"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, September 11, 2004 ::

Finally!

It took one hundred and thirty-eight games and eight innings, but playoff-type intensity has arrived at Wrigley Field.

In the space of one inning, I went from feeling like the Cubs might never score again, to the way it felt last September during that amazing Cardinal series, as player after player stepped it up in a four-run eighth inning, and the 5-2 Cub win over the Marlins means that they are a game up on Houston, who lost again to the Pirates this afternoon, and still tied with the Giants, who beat Arizona (c'mon, you didn't really think the D'backs would win with that Double-A lineup they're fielding, did you?) -- and they are still up two games in the loss column.

It was another day that the calendar forgot -- the last week has felt more like June than September, and it's supposed to continue at least through the rest of the homestand, 79 degrees at gametime with some high wispy clouds and a light breeze blowing out, though not so much as to influence home runs one way or another, and there weren't any today.

I told everyone that I could not remember the last time the Cubs came from behind in the eighth inning or later. So I had to look it up. Believe it or not, it was against the Cardinals, on June 22 in St. Louis, of all places. That was the second time in a four-day period they had done so, the other one being a bottom-of-the-ninth comeback against the A's on June 19.

Yeah, I said "It's Over" three days ago, and it sure felt like it was. I should know better. But today didn't start that way. Carlos Zambrano made an ill-conceived throw to first on a bunt that might have gone foul, and instead of having at worse a runner on first, there was a man on second, who advanced on a groundout (that might have been an inning-ending DP), and scored on yet another Michael Barrett passed ball, his eighth of the year. Despite this, Carlos settled down and allowed only one earned run in seven innings.

Dave, just in from the Riverhawks celebration in Rockford last night (so was Jeff, with no sleep at all), has said all year that no matter how well Barrett hits, he can't help the team as much as someone like Damian Miller, who plays good defense and calls a good game behind the plate. I'm not as critical of Barrett, who has won games with his hitting, but I have to say when stuff like this happens, I have to agree with him.

Meanwhile, the Cubs were leaving men on base every which way, including Derrek Lee grounding into a weak force with the bases loaded in the second, and then Nomar left the game after hitting into a DP in the third -- though this turned out to be a good thing, more anon. That, incidentally, was the Tomato Inning. I think the TI's powers are weakening. Mike suggested using another vegetable, and because I happen to like the Jimmy John's sandwiches, maybe tomorrow we'll try the Onion Inning, since that's the only other vegetable I get with the sandwich.

Six more innings passed today with Sammy Sosa in the starting lineup without a run scoring this week, and I really was beginning to wonder whether my "Cause and Effect?" from yesterday's post was turning true, especially when he got called out on strikes again on another knee-bending curveball from Dontrelle Willis. But then Sammy bounced a little single through the middle in the sixth and you could sense that something was about to break through.

It began in the seventh, when the Cubs finally had one of those two-out-nobody-on rallies that seem to happen against us so often, and the second out in that inning was a screaming line drive hit by Jason Dubois that was speared by Willis, and that's when my mood was about the darkest. What do you have to do to hit this guy? I kept thinking.

But then Corey Patterson hit a little single, stole second (his thirtieth steal of the year), Derrek Lee walked, and Aramis Ramirez, who ought to be the on-field leader of this team, got the Cubs off the "0" line by singling Patterson in.

So often during the NLCS last year, Jack McKeon outmanaged Dusty Baker. This time, Dusty got the best of McKeon, in the decisive eighth inning. I have no idea who this guy wearing Neifi Perez' uniform is, but whoever he is, he ought to get more playing time, because he has turned into a hitting machine. (Dave says he ought to get more playing time, and much as Nomar gets the adulation, maybe he's right.) After getting four hits yesterday, "Perez" beat out an infield hit and went to second on a throwing error. Then Sammy stepped up -- for the first time in forever -- and singled him in, the tying run. The Cubs loaded the bases and then McKeon brought in Rudy Seanez, who used to throw 100 MPH, but is now about 300 years old and threw Derrek Lee nothing but sliders. Dave called this, and I said that he'd wait on a fastball and drive it, and after swinging and missing a 3-1 pitch that would have been ball four, he did that -- right in between Miguel Cabrera and Juan Pierre, neither of whom seemed to want the ball, and clearing the bases.

But here's the secret, real reason for the decisive rally. I buy the early edition of the Sunday Tribune to read before Saturday home games, because I never would have time to read both Sunday papers on Sunday. Then I bring the later edition of the Sunday Sun-Times to the park on Sunday.

Anyway, it was sitting on the ground around the 7th when Dave asked to look at the sports page, and then Phil took it. Phil is the world's messiest newspaper reader, and he did a pretty good number on the sports section, and gave it back to me during one of the 8th inning pitching changes.

I was going to fold it up neatly and then the Cubs started rallying, so I figured I'd just leave it the way it was. Call it newspaper karma or whatever, we'll take it.

Then LaTroy Hawkins, who's made us nervous so many times, came in and not only got the save, but tied a major league record that's only been done thirty-six times (and not since 2002) -- striking out the side on nine pitched balls, all strikes. He becomes the third Cub (Milt Pappas, 9/24/1971, and Bruce Sutter, 9/8/1977, oddly, all three of the Cubs who did this, did it in September) to accomplish this feat.

It is indeed September. And we have thought so many times that an emotional win like today's would carry over to the next day, and it hasn't.

Now, it has to. Let's go get 'em tomorrow. Hope woke up today.

:: posted by Al at 5:11 PM [+] ::
...

Congratulations!

... to Dave's Rockford Riverhawks, who won the independent Frontier League championship last night with a 14-9 win over the Evansville Otters (where do they make up these nicknames, anyway?), sweeping the best-of-five championship series.

I've known Dave for 25 years and it was always his dream to own a baseball team, and now, in their third year in the league, his Rockford team is a champion. I know it's also sweeter for him because his son Kevin, a catcher, finally played a full injury-free year and was a key part of the success.

Perhaps as important for we Cubs fans is how the Riverhawks made the playoffs in the first place. With a couple of weeks to go in the season, they ran off a ten-game winning streak and roared into first place, getting themselves home field for the first round, which turned out to be critical in beating Gateway.

Let's hope the Cubs' ten-game winning streak began with yesterday's second-game victory.

:: posted by Al at 9:06 AM [+] ::
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Cause And Effect?

I hate to say this too loudly because of what Sammy Sosa has meant to the Cub franchise for the last decade.

But in the five games this week, the Cubs have played decidedly better when Sammy has not been in the lineup, even in the game they lost 7-6 to the Expos in extra innings.

When Sammy has started, the Cubs have been shut out. Sammy sat in the second game today and the Cubs pounded out eighteen hits.

He has hit one home run since August 20. He is two for his last sixteen at-bats. Now, we were told that he had "bursitis" in his hip, and that's why he sat a couple of days earlier this week. It's obviously not getting any better, and maybe he needs to sit for a few more games. There's also the tempest in the teapot stirred when Sammy apparently went home during the game on Tuesday night, and was "unavailable" to pinch-hit in extra innings. There's no definitive word on why he left, but I got the impression that Dusty Baker was NOT happy with this.

At this point, Dusty needs to do what's best for the team, and what's best for the team may be to play Jason Dubois, or Ben Grieve if healthy, in right field for a few days.

The Cubs really needed a sweep today, but they settled for trading blowouts, losing 7-0 to the Marlins in game 1, and trampling them good in game 2, 11-2.

It was one of those days that they put in the tourist videos -- absolutely not a cloud in the sky, 73 degrees at game 1 gametime (a bit warmer, 76 for the first pitch of game 2), with a slight east wind. The crowd was a bit late-arriving, even with the large amount of publicity about the makeup doubleheader today, as the first game started an hour before the original 2:20 pm CT starting time. Even with that, from first pitch to last was only five hours and thirty minutes, nearly unheard-of for a doubleheader in the 21st Century. Both games were less than two and a half hours, even with the Cubs' season-high hit barrage (18) in the second game.

We tried everything superstition-wise. I wore my Wood jersey for game one, then changed to my Prior jersey for game two. Howard had called me and said he might be late-arriving (after game time) with today's sandwich, so I decided to postpone the Tomato Inning until game two. It was just before game 1, and I had my scorecard sitting on the bench, when Brian (who actually arrived before gate-opening, he says for the first time ever) spilled part of his mai tai on my card. It was his first Wrigley Field mai tai of the year, so we figured this would be good luck. No such -- though for the record, the Mai Tai Inning was the ninth. The second-game Tomato Inning was the fourth, where the Cubs did score, but by then the game appeared to be well in hand, 6-1.

Kerry Wood, just as Greg Maddux did on Wednesday, deserved better. Sammy and Corey decided to play "After You" in the outfield in the sixth, with the score still only 2-0 (after two really bad Ramon Martinez misplays had led to two unearned runs and a loud chorus of boos in the third). Sammy signaled "catch" and put his arm out, clearly calling for the ball, but Corey kept on coming. With another outfielder bearing down on him, naturally Sammy shied away, result: the ball dropped neatly between them, though I think one or the other did get a hand on the ball, and it should have been an error, which would have made all four runs unearned. What it should have been was the third out.

Lesson learned:

COREY! WHEN SAMMY CALLS FOR THE BALL, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!!!!

Well, maybe the first game wasn't to be anyway -- Carl Pavano, making a case for the Cy Young, won his 17th game of the year, and his second complete-game shutout, and made the Cubs look pretty sick -- Nomar was about the only one to solve him, with two hits including a double, and the double, well, that would have given the Cubs a run, except Tom Goodwin had apparently decided that since he was playing LF in the opener, that he should make the Alou Baserunning Screwup of the day, and got picked off first -- running halfway to second before being run back.

Lesson learned:

TOM! WHEN YOU'RE PICKED OFF, RUN TO SECOND! MAYBE THEY'LL THROW THE BALL INTO CF!!!!

The second game started promptly 30 minutes after game one, and after Jeff, Howard and Brian had left for Rockford to see the Riverhawks try to sweep the Frontier League championship series tonight. Jon came just in time for game two, and a guy in a wheelchair and about a half-dozen of his friends (inexplicably, all people from New York) sat down in front of us.

The game seemed like an afterthought: Wayne Messmer, who really isn't a very good PA announcer (he did a Mesa-spring-training-like job on the double-switches late in game 2), didn't even announce the starting lineups.

Maybe this was by design, so as to take the Marlins by surprise. Alou and Aramis Ramirez decided to take matters into their own hands, homering back-to-back in the third, making it 5-1 and chasing Logan Kensing, a rookie out of A ball making his ML debut, and for once this wasn't a guy from the minors making the Cubs look sick, instead it was the other way around, and guys who haven't hit all year (Neifi Perez, four hits -- where did he learn that? -- and Paul Bako, 3-for-3 with three runs and two RBI, about a month's worth of work) pounded the Marlins bullpen around for the aforementioned eighteen hits. In addition to everything good offensively, Mark Prior threw an efficient (100 pitches in 8 innings, no walks) game and this bodes well for the rest of the season.

Sight seen: a large contingent of Arizona State football fans; they're here in town for the ASU-Northwestern game tomorrow. One of them was wearing a Barry Bonds #24 ASU T-shirt -- wow, that's almost 20 years since Barry played there.

The Pirates beat the Astros tonight -- thanks, Buccos! -- and so the Cubs are tied with Houston, though they have two fewer losses, and with Randy Johnson going for Arizona tonight, the 98-loss (franchise record) D'backs actually have a chance to beat the Giants.

If he does there will be a three-way tie atop the wild card in the morning.

We also learned today that due to the approach of the dangerous Hurricane Ivan to Florida, that the Marlins and the Expos will indeed play at least two games of their series next week here in Chicago, at the Cell, single games Monday and Tuesday at 1:05. After that they'll figure out if they can return to Florida or not.

Tickets are $15 and are being considered lower-deck general-admission.

It'll be interesting to see what these games draw. We figure that the crowd will be half Sox fans rooting for the Marlins, and half Cub fans rooting for the Expos. Yeah, I might go to one of them.

Finally, someone had set one of the out-of-town scores on the board incorrectly, so when they started taking down the "NITE GAME" signs to post scores a little before six, they had to flip the Philadelphia and New York panels to reflect the fact that their game is in New York tonight.

As you may know, each city panel on the board is actually in two pieces -- it'd be way too heavy and unwieldy if it were only one. So as they started to switch the panels, it read, for a moment, which Jon and I spotted:

PHILADORK
NEW YELPHIA

We told Phil that he's not a dork, but he was too busy telling us that the Cubs ought to sign both Carlos Beltran and J. D. Drew for next year.

Hang in there, Phil. Let's talk about next year later. We've got an exciting three weeks to go, yet.

:: posted by Al at 8:20 PM [+] ::
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Thoughts Before The Doubleheader

Got an e-mail from Mike this morning that about sums it all up:

I keep thinking (because it's the only damn comfort we got) back to the '98 wild card. Every few games, including the last scheduled one, was some maddening loss that seemed to cost us the thing at the time. Who the hell knows? I could say this Marlins series will tell one way or the other, only I know it won't.

The key to this afternoon's action is, of course, that Wood and Prior need to be WOOD AND PRIOR.

And, yesterday the other contenders for the WC played four games, and lost three of them (the Astros managed to split their doubleheader).

At a certain point, however, the players have to stop scoreboard-watching and win.

Today would be a good time to start doing that.

:: posted by Al at 9:00 AM [+] ::
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Aftermath

Well, I feel better this morning, though my post of last night got a lot of e-mail response.

Here's one, from Ross French, that I think pretty well sums it all up:

I have worked in college athletics for about 12 years and have seen this same malaise take over teams due to reasons behind the scenes. Suddenly, no matter how hard they try, nothing works right. Guys get frustrated, they lose the desire to win for their teammates. The fabric of the "team" falls apart. They bitch and complain about insignificant things. (My favorite was a second baseman on the baseball team complaining about an error I called on one of his teammates and telling me that I should get out there and take some ground balls.) And suddenly, as an observer, you realize how helpless you are to try to help things. The only hope is just blow things up and start again.

I look at the Cubs and see a team crying out for leadership. There just isn't any. Sosa isn't a leader, he is more concerned with playing his music after games. Alou is a DH. I love watching him hit, but everything else he does, including running, is a circus. Patterson is too young, Barrett and Lee too new. Garciaparra isn't going to do it, as shown with his career in Boston. Walker has never been a leader and Grudzielanek has one foot out the door. The guy with the chance to take this team and make it his is Ramirez, but he hasn't taken control yet. The starting pitchers are too young, hyper or inconsistent. Too many guys have reputations for being more trouble than they are worth (Farnsworth, Sosa, Alou, and Walker, who very well may be the baseball version of Gary Payton.)

So, what is to be done? Who knows? It is a factor that amateur GMs like myself never have to deal with on Strat-o-matic. I respect Hendry, but what I wouldn't do for a guy like Bagwell, Luis Gonzalez, Johnny Damon, Michael Young or any one of a dozen others known for taking care of business on and off the field.

Just remember, we haven't jumped off the bandwagon. We are just on the "Realist's Bandwagon."

There has to be someone in that clubhouse who can step up and be a leader. The time is NOW.

:: posted by Al at 1:37 PM [+] ::
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It's Over

I know you feel how I feel -- that we invest so much of ourselves, not just our time and our thoughts, but our emotions and feelings, into the baseball team known as the Chicago Cubs.

And that is why tonight's performance affected me in the way it did, and I'm writing this not long after it ended, and maybe by tomorrow morning I'll feel differently, but I wanted to put this down now, while it's still fresh. Maybe I'll even feel better by the end of this post.

This feels like the end, everyone. Tonight's 6-0 shutout loss to the Expos was about the worst performance I have ever seen out of a Cubs team, and that includes the 1980 version that lost 98 games, the 1997 version that lost 14 in a row, the 1999 club that up and quit on Jim Riggleman and cost him his job, and the 2002 club that pretty much did the same number on Don Baylor (though you can make a good argument that he deserved it!).

You'll say that I'm taking this one too hard and maybe I am. But the least you can expect out of a team that is this strong "on paper" (and yes, I've heard all the jokes about tearing the grass out and putting paper down in Wrigley Field, and somehow those jokes simply aren't too funny tonight), is effort, is trying, is playing playoff-caliber baseball.

They didn't do that tonight. Scott Downs, who was once in the Cub farm system and was traded in 2000 for Rondell White, and who Dave used to disparagingly call "Hugh Downs" (after the former ABC newscaster), who came into the game with a 7.22 ERA and exactly zero career CG's and shutouts, threw one, allowing only five harmless singles, and with the three double plays, faced only twenty-nine batters, two over the minimum. Here's how bad it got -- I didn't even write down the last play of the game on my card, Nomar Garciaparra's flyout to center.

How can that be? Because this team appears to have quit. Did Nomar have a good day? No. He hit into two double plays, one on the very first pitch he saw. There were a number of Cubs pulling that nonsense again, hacking away rather than make Downs, who had walked 20 batters in 31 innings coming into this game, run deep into counts. It's pathetic to think that Gary Matthews, who actually walked 103 times as a Cub in 1984, is the hitting coach teaching this sort of thing.

Did Moises Alou have a good day? In the first inning, he briefly ran into the dugout -- was he going to "toughen up his hands"? I guess we'll never know. And today's Alou Baserunning Screwup, which has to have about a five- or six-game streak going, occurred early in the game, the bottom of the second, when he got caught off second base when Aramis Ramirez lined out hard to right field. The game was still scoreless at that point, but then Sammy Sosa took care of that with a rookie-mistake type of misjudgment of a fly ball in the top of the third, which went for a double, and a sac bunt and a sac fly later, the game's first run.

Greg Maddux deserved better. Through seven innings he'd only allowed that hit and two other harmless singles, and then the wheels, the chassis, and the engine all fell off at once, with Derrek Lee making a stupid-looking error on a ball that could have been an inning-ending DP, and slamming his glove hand down in disgust, instead leading to two runs, followed by a Paul Bako throwing error allowing another run to score. Maddux only allowed two earned runs, struck out seven, and the only walk he allowed was intentional. Mike Remlinger came in and promptly gave away any chance the Cubs might have had to come back from 4-0 down, by allowing a 2-run homer to Terrmel Sledge that nearly replicated Corey Patterson's from last night -- it landed only about 20 feet to the right of us.

OK, I feel better now, but really, it doesn't feel good at all. It felt like an ending tonight, even with 26 games remaining. I even said to Howard, in one of my most down moments, "Maybe they can lose enough games to finish under .500." He looked at me like I was nuts, and maybe I was.

With twenty-six games remaining, winning 18 of them is almost mandatory to have any shot at the wild card, and it had better start this weekend against the Marlins. Houston won its 12th in a row today, pushing half a game ahead of the Cubs, though still one down in the loss column. The Rockies blew a 3-1 lead and lost to the Giants (to be updated here in the morning), so San Francisco is also now ahead of the Cubs.

Maybe we tried too hard in our section tonight; we had ten of us, including Brian, who probably would have rather been rooting on the Rockford Riverhawks, who were about to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Frontier League championship series (game 3 in Rockford Friday night), and Bharat, who returned (late from a business meeting) tonight and apologized for bringing another loss -- he's 0-3 at Wrigley Field this year. We also had massive Tomato Inning failure (the sixth, a useless 13-pitch 1-2-3 inning), and even failure of the Rally Milano cookies that Howard brought.

Just about this time a year ago, the Cubs lost two out of three to the Expos in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it didn't feel too good then either -- but that was a much better Expos team, a team that finished over .500 and was still in wild-card contention itself in the first week of September 2003. This Expos team needed to be swept, and the Cubs not only didn't do it, but made Montreal look like a playoff team itself.

Well, having spit all this stuff out, yes, I do feel better. All the wild-card contenders except the Cubs and Giants will play tomorrow, and if I were the Cubs, I'd go far, far away from the ballpark, try to brush this one off and come back ready to play a team that's quite a bit better than the Expos. As for myself, I must work tomorrow on my usual day off, and that'll be a good distraction from tonight's disaster.

To finish where I started tonight, yes, we all have invested so much in the baseball team we love, and yes, expectations were ratcheted much higher this year. It's time for these ballplayers, who are capable of so much, to fulfill those dreams and expectations, not only the ones we have, but the ones they ought to have for themselves.

:: posted by Al at 10:11 PM [+] ::
...

Wow!

Here's all you need to know about last night's game:

MIKE CAUGHT COREY PATTERSON'S HOME RUN BALL IN THE 12TH INNING!

OK, that's enough. Bye! See you tomorrow!

Seriously, you probably don't want to know too much more about yet another missed opportunity to gain on our pursuers, a long, dark, cold 7-6, 12-inning loss to the Expos, a game that was winnable on any number of occasions, till it came to a very quiet end after four hours and two minutes of less-than-admirable baseball. Oh, and Matt Clement had to leave the game in the third inning with a sore shoulder. Like we need any more injured pitchers.

The day yesterday was one of those crystal-clear September days that you get after the late-summer stickiness has been pushed out by a cold front -- there wasn't a cloud in the sky all day, and it was moderately warm (in the low 70's, though game-time temp was 65) while the sun was still out. This is also the time of year where it becomes difficult to pick up the ball in the late innings of a late day game, or the early innings of a night game, with the sun shining directly in our faces, since our seats face almost due west.

As soon as the sun ducked behind the grandstand, it started to cool off, and did so rather quickly. Luckily, I had dressed for the weather. Jon, who lived in northern California after growing up here in the Chicago area, had a T-shirt and shorts on, and I kept asking him if he was cold yet. By the later innings he said he wished he had a jacket, but didn't mind the shorts.

Also joining us last night was Bharat (pronounced, as he reminded us, like his "namesake" Michael Barrett), another denizen of the Cubs newsgroup, in for a visit from Philadelphia (yes, he lives there, but everyone has to live somewhere, right?). He wound up leaving before the game was over, missing Mike's catch of the homer (and maybe missing getting it himself), but we enjoyed his company and he'll be with us again tonight.

With the wind howling out of the northwest all night, it was not to be a night for home runs, at least not to left field, but someone forgot to tell the Cub power hitters to stop uppercutting the ball. Moises Alou and Derrek Lee, in particular, kept hitting fly balls to left, all of which would have been home runs on any other day, but not last night. Lee lofted three balls that wound up with Expos LF Terrmel Sledge (Mike says he's been waiting all year to write the name "SLEDGE" on his card) actually having to come IN on the ball.

Meanwhile, Corey Patterson was having a fun day, hitting a single and a double before hitting Sheffield Avenue in the seventh inning with his then-game-tying first homer of the game. The wind by then had a slight component going out to right, actually helping left-handed hitters. Too bad Todd Walker, in an early-inning pinch-hitting at-bat, decided to swing at the first pitch and pop up rather than wait for something he could maybe drive out of the ballpark.

The Cubs scored their first three runs when the Expos simply decided to stop playing defense. Brad Wilkerson was charged with an error when he dropped a throw (although it looked to us like the throw was the error), allowing two runs to score and Barrett to third, where he scored on a wild pitch.

But the Cubs simply left too many men on base, sixteen in all, and had chances to win the game in the eighth (runner on 2nd, one out), ninth (runners on first and second, one out), tenth (bases loaded, two out -- this after Neifi Perez, of all people, managed to slap a bunt single past the pitcher), and eleventh (runner on first, two out, after yet another attempt by Derrek Lee to mash a home run through the wind), and this after Mike Remlinger, who normally dispatches hitters fairly efficiently, walking in two runs and leaving to a chorus of boos. Bharat mentioned to us that he had never seen the ballpark this loud, and Mike and I both agreed that the reason is the expectations for this team and the importance of each game, and that the crowds have actually been into the games this year, which has cut down on the number of ejections and stupid drunkenness that has, mainly in our 95-loss-type-seasons, been the norm in the bleachers.

Speaking of the crowd, the attendance was announced as 38,321 (the second-smallest announced paid crowd of 2004), but for the first time all year, there was a significant empty spot in the ballpark, the corner of the LF upper deck, almost half a section of which was completely empty. This won't prevent the Cubs from breaking the 3 million mark, and can probably be explained by schools being back in session and the opponent being the decidedly non-marquee Expos.

Anyway, about Patterson's twenty-first homer in the 12th, which briefly gave us hope of winning again -- the ball started lofting toward us and when both Mike and I realized that it was heading our way, we stood up -- I'm not sure whether to try to snag it, or to get out of the way. It bounced right in front of us and literally into Mike's lap, where he covered it up quite well. We're in the last row and though it doesn't seem that way, baseballs only come up that far maybe once or twice a year, and as Mike put it, this is how long he's waited:

2450 major league games, nearly all in the "line of fire"
1511 Cub games
5034 home runs witnessed

And then he continued:

Still lost.

Finally, Kurt, who runs the Cub Fan Nation, thinks I should be doing more for the team:

[Al Yellon] is the only guy I know of who goes to practically every game. So, it should be his task to bring a sign big enough for Dusty Baker to read from the dugout. The sign should say something like "You'll never win batting Macias second in a game," or "no, really, you just can't win that way for christ's sake!"

Welllllll... first of all, those of you who know me well know that bringing signs just, well, isn't my gig. Second, does anyone really think that Dusty would even look out our way, or listen to obvious advice like Kurt's first suggestion above?

He does happen to be right about Macias, of course. If Dusty insists on playing him, he ought to bat eighth. Or ninth, depending on who's pitching. Derrek Lee has done well batting second. Why screw with that? Macias did actually make a nice effort to try to catch a foul fly ball in extra innings, a ball that Sammy Sosa wouldn't have gotten within twenty feet of.

For my part, I'll stick with the Tomato Inning (it did land in part yesterday right where Wilkerson's error allowed the two runs to score), and stabbing myself with my pencil (I did so again last night, but I think it only works when I actually draw blood), and kicking over my Big Gulp -- say, that hasn't happened in a while, and...

Seriously, right now it's the old Al Davis/Oakland Raider slogan: "Just win, baby". The Cubs still lead the wild-card race by half a game, eventually the other teams will lose a game or two, and again, as we have said several times in the last few weeks, win tonight and all is forgiven.

:: posted by Al at 9:20 AM [+] ::
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It's Official

The three postponed games from last weekend have been officially rescheduled.

There will be a doubleheader in Chicago this Friday. Unlike most doubleheaders, which start at noon CT, this one will start at 1:20 CT -- why? I have no idea. Possibly to give the Marlins extra time to get to Chicago after their day game in Miami on Thursday, possibly for TV reasons.

Here is the announcement from the Marlins website, which states that the Marlins will be the visiting team for both games.

The Cubs website says the same thing, and both announcements go on to say that the other two games will be made up as a DH in Miami on Monday, September 20, time to be announced.

I'll bet this will be changed later, but as of 2:45 CT on Tuesday, this wire service story, which has been picked up by news websites all over the country (the Chicago NBC link above being only one example), says that the Marlins will be the HOME team for both games. This is absurd, and probably is the result of a wire service writer copying down the information incorrectly.

So, the Cubs will gain the benefit of an extra home game this season, and unless Dusty changes his mind, Kerry Wood and Mark Prior will pitch the two games on Friday.

:: posted by Al at 2:45 PM [+] ::
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A Single Step

The Cubs beat the Expos convincingly today, 9-1.

Good! Now go out and do it again tomorrow.

This is, as we all agreed on leaving the park today, exactly how the Cubs must focus on the twenty-eight remaining games. One at a time, win them, and beat the teams that you must beat, like Montreal, convincingly. Today's win puts the Cubs back in first by themselves, half a game in front of the Giants, who had the day off.

The ballclub came out after four days off like a team on a mission, smacking two home runs (Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez) in the first inning, which was the "bounce" inning for today's Tomato Drop -- it actually dropped in the fourth and then landed right in Ramirez' square in the first. So Tomato Power is back, and the Cubs took advantage of the early-game humidity and southwest wind to score seven early runs off Tony Armas, Jr., who had handled them so well five days ago in Montreal.

The sky was low and threatening when the ballpark opened, and Phil and I sat through a couple of spitty little showers, but with the sun peeking through the dark clouds, we knew the rain wouldn't last too long, and the two of us held on to seats for... well, for Howard's entire family, basically, and when I say entire, I mean entire... not only his wife Marilyn and daughter Nora, but his sons Jon and Mark and Jon and Mark's mother (Howard's ex-wife), who I'd met many years ago when Jon and I used to share a bench when he was still in high school, for heaven's sake, and a sister-in-law? -- I wasn't sure, they were introduced to me and they seemed nice, but they were pretty quiet, and a nephew who could be the next Harry Potter if they chose to cast an American in the role, nine people in all, nearly all of them keeping score (except Mark, who got really excited when I told him that the Giants were playing in Milwaukee next week; he's a Brewers fan from way back and was happy that the Brew Crew could help the Cubs out in the wild-card chase), and it was a festive afternoon on what appears to be summer's last gasp.

It almost seemed to let go right in the middle of the game, when the skies started to clear and the late-afternoon sun, which in September makes it really hard to pick up the ball from our perch in right field, because it's nearly right in our eyes after about 4:30, and the wind shifted out of the northwest and there was a definite hint of the fall to come in the air; I suppose tomorrow will be almost cool for the evening affair with Les Expos.

Before the game the Cubs honored some surviving stars of the Negro Leagues, including Chicago resident Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe (so named because he used to catch one end of a DH and pitch the other), who is perhaps the oldest surviving Negro League star at age 102 -- he lives near the Cell and attends quite a few games there. The Cubs also had one of the nicer giveaways of the year, a very well-made, red-and-white replica cap of one of the best Negro League teams, the Kansas City Monarchs, the team on which Ernie Banks started his fabled career.

I remarked to Mike on hearing the first strains of the Canadian national anthem, that it's likely that Wednesday will be the last time we'll hear that song played at Wrigley Field -- except that I have learned that the Blue Jays are going to be visiting the Cubs next year as one of the interleague opponents, at least on the draft schedule that's yet to be approved, and partly because of all the dithering about the Expos franchise, which if MLB's poohbahs had an ounce of sense, they'd just move them to Washington already, and let Peter Angelos' chips fall where they may. It might be uncomfortable, but it can't be worse than letting these poor players spend another year in limbo, or playing half a year in the Caribbean, and drawing 9,000 per game.

That, however, is another story. Today, it was all Cubs, and though I usually complain about too many homers and not enough other hits, with the wind blowing the way it was, it was absolutely the day to hit five homers, and Carlos Zambrano managed to keep the ball down enough to allow only four hits and a consolation run to the Expos in his eight innings; he almost seems as if he insists on stretching himself out to reach 120 pitches, and he just barely missed (119). That's not so bad, considering he hadn't thrown in nine days, and Ryan Dempster finished up handily, saving the bullpen for another day.

With the game well in hand, Dusty emptied the newly-fortified bench. The callups included Neifi Perez, Sergio Mitre and Calvin Murray, along with the recently-acquired Mike DiFelice and Ben Grieve, all of whom played this afternoon. The only starter who played the whole game was Mark Grudzielanek (my scorecard resembled an early-March spring training card with all the changes and not-listed-on-the-roster players), and Dusty gave Todd Walker a couple of innings at first base, which is a good thing, increasing his versatility. The only person who had a bad day was Wayne Messmer, who, though he has a terrific voice, cannot seem to handle double-switches or lineup position changes -- he made mistakes for both teams, something that the night/weekend PA guy, Paul Friedman, never does.

Grieve started in place of Sammy Sosa today -- Sammy has some sort of hip injury, which he didn't have before the enforced layoff -- or did he? Something like this could easily explain why he hasn't hit much in over a month. Grieve made a nice running catch right below us against the wall in RF in the fifth inning, only to scrape his face on the brick wall and have to leave the game.

There is still no definitive word on when the rained-out weekend series will be rescheduled, though a clue was given by the Marlins today when they announced that their Thursday game with the Mets is being moved up two hours, and will start at 1:05 ET instead of 3:05, ostensible reason: to give the Marlins extra time to get to Chicago early, for a possible doubleheader here on Friday. MLB, which was to announce plans today, apparently cannot be reached on a holiday, so we now expect an announcement tomorrow.

Finally today, congratulations to Dave on his Rockford Riverhawks winning their first-round playoff series and advancing to the Frontier League championship series against Evansville, to begin tomorrow in Evansville. If you want to see a talented team at the minor league level play in games that really mean something and you're anywhere near Rockford, I'd highly recommend taking in game 3 of their series, Friday night in Rockford. You can get more info on the Riverhawks website, link above.

For the Cubs, it's absolutely crunch time. A sweep of the Expos is nearly mandatory, and with two of their weaker pitchers going the next two days, is within reach.

Faith and hope, all.

:: posted by Al at 7:38 PM [+] ::
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Here's The Good News!

After four days off, the Cubs are still tied for the wild card lead.

Of course, the bad news is that the Giants swept the Diamondbacks (yeah, I know, we held out hope for an Arizona win today with Randy Johnson pitching, but these are the 2004 D'backs we are talking about, and they're nearly as bad as last year's Tigers), and that the Astros swept the Pirates, and both of those teams seem really hot right now.

But.

The Giants have now played six more games than the Cubs, which is a double-edged sword... the Giants have less time to catch up, and the Cubs lead everybody except the Marlins (two games) by three games in the loss column. And the Cubs do seem well-suited to play the probable doubleheaders coming up, with the presence of Glendon Rusch on the staff.

At this writing, it appears that makeup dates for this weekend's series in Florida will be announced tomorrow. Speculation has the teams playing a doubleheader in Chicago next weekend -- likely Friday -- with the Marlins batting last in one of the games, and the other two games to be made up as a conventional (not day/night) doubleheader in Miami on September 20. The Marlins also have another doubleheader against the Expos on September 14, so their pitching staff may be rather stretched out.

Schedule-wise, the Astros must play the Giants, and also have six left with St. Louis; the Giants and Padres play each other, and of course, the Cubs have the chance to dispatch the Marlins all by theirownselves with six head-to-head meetings.

With all the injuries, with all the expectations of a great team dashed, with the poor bullpen and poor play from Sammy Sosa, among others, the Cubs can still win the wild card just by winning their own games. Let's start it tomorrow.

That out of the way, let me share with you an e-mail Mike sent to me last night. The "fellow" he refers to is Ichiro:

See this fellow tomorrow. No kidding, you'll regret it if you don't. Last night felt something like the '98 home run chase. You know what he needs to do, you know how difficult it is to do; and you sit there and watch it happen. The baseball equivalent of a magic show.

Sisler's record is crazy enough, but Ichiro now has 188 singles. Record: 206 (the latest researched total) by Willie Keeler in 1898. Both records will be toast, barring catastrophe. If this guy ever were to put this together for the full run of a season (and I know that's not really possible), we'd have the most astounding individual player-season of our lifetimes.

After Ichiro had gone the first three-for-three, Buehrle threw him an eephus the first pitch of the fourth at-bat. Two pitches later, Ichiro singled right back through the mound. Buehrle laughed and tipped his cap in the direction of the hit. Priceless stuff.

With no Cub game and summer having finally arrived, two months late (it was sticky and 85 degrees today), I took Mark and his friend Mitchell (who is, unaccountably, a Sox fan) to the Cell this afternoon to witness Ichiro (and the rest of the Mariners, most of whom are eminently forgettable) play the White Sox.

The Sox won 6-2, and I think Felix Diaz' agent is going to ask me to be present at all his starts, because I have now witnessed both of his major league wins (the other against the Cubs), and that's pretty impressive for a guy who came in with a 9.09 ERA. He mowed down Seattle for six innings, giving up five hits, and I kept shaking my head in Mike's direction every time Ichiro grounded out, which was each time he batted until his last, which was against Jon Adkins in the 8th, when he slashed one of his trademark opposite-field liners over the shortstop's head for his two hundred twenty-fourth hit of 2004, and his one hundred and eighty-ninth single. He needs thirty-four hits in Seattle's remaining twenty-six games to break the record, and that is eminently doable. It's a little in the realm of the absurd, but Ichiro is hitting .378 -- could he hit .400? It would take an average of about .580, which is, of course, ridiculous for a four-week span -- until you note that in the last week alone, he has hit .654, and has hit .486 from August 1 through today. Worth watching, at least.

The rest of the game seemed funereal, as the White Sox completed a sweep of a hapless team; the crowd was larger than I would have expected for such a game (30,406), swelled by about 5,000 Teamsters on "Teamster Day" -- you could see them taking up half the right-field seats in their white T-shirts. The 600-year-old Jamie Moyer threw creditably for the Mariners, making only two mistakes, home runs to Paul Konerko and Joe Borchard (who seems to hit home runs or nothing at all), after walks, and that was the ballgame.

The kids had fun, though Mitchell, who was excited when he opened his Pepsi and found a "Free 20-Ounce Pepsi" bottle cap, wound up losing the cap. Plus, the teams didn't take batting practice, so the boys had to make up their own fun for the pre-game time, which they did, good friends that they are.

Almost more interesting than watching Ichiro was seeing the final Chicago appearance of the retiring Edgar Martinez, hitting machine of the 1990's, and he went out in fine style, with three hits. I was wishing that Bob Melvin would have pinch-run for him after the last hit, so that anyone with a sense of baseball history might have given this classy veteran at least a small standing ovation.

Tomorrow, back to our regularly scheduled program.

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