Monday, May 23, 2005

 

News and Notes

The Cubs managed to take one out of three from the very impressive (and yet frighteningly evil) White Sox. Odds are this is not news to anyone out there, but I thought it made a nice lead-in for this post. Elegant even. So, without further ado (adu? adieu? doo-doo?), I give you all things Cubs.

BatGirl rides again

Over at Goatriders.org, BatGirl has taken a swing at defending her GM as the best...in brilliant Lego-vision. I have to admit, the lego-tastic representation lends a certain weight to her arguments, despite the pointy heads and claw-like hands. So, go over a check it out, because everybody like Legos (except communists. You don't want to be a communist, do you?).

Bleacher Bums

Seriously, there were some real idiots up in the bleachers (and I'm not even counting myself). Now, for the good folks at Bleed Cubbie Blue and View from the Bleachers, the bleachers are nothing new. But for this Cub fan, most games are attended in either the cheap seats or the really cheap seats (i.e. my couch at home), and so this was a rare experience for me. So, let me just say thanks again to Chris for the tickets, and share a few examples of really stupid people. And most of them weren't even Sox fans (but some were).

On the Sox ledger: a few die-hards made the trip up from the South Side after apparently having started drinking on, oh, tuesday maybe? They were super nice fellows and one Sox fan kept telling me how he knew for sure that the Cubs would win...which was fine until about the 100th time he repeated it. But in general they were all fine until that same Sox fan, in a fit of excitement over Wuertz's beating, jumped up and came down right on The Wife. Granted, she's pretty tough and more than held her own, throwing the guy off of her, but I was still pretty annoyed. I became even more annoyed when the guy apologized to me about 87 times in the course of the next 5 minutes. The fact that the Cubs had just given up four runs didn't really help. That was a trying 15 minutes or so.

On the Cubs side: This was worse. I expect bad things from Sox fans, but always get disappointed by Cubs' fans when they exhibit poor-fansmanshipitude. A couple of the worst cases:
I give the bleachers high points for entertainment value...and the game was alright too.

Internet related wrist injuries

...are certainly common, but not usually due to typing too often. I think they are really reaching when they start to blame AIM for Zambrano's wrist problems. Swinging too often I could maybe see, but typing? I'm sure many of us type pretty often at work (I certainly do), but it is not keeping any of us from throwing complete game shutouts, now is it? (for that, I blame genetics)

Prior == good

Enough said. Now that he seems healthy, I can resume my non-sexual man crush (and the women of Chicago can resume their other kind of crush. Yes, yes, he's on your "list", I get it.)

Bullpen == bad

bullpen makes Jason==sad.

GROTA-wear

...is flying off the shelves. Goatriders of the Apocalypse is quickly becoming the #1 selling goat/apocalypse related clothing line on the market. Get yours now before your friends all shame you for having no goat-clothes in you wardrobe.

And finally, Houston is coming to town this weekend. I am predicting very bad things as Houston has been stuggling terribly (lost 6 in a row), are 2-19 (!) on the road, and are starting a rookie in his ML debut. All these things spell disaster for the Cubs and they will be lucky to not get swept.

Game time 7:05. Go Cubs!

Comments:
Yes, I did. I heckled. But really, who leaves in the 8th.

I would also like to note that these same people (yes i overheard them talking because i can be a tad nosey) had Season tickets to the cubs, but got rid of them because the "seats weren't quite good enough" If I had season tickets in section 500 i wouldn't give them up.

Just more reasons that these kids weren't the greatest fans ever.

But we did have a great time at the game, and we are both looking forward to our next chance to head to wrigley and cheer our cubbies on.
 
Good for you.
Um, Jason, I have to disagree a little bit about bullpen=bad.
I think, as of yesterday, bullpen=pretty okay.
I think we got two decent closers (Dempster and Borowski) in two days.
Closing is a state of mind, and they both got it. (Others, with the initials "LaTroy Hawkins", don't.)
And having two reliable closers makes the whole rest of the bullpen much more straightforward.
I think the problem is run-production.
I think with Prior, Zambrano, Maddux, Rusch and possibly Wood out there, and the newly-stocked bullpen behind them, if the Cubs can score 5 runs a game, they'll win a whole lot more than they lose.
Unfortunately, they're scoring somewhere between 0 and 1 runs on average.
 
Well, I was actually focusing more on the fact that the bullpen ='d bad on that particular day. That is pretty much completely not obvious from the post. Wuertz generally has been good, but was terrible that day.

I think the problem with the bullpen lies with the veterans, not ther rookies. However, the return of JoBo means the Curse of the JoBo has come to an end, and the blown saves will now stop.
 
Well, I have a little note that I scrawled back in February when Peter "no lips" Gammons was on ESPN, and said that a closer to keep an eye on (okay, so I'm a fantasy geek) was Ryan Dempster. He (Gammons) said that his (Dempster's) stuff was so nasty that if he (Dempster) were to be converted to closer, he (Gammons) would be willing to bet that he (Dempster) would be a star.
So, in my mind, we went from having NO closers, to having TWO, all within a few days.
 
eh. Maybe he will, maybe he won't (he=Dempster). Stuff is one thing, control is another. If he can harness his control, I will be happy. I don't really by this mystical need for a "mentality," I think it is just important to not be a big head-case, which most major-league pitchers aren't. The most important thing is the ability to actually get people out (which was the secret of Borowski's success).
 
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