosa and Moises Alou, because after Corey Patterson reached in the ninth with one out, both Sosa and Alou swung at, and made outs on, the first pitch they saw. I know Dusty Baker is preaching "aggressiveness", but this is ridiculous. The Cubs let Morris off the hook there, and paid for it in extra innings. Morris threw 112 pitches, ten fewer than Zambrano, in two more innings pitched, and this is clearly a result of -- well, first, throwing strikes, and second, the Cub hitters not working counts.

I spent the first three innings at a piano recital. Yes, that's right, a piano recital for both my kids, Mark ("A Quiet Song") and Rachel ("My Valentine"), and both played well, and I note in particular that neither brought their sheet music, but played from memory. That'd have been better if Mark hadn't actually forgotten his sheet music, which he had intended to bring. Afterwards, they didn't really care about the congratulations -- all they were out for was the cookies and brownies laid out.

Then I learned (as if I didn't know already) that Rachel really doesn't like listening to the games on the radio. No, it has nothing to do with Ron Santo. She's just not a baseball fan, though she's lately taken to yelling "Go! Team! Hail Mary!" any time she sees something interesting happening when a game's on TV.

This was really funny the first time, but as you can imagine, by the 40th time, it got kind of old.

I imagine the Cubs will be glad to see Wrigley Field on Tuesday for the first night game of the season against the Richie Sexson-less Diamondbacks, and the weather appears ready to cooperate, with temperatures in the 80's again by late in the week.

Let us hope the Cubs' bats are just as hot.

:: posted by Al at 4:50 PM [+] ::
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