"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, July 24, 2004 ::

Napster

That's what I was today.

I felt tired after I got home from work (yes, I work at the usual early hour on Saturdays), so I had an hour nap.

After that I went and watched my son Mark's Park District Diamondback team take apart a Cubs team (how poetic, right?) 22-7 (hey, it's Park District ball, where if you get a kid who can't quite pitch, it becomes a walk-fest), advancing to the next playoff game tomorrow.

Since the Cub game wasn't scheduled to start till 2:15 I figured I'd take another nap before the game, which I did.

Guess the Cubs decided nap-time was a good idea today, because they pretty well sleepwalked through a frustrating 4-3 loss to the Phillies, dropping their record in one-run games to 13-18 (as opposed to 27-17 all of 2003).

Oh, that's not the worst of it, either. The eventual winning runs were driven in by Phillies pitcher Paul Abbott, who in an 11-year career mostly spent in the American League with Seattle and Minnesota, had been 4-for-17 lifetime with zero RBI, on a two-run single off Carlos Zambrano.

Z was actually pretty good today, inducing quite a few ground balls, which is his trademark. Unfortunately, in the first inning he was a little too good, and leadoff hitter Jimmy Rollins hit a roller that simply wouldn't roll, got on base and eventually scored. Rollins was one of Fox-TV's "Sounds of the Game" people, and I happened to notice that he was wearing his microphone even up at bat. This has got to be uncomfortable for a hitter, because it's not just a microphone, it's got a battery pack and antenna attached. Where do you put this? And wouldn't it interfere with sliding?

Wendell Kim was another of Fox's mike targets today, and they put him on the air right after Corey Patterson advanced to third base on a wild pitch. What Wendell said to Corey was pretty well incomprehensible -- I think, and so did Fox announcer Steve Lyons, that he was trying to tell Corey something about the way the ball bounces off the back wall in the new Philly ballpark, but it came out as gibberish, and not because the antenna on the microphone pack wasn't working.

Didn't matter. Corey got stranded at third base, as did every other Cub runner who didn't hit a home run today.

This is getting ridiculous. The Cubs have hit six home runs the last two days, and scored a grand total of eight runs on those homers. It's not so bad to rely on the long ball, as Earl Weaver's Baltimore teams did for years -- but there's a difference. Weaver's players also coaxed lots and lots of walks -- year after year, leading the AL in walks -- and so scored tons of runs when the Robinsons, or Boog Powell, or later Ken Singleton, homered.

This Cub team can't seem to figure out how to do this. They also can't seem to figure out how to score runners who do get into scoring position. Patterson, as noted above, got stranded at third with two out -- that was in the third inning. Mark Grudzielanek was at second with one out in the fifth -- nothing doing. There was a great opportunity after Michael Barrett singled pinch-runner Ramon Martinez to third with one out in the eighth -- all that was needed was a simple fly ball to tie the game. Nope -- Alex Gonzalez hit into a double play.

Then there was the ninth, the inning that'd have made me tear my hair out, if I had any. Tom Goodwin looked like he was going to have a typical lousy at-bat, looking at two strikes right down the middle. But he worked the count full, and then doubled off of Jim Thome's glove. Scoring position with nobody out. Great, right?

Nope again. Grudz couldn't lay down a bunt. Patterson struck out and looked typically bad doing it (now 86 strikeouts in 364 at-bats, nearly one out of every four times), and then...

Remember yesterday when I wrote that it'd be interesting to see Joe West, long-time Cub hater, as the plate umpire with Z pitching? Nothing at all out of the ordinary happened during Z's 6.1 innings, and 67 of Z's 104 pitches were strikes.

Nope, he had us all fooled. Joe waited till the game was on the line. On a 3-1 pitch to Sammy Sosa that was at least a foot outside, West called strike two. And did he do this right away? No, he waited till Sammy had dropped the bat and was twenty feet down the line, to embarrass him even more. Everyone in the ballpark and watching on TV and even the Fox-TV announcers, knew that was ball four.

Fox-TV didn't have such a good day either. They lost the feed from Philadelphia for a few minutes, and when they tried to switch back, lo and behold, there was the St. Louis/San Francisco game for a couple of outs. That'd have been more worth watching, anyway: the Giants blew a 3-2 ninth-inning lead, but won it in 10, 5-3 over the Cardinals, so the Cubs remain nine back in the division race, and pending the result of tonight's Dodgers/Padres game, either one or two behind in the wild-card standings.

We'll see Mark Prior throw tomorrow. Hold your breath, everyone.

:: posted by Al at 5:50 PM [+] ::
...

Catching Up

This is what I wind up doing on days after homestands end, because with work and the ballgames every day, things wind up getting let go, piled up, you know the drill.

So, I spent the morning running errands, and I just know you're interested in the highlights:

* I took my umbrella to the dry cleaners in the neighborhood, hoping that they could fix it, rather than have to send it to a luggage store. Luckily, the nice Korean ladies who run the place said they could. Charge: $3.

* A couple of weeks ago I lost a piece of my sunglasses, which one of the local sunglasses shops said they could order in a week. Well, it's been two weeks. They said it was backordered, which means waiting another week.

* Then, a trip to the gas station and the car wash, re-stocking on low-carb chocolate bars, a run through the drive-through ATM, and back to catch up on snail-mail.

* And, discussing some moves for one of my fantasy league teams, including dropping Magglio Ordonez (who went back on the DL today) and picking up Eric Chavez. I was actually upset when I checked another of my teams and realized the two moves I made last night, supposedly to take effect today, didn't happen -- because one of them was picking up Dustin Hermanson, who's pitching for the Giants tonight against the Cardinals.

Oh, well.

After all this, it was time to relax and sit down and watch the Cubs try to catch up as well, which they did with a decisive 5-1 win over the Phillies in their first visit to the new ballpark in Philadelphia tonight. And, since the Cardinals lost to the Giants 7-2, the Cubs picked up a game in the division race -- and you'll see below why I'm mentioning this, rather than hoping the Giants, who are ahead of the Cubs in the wild-card race, would have lost this game.

(And besides, I can't root for the Cardinals anyway.)

As advertised, the park is homer-friendly. Three Cubs went deep -- Derrek Lee (#17), Moises Alou (#25), and Sammy Sosa (#19, and career homer #558, putting him five behind Reggie Jackson for 8th place on the all-time list).

It didn't start auspiciously tonight -- I was watching weather radars (so sue me, I'm a weather geek) and tonight's Mets/Braves game in New York was rained out, but the rain cleared through Philadelphia a couple of hours before game time, though Chip and Steve reported at the beginning of the telecast that the rain was falling so hard that, among other things, it prevented three of the four scheduled umpires from making it for the start of the game. The only major league umpire who took the field for the first pitch was vacation replacement Darren Spagnardi, though Mike DiMuro arrived in the middle innings. Perhaps the Cubs should be thankful for this, because veteran Cub-hater Joe West was scheduled to be one of the other umpires, and based on the listed positions in the boxscore, West should be the plate umpire tomorrow.

Joe West, plate umpire; Carlos Zambrano, starting pitcher. This oughta be good.

Tonight, the Cubs got lucky that Jim Thome had taken a cortisone shot and so was sitting firmly anchored to the bench while Chase Utley, normally a second baseman, played first. Even so, Kerry Wood looked pretty bad in the first inning, as the first three batters reached base on a triple, single (scoring a run) and a walk.

But Wood settled down after that, and that was all the Phillies wrote; they had only four hits after the first inning, and though Kerry walked four, he finished a businesslike six innings with 100 pitches, and the bullpen, featuring an inning each from Jon Leicester (who has rapidly become one of the go-to guys in the pen), Mike Remlinger and Kyle Farnsworth, finished the Phillies off easily, once again having a staff total of ten strikeouts (Wood: 6, Leicester: 1, Remlinger: 1, and Farnsworth: 2).

Philadelphia's been suffering from Cub Offense Disease recently and frankly, I'm glad the Cubs gave it to someone else and have had their own bats wake up.

Tonight, Dusty finally relented and started Todd Walker at second base and led him off and guess what? Walker walked. He didn't score, but Dusty -- this is the point of a leadoff man, getting him on base. Walker didn't reach base the rest of the evening, but I hope Baker will stick with him for at least a few more games, and hope he gets hot.

I was reminded today in the Cubs newsgroup that there was another team that blew a ten-game divisional lead, and from almost exactly this point in the season. The calendar date was July 22; 97 games had been played, and the team leading had a 65-32 record and the team trailing had a 55-42 record, exactly ten games behind.

You might be wondering why I didn't mention the team names there, and you'll understand why after I tell you.

The year was 1993.

The trailing team was the Atlanta Braves, who went 49-16 and finished 104-58.

The leading team was the San Francisco Giants, who went 38-27 and finished 103-59, one of the best records ever to not make the postseason.

That was the first year Dusty Baker managed the Giants. He's got one of these coming to him, wouldn't you say?

:: posted by Al at 8:51 PM [+] ::
...

Commencing Countdown, Engines On

For you Greg Maddux fans out there (and who isn't, these days?), here is, barring rainouts or injury, his schedule of starts through the end of August:

Tuesday, July 27 at Milwaukee
Sunday, August 1 vs. Philadelphia at home (first chance at #300)
Saturday, August 7 at San Francisco
Friday, August 13 vs. Los Angeles at home
Thursday, August 19 at Milwaukee
Tuesday, August 24 vs. Milwaukee at home
Sunday, August 29 vs. Houston at home

And darned if he's not looking exactly like he's going to have a repeat of his spectacular second half last year. In his second start since the All-Star break, Maddux put on another show, walking no one, making several really nice plays in the field, allowing only four hits (two of them nearly identical foul-line-scraping homers by, of all people, .182-hitting catcher Javier Valentin), and the Cubs' bats woke up and they beat the Reds in a no-brainer, 13-2, Maddux' ninth win of the year and 298th of his career.

Greg worked quickly, which is his trademark, and that was a good thing, with the forecast of rain by mid-afternoon. We saw ominous clouds building to the south all day -- Howard, who wasn't at the game, called me and said it was pouring at his office on the near south side, and looked even darker to the south, but it didn't start raining at the ballpark till the 8th inning, at which time it got so windy it inside-outed my umbrella, which is one of those double-hung jobs that's supposed to be resistant to winds like that. However, with the help of Bill the security guard and a couple who sat in front of us with their son (and the dad kept score in a very neat fashion the entire game), I managed to get it bent back in place, only to find that the fabric had been ripped off one of the ribs. Off to the repair shop tomorrow!

Before the rain began, it was the hottest day of the year at the ballpark -- though game time temperature was reported as 89, it was getting cloudy by then, but when the gates opened at 11:20, it was sunny and humid, and hard even to put the sunscreen on, it was so sweaty. After the clouds rolled in (and some off to the south, as Howard said, looked like the kind of clouds that produce funnels) and the wind shifted from east to west, the oppressive heat ended.

With Howard having to work today, I decided to walk over to the Jimmy John's near the ballpark and get my own sandwich, and perform the tomato ceremony myself. It landed across the fifth and sixth innings, but it could have been anywhere today, as the Cubs scored in six of the eight innings, including homers from Moises Alou in back-to-back innings (the 2nd and 3rd) and the grand slam by Aramis Ramirez that put the game away in the sixth. This was one batter after Derrek Lee had been hit by a Ryan Wagner pitch. The benches had been warned an inning earlier after Cory Lidle (for you numerologists out there, this is the second consecutive start where Maddux has faced a pitcher wearing #15, and that will become three in a row when he faces Ben Sheets again in Milwaukee on Tuesday) had floated a breaking ball that headed toward Moises Alou's head, but I think the umpires realized Wagner was just wild, plus, with rain coming, I think they felt that ejecting him would have simply made for an unnecessary delay to warm up a new pitcher, and with the score at that time already 8-2, I think they made the wise decision to let the game continue.

By the middle innings nearly everyone on both teams was swinging away at the first or second pitch, knowing that the rain was coming and it was getaway day. Had there been a delay, I probably would have left -- I cannot imagine the umpires would have continued a 12-2 or 13-2 game after the required 75-minute wait.

Sammy Sosa drove in the final run of the day, in a moderate rain, after a Jose Macias single and a wild pitch, prompting this e-mail from Mike:

An RBI single for the 13th run?! Must've been a drizzle.

Well, it pretty much was, right at that point.

Jeff felt ill this morning and decided not to come, and the Cubs are now 5-0 in games he has missed this year. No, he's not going to be allowed to skip the rest of the season. This has to be saved for special occasions.

One of the weirder things of the day was looking up at the scoreboard and seeing eleven day games listed (and there was a twelfth played today, SD & SF, that wasn't on the board) -- that's the most I can remember on a weekday in probably 20 years. It's certainly due to the odd two-game series schedule this week and the fact that it was getaway day for just about every team in baseball. Among the other obsessive things that I do, I like to keep track of out-of-town scores, pitching changes, etc. on the back of my scorecard where the teams and pitchers are listed, and it was a busy day with several high-scoring games.

I can't say enough about Maddux, who threw even fewer pitches today (92) than he had in his CG on Saturday. Just to show you how competitive he is, he slammed his bat to the ground after popping up a bunt with runners on first and second and nobody out in the fourth and the score only 3-1 at the time. I imagine he felt lots better when Mark Grudzielanek hit a three-run homer on the very next pitch.

This is the first time Maddux has thrown back-to-back complete games since September, 2000, and the only other Cub who has thrown a CG this year is Carlos Zambrano, who threw a two-hit shutout against the Rockies on May 7.

Maddux' comeback couldn't come at a better time, and neither could the offensive explosion. The Cubs have now started what was the envisioned opening day lineup for four days in a row, and everyone got a hit today, even Paul Bako. The pitching matchups for this weekend, which will be the Cubs' first and only visit to Philadelphia this year:

Friday: Kerry Wood vs. Brett Myers
Saturday: Carlos Zambrano vs. Paul Abbott
Sunday: Mark Prior vs. Eric Milton

all favor the Cub bats, and based on half a season's results, (Insert Corporate Name Here) Park in Philadelphia is a launching pad for homers -- it ranks fifth in most homers per game, or fourth among all parks not located in Denver.

Incidentally, late today both Zambrano and LaTroy Hawkins were suspended for their tantrums earlier this week, Hawkins for three games and Zambrano for five. The Hawkins suspension seems justified, given that he was about to attack an umpire. The Zambrano suspension seems overblown. Both, obviously, will be appealed. Incidentally, Kerry Wood has yet to serve his suspension from April.

For now, never mind that. It's time to build this two-game winning streak into something big.

:: posted by Al at 5:44 PM [+] ::
...

One Day At A Time

Remember yesterday I decided to give the Tomato Inning a day off?

Today, I wasn't even sure I'd get a sandwich, since Howard decided not to come and gave his ticket to his son Jon, and I had asked him to tell Jon to get me a sandwich if he was stopping -- but when Jeff (who along with Krista is living with Jon in Howard's building) woke up today, Jon and his dog were gone.

Turns out they had gone to stay with Jon's girlfriend, because the dog gets scared during thunderstorms (of which they had a loud one last night) and Jon was doing Jeff a favor, because otherwise the dog burrows in with Jeff.

Too Much Information. Right?

Anyway, that's more or less irrelevant, except that no one could get in touch with Jon today. When I ran into him outside the 7-11 before the game, he had in fact brought a sandwich.

So I let him do the honors of holding my scorecard and moving it around while I dropped the tomato.

It landed on the exact square where Sammy Sosa hit the game-winning homer.

Or, as Mike e-mailed me:

Forget the damn tomato, find something that provides a driving rain whenever Sammy bats in the late innings.

This, of course, recalls the homer he hit to the opposite field against the White Sox on July 3, into a rain that was falling even harder than today's.

Sammy's 18th homer, and 557th of his career, won the game today, as the Cubs came from behind twice to beat the Reds 5-4 and reclaim second place in the NL Central, stop a three-game losing streak, and generally look pretty good.

Today's other superstitions: I decided it was time to bring out a brand new scoring pencil, which I did, and of course, now I must wear today's cap of choice (my 2004 Cub Convention cap) until they lose. Yes, I will change my underwear. (Too Much Information, right?)

This despite Matt Clement playing Haz-Matt in the first inning, giving up a bunt single and then two more hard-hit balls, resulting in a 2-0 deficit, and then after the Cubs tied the game on Moises Alou's 21st homer in the third, giving it right back with two homers, including a rocket onto Waveland by Jason LaRue.

Clement pretty well settled down after that, and Derrek Lee tied the game with a two-run bomb of his own in the sixth, resulting in what Jon and I felt was a nice pattern on the scoreboard:

REDS 200 200
CUBS 002 002

I figured it was time the pattern was broken in the seventh and it was. It started raining hard in the top of the inning, and I think the umpires let the half-inning finish because the game was tied, and it was almost like what they did in that White Sox game on July 3, play the inning as if it were the top of the 9th. Unlike that game, I believe they knew the game would be resumed at some point.

It took the ground crew a while to dry out the infield, and the RF bullpen had nearly a foot of water in it (though it drained fairly quickly), and not two minutes after play resumed, it started raining hard again. That's when Sammy smacked the homer into the LF basket right below the family section -- that's a place that never even used to have a basket until seats were put there in the 1980's.

It didn't rain for too long, and the game was never held up, despite a prolonged visit to the mound by Reds manager Dave Miley, who was clearly trying to stall the umpires into delaying the game again.

Phil was happy today because Todd Wellemeyer got into the game. I told him it was only because the rest of the bullpen had pretty well been used up yesterday, and he was nearly beside himself when LaTroy Hawkins came in to throw the ninth; he kept saying "Keep Wellemeyer out there!"

Wellemeyer had thrown extremely well, and got his first win of the season as a result, but we told him that, for better or worse, Hawkins is still the closer and thus, you have to put him in, because what kind of message are you sending to your players if you don't?

Hawkins had himself a good outing, giving up a harmless single to Adam Dunn and striking out two, including D'Angelo Jimenez to end the game. Incidentally, the last out that Wellemeyer got before the rain delay astonished us; it was a called third strike on John Vander Wal that looked for all the world like it was about a foot out of the strike zone. However, we will take it.

I must issue an apology here to a reader of this blog whose name I did not quite get -- I think it was Mike Hall or Mike Hull; he came up and introduced himself during the rain delay, and I was so focused on keeping me and the scorecard dry that I just said "Hi, and thanks for reading!", and I'm sorry, Mike, I really would have loved to talk to you some more, considering you came all the way from Orlando to see the game. If by chance you are in the bleachers tomorrow, stop on by and we'll talk some more. That is, if it's not raining, and the forecast for tomorrow is much like today's.

During the 8th inning we saw Jon Leicester, who had been sent down when Mike Remlinger was activated, warming up in the bullpen, and we knew a roster move must have been made. It was. Francis Beltran, whose command has been poor over the last few outings, was sent back to Iowa, which is a smart move. Beltran has tremendous ability, but I think, and apparently the Cubs agree, that he needs a little more seasoning before he is thrust into a major league pennant race. The Cubs also traded Ricky Gutierrez, who has been at Iowa, to Boston for a PTBNL, and no, that's not going to be Nomar, unless this is part of a larger deal to come.

And this still is a pennant race, everyone. Do not lose hope. Do not give up. A year ago this coming Saturday, July 24, the Cubs had just been swept in a two-game series by the Phillies at home, and looked bad doing it (Kerry Wood had given up eight runs in an eventual nine-run inning), and were 50-51, in third place, 5.5 games out and 7.5 out of the wild-card lead. Incidentally, on that date Sammy Sosa hit his 21st homer of the year, and today's, as I mentioned, was his 18th. I'm still waiting for him to go on one of his patented hot streaks.

Now would be the time. Now would be the time for someone, anyone, to carry this team for a week.

:: posted by Al at 6:43 PM [+] ::
...

The Beginning Of The End

Dusty Baker has a reputation as a great motivator of baseball players, and his teams have repeatedly shown resilience in the face of sometimes seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Well, this one's probably the biggest mountain he's ever had to climb, and I'll go through all the reasons for that in a moment.

Just to give you an example of how ridiculous today was, a very large, very drunk man and his equally drunk wife were sitting across the aisle from us waving two medium-size Cub flags the whole game. This normally wouldn't be a problem, except as they got drunker they started waving them in Jeff's face. After a while he got sick of this and grabbed them away, a reasonable reaction, I thought.

Of course, being drunk, the guy got ornery, threatened Jeff (and Howard, who is about the most peaceable man I know) with the usual "Meet me outside" nonsense, then said he was going to go get security.

After having told the whole story to the paramedics stationed at the stairs (instead of security -- hey, they had uniforms on, right?), security did come and got all four of them, brought them downstairs to talk about it, and everyone came back peacefully; the flags were put away, and Howard said, defusing all the tension: "Both benches have been warned."

There's no good way to put this, so I'm just going to say it. The Cubs blew a six-run, sixth-inning lead in about the worst way imaginable and lost to the Cardinals 11-8, and you know how we've been complaining that we can't catch up because we don't play them again?

Forget it. Good riddance. 11-8 was also the final result of the season series between the Cardinals and Cubs, and frankly, considering St. Louis is 59-34, that means the Cubs actually played them pretty well (they are 48-26 against everyone other than the Cubs so far this year).

It started out so well, too. Though I ran into traffic on Lake Shore Drive (explain to me, please, why the city chooses the afternoon of a ballgame to water the plants in the median between Belmont and Fullerton, causing a huge backup?), I managed to find an almost-too-small parking space, but wedged myself in, allowing about three inches on either side of my car. Meanwhile, Howard was running late and though he did bring me a sandwich, he didn't arrive till after game time so I declared that the Tomato Inning would be taking today off. Everyone agreed that this might be just the thing that would spur the Cubs on -- and note the power of the tomato, the Cubs had a seven-run inning anyway. That's the second inning of seven or more runs the Cubs have had against the Cardinals this year, chasing Matt Morris, who had his shortest and worst outing of the season, only an inning and two-thirds.

So far so good, right?

Yeah, it was terrific until the sixth, when Glendon Rusch, who had pretty well run smoothly (except for the first of Albert Pujols' three homers in the third), gave up three little bleeder hits, any and all of which could have and should have been turned into outs, and with the bases loaded and Rusch at 105 pitches, Dusty decided he'd had enough and called on Francis Beltran, who for the second time this week couldn't find the strike zone.

Phil kept saying, "Where's Todd Wellemeyer?" and I have to agree with him. Once again, the Cubs are carrying twelve pitchers and why bother doing this if you are not going to use them? Wellemeyer stayed anchored to the bench, as he's been since his recall last weekend, and the rest of the pen imploded badly -- eleven hits and nine runs in the last four innings. Pujols did it almost singlehandedly, going five-for-five with the three homers, and five RBI, and four runs scored, and... need I go on?

It's really simple. Contending teams should not blow six-run leads with twelve outs to go. Period. Dave was saying this even into the eighth inning, when the Cubs had an 8-7 lead with the dreaded (ever since NLCS game six) five outs to go. Then So Taguchi, who isn't much taller than Wendell Kim, smacked an opposite-field homer onto Waveland to tie the game. Then LaTroy Hawkins melted down pitching, allowing two homers, and then inexplicably had a temper tantrum in front of plate umpire Tim Tschida -- so bad that it took nearly half the team to push him away. I imagine he'll be fined and perhaps suspended. Hawkins was great in the setup role, but he's really not suited to be a closer, and this may be something Jim Hendry has to address soon. More on this anon.

Speaking of Kim, he apologized "to the entire city of Chicago" today for sending Aramis Ramirez home last night, probably costing the Cubs the game. Yeah, I bet all the Sox fans are really happy about that apology today. Seriously, it's time for Kim to go, or at the very least, if loyalty really is an issue, why not just switch him and Gene Clines as base coaches? I have no idea how good Clines would be as a 3B coach, but the point is -- he could hardly be any worse than Kim.

Dave and I got to talking late in the game about how this team badly needs a shakeup, like the one they got just about this time a year ago with the acquisitions of Kenny Lofton and Ramirez. He suggested that a bold move could be to try to pry away Ichiro Suzuki and Eddie Guardado away from Seattle. There have been rumors about Ichiro for a couple of months, and Guardado and Hawkins were a good tag-team in Minnesota. It'd cost Corey Patterson and probably Angel Guzman and maybe even Felix Pie, and though those are the crown jewels of the Cub farm system, I'd do it, because it could jump-start this club, which even with this latest string of losses, still is in the pile of teams that refuses to sort itself out in the wild-card race. I'd do something just that bold if I were Jim Hendry, because this club seems to be crushed under the weight of the expectations that were put on it before the season began, the pick of Sports Illustrated and others to win the World Series (and SI, thanks again -- and yes, I'm being sarcastic -- for putting Kerry Wood on the cover and costing him two months. Say! How about a cover this week featuring Scott Rolen and Albert Pujols!), and if this miracle is to happen, it had better start now.

Incidentally, for perspective: On this date one year ago, the eventual World Champion Marlins were 50-48, 15.5 games out of first place, and tied for fifth in the wild-card race, with Montreal, five games behind the Phillies, who led it at the time. The Marlins went 41-23 from that point. It can be done.

Mark Prior threw without pain today and if he feels good after this, he'll start on Sunday at Philadelphia. It's time for him to step up -- right now, he's been about the worst starter we have, and though of course you don't want to ruin him for the rest of his career, if there's no structural damage, perhaps he just has to pitch through it like just about every pitcher out there, almost all of whom will tell you they throw through aches and pains all year. If Prior does indeed have the "perfect mechanics" that everyone speaks of, then let's step up.

Someone else who has to step up is Sammy Sosa, who went 0-for-5 today and looked really bad doing it and actually got booed when he popped up on the second pitch he saw in the ninth inning, after it was clear that if you waited out Jason Isringhausen, he was going to put people on base, which he did with a single and two walks. Dave said right then, "This could turn the season around right here," if Aramis Ramirez could have pulled it out with a miracle grand slam, but he wasn't patient either.

There seemed more Cardinal fans in the ballpark today than last night, or indeed for any of the other home games against St. Louis this year, and it got lots louder from them in the ninth, by which time the park was about as empty as I've seen it this year.

The Reds beat the Brewers 6-2 today, so the Cubs fall behind them into third place.

But they can do something about that tomorrow, with the Reds coming to town for another abbreviated two-game series. I think tomorrow will be a good day to bring out a new scorekeeping pencil. The current one seems to have run out of luck.

We continue to hope. As Cubs fans, you know we cannot do otherwise. Keep the faith.

:: posted by Al at 6:42 PM [+] ::
...

Wendell Kim Must Go

How many more of these is it going to take for Jim Hendry to call Dusty Baker in and tell him his pet coach has to go?

This one was so obvious and blatant that virtually every one of the 40,033 in attendance tonight (and incidentally, that's a highly suspicious number, since it was identical to the reported paid attendance on Saturday) knew that Kim had made a mistake.

If you didn't see it, Aramis Ramirez had led off the sixth inning with the Cubs' tenth hit of the game, a line-drive double into the LF corner. Michael Barrett followed with what another announcer in town might have called a duck -- well, you know.... into right field, just in between Reggie Sanders, Tony Womack and Albert Pujols, none of whom could reach it.

Ramirez doesn't have great speed to begin with and he's just coming off a groin injury. And if he stays at third base, the Cubs have two runners on, nobody out, a tie game, the crowd into it and Alex Gonzalez, who had doubled in his last at-bat, coming to the plate, and maybe the Cardinals get their bullpen up.

Nope. Ol' Wavin' Wendell strikes again, sends Ramirez, who is thrown out easily, and that took the air out of the crowd and the Cubs; instead of two on and none out, there's a runner on first and one out and Gonzalez promptly hit into a double play, and though the game was still tied, you knew that was it, and indeed it was, as Scott Rolen's homer in the eighth gave the Cardinals a 5-4 win over the sinking Cubs, clinching the season series over the Cubs with their 10th win to the Cubs' eight, putting the Cubs nine games out of first place and making tomorrow's game, now to be pitched by Glendon Rusch, as Mark Prior is going to throw a simulated game instead.

We tried everything tonight. Devoted reader Chad Savage, having just gotten married, arrived in the bleachers with his new bride Regina tonight, having spent way too much (OK, if you really want to know, $130 a ticket) to come and sit with us, and I enjoyed meeting the two of them. I even had Chad do the honors for tonight's Tomato Inning (holding my scorecard and moving it around while I did the ceremonial drop).

The tomato works in mysterious ways. The only square on which anyone batted where it dropped was Corey Patterson's double play in the third. But two innings later, the bats exploded, thus making up for the two innings early that it had worked yesterday, when Jose Macias homered in the at-bat prior to the tomato square. I also, just before I left for the game, ate the tomato that Jeff's friend Mark had brought me yesterday. I couldn't remember the last time the Cubs had five hits in an inning, and it had the crowd rocking, that is, until Wavin' Wendell threw a wet blanket over everything.

That was after Carlos Zambrano had provided some excitement by hitting Jim Edmonds in the first inning. There's been bad blood between these teams since last year, and there's no love lost between Tony LaRussa and Dusty Baker. The hit batsman wasn't intentional -- in the first, Z didn't have any control, having walked two before the HBP. He got out of it nicely and after that settled down, giving up only a monster homer to Edmonds in his next at-bat, one that flew to the CF side of us onto the street, one of the longest ones I can ever remember being hit to RF. Z was throwing well until the eighth, when he got in trouble by walking Tony Womack for the second time (if Womack had been this good last August and September, he might still be a Cub), and after the Scott Rolen homer that iced the game, you knew Z was going to let his emotions get the best of him. He had appeared to be yelling and screaming at Edmonds after he had hit the long homer, perhaps justifiably so since Edmonds stood there and admired it, something pitchers absolutely hate -- and that's when the benches emptied, to the usual effect of having all the players mill around for a few minutes screaming at each other. So, in the eighth, he plunked Edmonds again, getting himself (and Dusty) tossed and getting the Cardinals out of their dugout again, though that was short-lived.

I had just about to tell everyone that Z was showing a lot of heart when he did this. I do think that Z wears his heart on his sleeve, but sometimes he lets his emotions get the best of him, and if he could only harness that energy into his pitching, he'd be nearly unstoppable.

My son Mark came to the game tonight, and I made the mistake of letting him keep score with one of the pencils I got in Houston. I figured it was acquired at a victory, so it was safe. Never again. Jessica also brought a child -- no, not hers, her nephew Jamie, who seemed most interested in the stories that Howard and I had to tell about the ball we threw back instead of Rafael Furcal's home run last July. I had called Jeff earlier to remind him to bring his light-up cap, which had brought us good luck in night games last year, but it didn't have any effect tonight. I may have to resort to something drastic, like changing scoring pencils.

The crowd turned ugly in the eighth, as a huge fight broke out near the juniper bushes in CF, resulting in at least six people being ejected, one of whom fought the security guards all the way down the stairs next to us on the way to Cubbie Jail. Even after that, when Alex Gonzalez walked in the ninth to put the tying run on, the crowd got back into the game, only to see Todd Walker hit into a game-ending DP, after he also thought he had walked on a 3-1 pitch, and flung his bat away, only to be sent back to the batter's box by plate umpire Tim Tschida.

Seriously, umpires hate that kind of thing. Mike has said to me many times, and I agree, that no hitter should take first base on a walk until the umpire says, "Take your base." (or whatever it is that major league umpires say in that situation) Doing the bat-flinging thing on a borderline pitch is only going to get the next borderline call to go against you.

I'm going to pick a bit at Michael Barrett tonight, despite his two hits... he also had two passed balls, neither of which had an effect on the scoring (the first one was in the scoreless first inning, the other was irrelevant because the runner scored on a home run), but this sort of thing is eventually going to lose ballgames for you.

With the Giants beating the awful Diamondbacks tonight (and how in the world I could have picked them to win the NL West, I'll never know), the Cubs drop two games behind in the wild-card race, dropping also a game behind the Padres, who beat up on Colorado. There are still seventy games left, so it's way too early to panic.

The bottom line is, however, that as a fan you can take a loss if your pitcher doesn't pitch well or if your hitters don't hit.

When your third-base coach takes you out of the game and has made a pattern of doing this for nearly two years, it's time make a change.

Come on, Dusty & Jim. Show us you mean business. Let Wendell go.

:: posted by Al at 9:57 PM [+] ::
...

Writer's Block

Well, it finally happened. I got home and I simply could not figure out what to write about today's disastrous, depressing, deflating, disheartening, dispiriting, distressing (can you tell I got the thesaurus out today?) 4-2 Cub loss to the Brewers.

So, I went out to the gas station, which I could have put off till tomorrow, and drove around a bit, and here I am, still shaking my head in disbelief that yet another stellar pitching performance, this time by Kerry Wood, was wasted.

Before I talk about the game, a little rant about bleacher etiquette.

[begin rant]

All the time, those of us who are there every day or nearly so, see the one-timers who show up after game time and expect to get a seat. Security usually gently informs them that the bleacher ticket is general admission, and does not guarantee a seat -- it's either seats or standing room. The bleachers have been oversold for years (at least in terms of the number of tickets sold compared to the number of actual seats), and even though the number of people standing at the fence wasn't that large today, there were a few people who were standing behind us when the game started. It must have been crowded elsewhere -- today's announced paid crowd of 39,911 made the series total 160,035, a new Wrigley Field record for a four-game series.

Anyway, just after game time a guy came up and broke the unwritten etiquette, which I will present to you now.

We were holding a seat for Brian, who I eventually reached on the phone to find out that he had to work overtime, when this guy came up and said, "I'm taking this seat in five minutes."

Well, that instantly causes dislike -- why would I want to sit next to someone like that? He began a silly rant about how he has the same ticket that I do (actually, he doesn't -- I have a season ticket, and I'm sure this guy didn't). Fortunately, there was a nice woman and her boyfriend who were splitting time among themselves and a couple of their friends who were also looking for seats, so we let them sit next to Phil.

This usually is the end of it, but the original guy wouldn't leave me alone the whole game, even when he was busy talking to some drunk women in silly blue fuzzy hats back at the fence; kept asking me if I wanted food, etc., when he knew I didn't really want to have anything to do with him.

So here's the bottom line -- if you see anyone has an open seat around game time, ask if it's taken, and if the person says that someone's coming (and we often have people arrive after game time), ask if you can sit there till they arrive. If you do that, we'll be happy to let you.

As for Mr. Jerk, I doubt we'll see him again.

[end rant]

Now, a rant about the game itself.

It started auspiciously, with Wood striking out five in the first two innings and appearing, as Mike and I agreed, to have good control. The tomato piece landed on the Jose Macias square in the fifth inning, and when Macias homered in the third, I said, "Behold the power of the tomato! It works TWO INNINGS EARLY!" Jeff's friend Mark, who was there today visiting from California, brought me a tomato from his garden, and we would have used a piece of it for the ceremony today, except that no one could find a knife to cut it up with, not even a plastic one. The best we could find was a plastic fork. Today's tomato piece came from a Wrigley Field hot dog, since Howard didn't come to today's game, and I believe I'll have to place my sandwich order from Jimmy John's with him early for tomorrow's game.

Speaking of Jeff, he's starting to wonder about his luck. He skipped yesterday's game and the Cubs are now 4-0 in games he's missed this year. I told him not to press his luck too much.

Today, Sue came with a friend of hers and I gave her a number of tickets which I had obtained for her for future games, and she asked me jokingly, "Do you take credit cards?"

Thinking about it, I actually do take credit cards -- I have a Paypal account which I set up mostly for eBay use, but I set it up to take credit cards.

Therefore, Al-Master -- cash, check OR credit card!

And now, back to baseball, or the lack thereof:

This offense simply does not know how to press in for the kill. With two out in the first, the Cubs loaded the bases with a double and two walks but could not score, and that was probably the best opportunity, because Chris Capuano couldn't throw a strike to save his life in that inning -- after that, he settled down, and was the beneficiary of two double plays, including a spectacular one started by Geoff Jenkins running into the LF wall to stab a long line drive from Aramis Ramirez (who was welcomed back to the lineup with a long standing ovation), and then easily doubling Moises Alou off first.

Little things killed the Cubs after that -- Sammy Sosa's ill-advised dive after Scott Podsednik's liner in the sixth, allowed it to get by him for a triple, when it should have been a single, and no runs would have scored in the inning.

Little things -- Dusty brought Francis Beltran as the first man out of the bullpen, with Kerry Wood on one of those darned pitch counts again (85, apparently, since he threw 86), and Beltran caught Capuano Disease, not being able to throw strikes, and by the time Kent Mercker came in, one run had already scored, on an infield out to first base that wasn't quite hit hard enough with the infield pulled in, and then Mercker gave up a line-drive double by that pest Podsednik (who could have been a Cub for the taking before the 2003 season -- he had been outright released by Seattle).

Little things -- Sosa letting a popup drop in front of him for a single, leading to the fourth run in the eighth inning.

This team is not going to win anything relying on the long ball, even though they hit two today, because they simply are not patient enough hitters to get enough men on base to make those homers more than solo jobs. The Cubs had six hits today, but never more than one in any one inning, and that's not going to get the job done.

Alex Gonzalez is due back tomorrow, and that, at least, gets the Opening Day lineup back together for the first time since the first week of the season.

Mike mentioned to me today, that if the Cubs had won and the Cardinals lost (obviously, the opposite happened), it would have been a six-game deficit and could have been cut to four by sweeping the next two games.

Doing that will now cut it to six, but it will also do something more important. It would win the season series with the Cardinals, which could come into play if the Cubs were somehow tied with St. Louis at the end of the season, and both qualified for the playoffs -- head-to-head competition would decide who was the division champion and who was the wild card. That wasn't how they did it in 2001 when the Astros and Cardinals tied for the Central title, but Houston had won the season series that year, and this rule was changed effective with the 2003 season. Today, all the nearest competition in the wild-card race (the Giants, the Padres, the Reds) all lost, so the Cubs remain only one game behind the Giants, who currently lead that race.

In any case, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's just win tomorrow.
Mark Prior threw today and experienced no pain, so he may make his scheduled start on Tuesday, but Glendon Rusch has been so good in his, and Kerry Wood's, absence, that I'm not even concerned if Prior sits out this start. If you believe this article in today's Daily Herald, Prior, and virtually every other pitcher in baseball, has bad mechanics, according to former pitcher turned kinesiologist Mike Marshall.

Frankly, I think that's just silly, and Marshall's a perfect example of a guy who says, "Heads I win, tails you're wrong." He's a smart and talented man, but his ideas are just this side of lunatic.

This team isn't winning because they are not hitting. It's time for Jim Hendry to go out and make some sort of move to jump-start the offense.

Now.

:: posted by Al at 6:10 PM [+] ::
...