Babes Bucs Bakers Bynums Buckets
I hopped the El toward Wrigley a little bit later than usual because, frankly, who gives a fuck about the Cubs or the Pirates (henceforth, the P-rats)? After witnessing yesterday's sorry effort, I'm about ready to swear off the remainder of the season. No I'm not -- I'm just tired of all the losing and I have little recourse but to threaten absence.
Anyway, somewhere between Chicago and North, two fellow Cubs fans asked me to clarify which NFL teams are in which divisions. I told them I didn't know why the Cowboys are still in the East, so I used that odd factoid to deke out of the conversation as quickly as I was drawn in. Then, a really cute blonde climbed aboard at the North stop and stood next to me in front of the door. The first thing I noticed was that she was hot; the second that we were dressed eerily similarly: blue shirts, jeans, Cubs b.p. hat. She asked me in a throaty voice if I thought we'd be late, I said it really didn't matter since we looked like twins, and she laughed. Aha! Then two seats opened up at the Fullerton stop, so we sat down and continued flirting. Amazingly, she's as big of a Cubs freak as I am -- tonight was her 24th game of the year and my 32nd. Thankfully the train was delayed for a bit before Belmont, so we were able to talk longer than usual. She's Irish, from the North Side, went to Fenwick and DePaul, works at Chase, is single, and lives in Old Town. Things couldn't have gotten off to a better start.
Throughout the train ride, she was sipping on a Miller Lite pounder from a brown paper bag. I warned her to watch out or at least ditch the can in the train car, because I had been busted last year doing the same thing. She said she'd be fine and we kept talking. We exited together at Addison and I waited at the top of the stairs while she threw the empty into one of the trash cans on the platform. Sure enough, just as she was about to let go of the can, three undercover cops pounced on her. Fuck! I followed them as they walked her to the other end of the platform to run a background check and ticket her, but one of the thug cops said to get the hell away and, given my recent experiences, I reluctantly obliged. However, as they walked away, I shouted out that she should come find me in the Friendly Confines Cafe, where I've been spending most of my times at games lately. She looked pretty freaked out and she never did come find me, though I have to wonder if she even ended up going to the game or if they detained her for some other reason, like a parking ticket or some other equally slight infraction. Life is not fucking fair. Fuck the police.
Bewildered at and heartbroken over the inequity of it all, I ambled over to Jerry's stand for a scorecard and thereafter entered Wrigley through the right field gate. The park was not quite half empty, but it's getting there in a hurry. They've cleared away many of the temporary concession stands and some of the permanent stands are completely locked up. It was the bottom half of the first inning when I sat down in the Cafe, and the P-rats already put up two runs in the opening frame. Crap. Here we go again.
This contest, the Cubs' 68th at home, was nominally notable for an extremely dubious reason: The Cubs went into the game leading the P-rats by just 0.5 games in the Central, meaning that last place in the entire National League was on the line. The past two years I've comforted myself with the fact that, no matter how bad things got on the North Side, the Cubs would never fall to last place behind the pathetic collection that is the P-rats. Somehow, during all the awful stretches and boneheaded mistakes that cost the Cubs dozens of games these past two years, the P-rats still managed to lose more often than we did. Yet here we were, September 5, 2006, a hair's width from dead last place in the entire National League, and facing a two run defecit before the Cubs even came up to bat for their first turn. This season has been chock full of ceaseless agony to a stupefying degree.
The game was a sloppy one for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the P-rats are the worst fielding team imaginable. Thanks to injuries and senseless trades, they had three marginally talented second basemen taking turns kicking the ball around at second, third, and short. They also started the arm-less Jason Bay in left and Jeromy Burnitz in right, meaning that any ball hit to either corner could easily become a double or even a triple. Also, their hot-hitting catcher, Ronny Paulino, might have the third-worst arm and defensive skills of any catcher in the big leagues, with the exception of Mike Piazza and Michael Barrett (say a prayer for him, by the way).
They say that in baseball the toughest ninety feet to get are the last ninety feet, and Cub leadoff hitter and centerfielder, Juan Pierre, exemplifies this team's frustrations. Being a true leadoff man, he's always doing everything possible to get into scoring position. Yesterday he scored once, was stranded at third twice, and was stranded at first once. Tonight he scored once and was stranded at second twice. Over the course of the last two games, he stole four bases against one caught stealing. However, his efforts are futile if the guys in the heart of the lineup can't get him around to score. If the name of the game were to collect total bases, Dusty Baker would have won four World Series rings during his four years with the Cubs. This the essence of Dustyball: Hopefully get a guy on and have him wait at second or third for a big bat to jack a home run. And what happens when your lineup is short one or two big boppers? The 2005 and 2006 Cubs happen, that's what. It's mind boggling to think about the number of guys they've left in scoring position, and tonight continued the trend. Tonight they stranded 12 guys, eight of whom were in scoring position. If that isn't the definition of offensive futility, I don't know what is. A lot of the fault lies with lineup construction, but that's a topic I'd rather not revist at the moment.
Contributing to the continuing frustrations hampering this club, the player personnel wire and subsequent WGN-broadcast spindoctoring effort by Oneri Fleita, head of the minor league system, reinforced my belief that the entire organization is utterly devoid of balls. The lineups of late make it clear that management acknowledges that the season is a lost cause. So let the kids play. Let them make mistakes. Let them learn. Let them try out for next year. Guys like Geovanny Soto, Buck Coats, and Scott Moore, who obviously have some talent but are not top-notch prospects, will finish out the year with a good number of at-bats under their belts. However, in an amazingly frustrating move, someone in the organization opted to hold off on the highly anticipated debut of phenom outfielder Felix Pie, despite the fact that he's on the 40-man roster and Jacque Jones blows in all areas of the game (except for that occasional big homer Dusty loves so much). As far as I'm concerned, the slight against Pie represents a major slap in the face to the die-hard fans who are still willing to come out to the park. The official line is that Pie still has much to learn about the game, but that's something that could be said for basically everybody in the Cubs dugout, manager and coaching staff included. The real reason they're holding him back is simple: If he came up this September, he would be eligible for free agency in 2010 instead of 2011. Once again, the Cub organization is more concerned with saving money somewhere down the line and being overly cautious when it isn't really necessary, rather than focusing on the here and now of setting into motion a sensible rebuilding process.
Returning to the field of play, Dusty further contributed to the castration of his team with another insanely peculiar subsitition at the end of the game. SS-turned-2B-turned-SS Ronny Cedeno put forth a solid effort tonight. He was 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored, made all the plays in the field he was supposed to make, and gunned down the lead runner on a nice heads-up play in the top of the ninth to prevent the winning run from reaching to third. It turns out that Ryan Dempster threw a bunch of walks and wild pitches (again), so the P-rats took the lead anyway. Regardless, Cedeno played very well.
Coming in for the save in the bottom of the ninth was right-hander Salomon Torres, best remembered for delivering the helmet-shattering beanball to Sammy Sosa in April 2004 at PNC Park that triggered the slugger's decline. Back in the present day, DLee and Jones struck out to begin the inning, then Murton and Blanco blooped a couple of singles into the short outfield. With Cedeno's spot due up next, Dusty had a pinch-hitter by the name of Freddie Bynum taking his warm up cuts. For those of you who don't know, Bynum more or less stinks. He has good speed but is a spastic at the plate and is troubled by routine plays with the glove -- he is the five years younger version of Jerry Hairston Jr. Looking back at the splits prior to tonight's game, it's tough to guess the better option versus Torres. Right-handed Cedeno was 0-for-3 lifetime against Torres, while left-handed Bynum was 0-for-2. Further, against all right-handers this season, Cedeno and Bynum's stats are more or less identical, with averages in the .265 range and on-base percentages around .300.
Now, any manager with a pair of balls and half a brain would have let Cedeno take his scheduled turn at bat. You cannot teach a player how to react to pressure; he must go out there and figure out get it done if he wants to be a baller. If the rebuilding plan includes Cedeno at either second or short next year, he needs to learn how to perform in exactly these types of situations. Instead, Dusty called for Bynum to pinch hit, thereby planting the seeds for the kid to become the next in line of players the fans despise but Dusty adores. After a halfway decent at-bat in which he fouled off a number of pitches and did a good job working the count, ultimately, as he has in 35 out of 113 previous plate appearances this season, Bynum struck out swinging, and the Cubs let another opportunity slip through their fingers. Game over. The unfathomable had become the reality.
I finished filling out all the boxes and played my customary numbers games -- figuring out in a backwards way how many double plays were turned, mathematically estimating how many runs should have been scored, and computing the starting pitchers' updated earned run averages. I circled the park once to let the lines at the El turnstiles die down, then I hopped the train home. I stopped at Tempo to pick up a bowl of split pea soup for dinner, said hey to my doorman, rode the elevator upstairs, undressed, and tried to digest the sublime ridiculousness of the night, from the star-crossed train ride right through the end of the ballgame, and all its disjointed layers of sorry, crackling melancholy.
I need a bucket -- I feel like I'm going to hurl.
Anyway, somewhere between Chicago and North, two fellow Cubs fans asked me to clarify which NFL teams are in which divisions. I told them I didn't know why the Cowboys are still in the East, so I used that odd factoid to deke out of the conversation as quickly as I was drawn in. Then, a really cute blonde climbed aboard at the North stop and stood next to me in front of the door. The first thing I noticed was that she was hot; the second that we were dressed eerily similarly: blue shirts, jeans, Cubs b.p. hat. She asked me in a throaty voice if I thought we'd be late, I said it really didn't matter since we looked like twins, and she laughed. Aha! Then two seats opened up at the Fullerton stop, so we sat down and continued flirting. Amazingly, she's as big of a Cubs freak as I am -- tonight was her 24th game of the year and my 32nd. Thankfully the train was delayed for a bit before Belmont, so we were able to talk longer than usual. She's Irish, from the North Side, went to Fenwick and DePaul, works at Chase, is single, and lives in Old Town. Things couldn't have gotten off to a better start.
Throughout the train ride, she was sipping on a Miller Lite pounder from a brown paper bag. I warned her to watch out or at least ditch the can in the train car, because I had been busted last year doing the same thing. She said she'd be fine and we kept talking. We exited together at Addison and I waited at the top of the stairs while she threw the empty into one of the trash cans on the platform. Sure enough, just as she was about to let go of the can, three undercover cops pounced on her. Fuck! I followed them as they walked her to the other end of the platform to run a background check and ticket her, but one of the thug cops said to get the hell away and, given my recent experiences, I reluctantly obliged. However, as they walked away, I shouted out that she should come find me in the Friendly Confines Cafe, where I've been spending most of my times at games lately. She looked pretty freaked out and she never did come find me, though I have to wonder if she even ended up going to the game or if they detained her for some other reason, like a parking ticket or some other equally slight infraction. Life is not fucking fair. Fuck the police.
Bewildered at and heartbroken over the inequity of it all, I ambled over to Jerry's stand for a scorecard and thereafter entered Wrigley through the right field gate. The park was not quite half empty, but it's getting there in a hurry. They've cleared away many of the temporary concession stands and some of the permanent stands are completely locked up. It was the bottom half of the first inning when I sat down in the Cafe, and the P-rats already put up two runs in the opening frame. Crap. Here we go again.
This contest, the Cubs' 68th at home, was nominally notable for an extremely dubious reason: The Cubs went into the game leading the P-rats by just 0.5 games in the Central, meaning that last place in the entire National League was on the line. The past two years I've comforted myself with the fact that, no matter how bad things got on the North Side, the Cubs would never fall to last place behind the pathetic collection that is the P-rats. Somehow, during all the awful stretches and boneheaded mistakes that cost the Cubs dozens of games these past two years, the P-rats still managed to lose more often than we did. Yet here we were, September 5, 2006, a hair's width from dead last place in the entire National League, and facing a two run defecit before the Cubs even came up to bat for their first turn. This season has been chock full of ceaseless agony to a stupefying degree.
The game was a sloppy one for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the P-rats are the worst fielding team imaginable. Thanks to injuries and senseless trades, they had three marginally talented second basemen taking turns kicking the ball around at second, third, and short. They also started the arm-less Jason Bay in left and Jeromy Burnitz in right, meaning that any ball hit to either corner could easily become a double or even a triple. Also, their hot-hitting catcher, Ronny Paulino, might have the third-worst arm and defensive skills of any catcher in the big leagues, with the exception of Mike Piazza and Michael Barrett (say a prayer for him, by the way).
They say that in baseball the toughest ninety feet to get are the last ninety feet, and Cub leadoff hitter and centerfielder, Juan Pierre, exemplifies this team's frustrations. Being a true leadoff man, he's always doing everything possible to get into scoring position. Yesterday he scored once, was stranded at third twice, and was stranded at first once. Tonight he scored once and was stranded at second twice. Over the course of the last two games, he stole four bases against one caught stealing. However, his efforts are futile if the guys in the heart of the lineup can't get him around to score. If the name of the game were to collect total bases, Dusty Baker would have won four World Series rings during his four years with the Cubs. This the essence of Dustyball: Hopefully get a guy on and have him wait at second or third for a big bat to jack a home run. And what happens when your lineup is short one or two big boppers? The 2005 and 2006 Cubs happen, that's what. It's mind boggling to think about the number of guys they've left in scoring position, and tonight continued the trend. Tonight they stranded 12 guys, eight of whom were in scoring position. If that isn't the definition of offensive futility, I don't know what is. A lot of the fault lies with lineup construction, but that's a topic I'd rather not revist at the moment.
Contributing to the continuing frustrations hampering this club, the player personnel wire and subsequent WGN-broadcast spindoctoring effort by Oneri Fleita, head of the minor league system, reinforced my belief that the entire organization is utterly devoid of balls. The lineups of late make it clear that management acknowledges that the season is a lost cause. So let the kids play. Let them make mistakes. Let them learn. Let them try out for next year. Guys like Geovanny Soto, Buck Coats, and Scott Moore, who obviously have some talent but are not top-notch prospects, will finish out the year with a good number of at-bats under their belts. However, in an amazingly frustrating move, someone in the organization opted to hold off on the highly anticipated debut of phenom outfielder Felix Pie, despite the fact that he's on the 40-man roster and Jacque Jones blows in all areas of the game (except for that occasional big homer Dusty loves so much). As far as I'm concerned, the slight against Pie represents a major slap in the face to the die-hard fans who are still willing to come out to the park. The official line is that Pie still has much to learn about the game, but that's something that could be said for basically everybody in the Cubs dugout, manager and coaching staff included. The real reason they're holding him back is simple: If he came up this September, he would be eligible for free agency in 2010 instead of 2011. Once again, the Cub organization is more concerned with saving money somewhere down the line and being overly cautious when it isn't really necessary, rather than focusing on the here and now of setting into motion a sensible rebuilding process.
Returning to the field of play, Dusty further contributed to the castration of his team with another insanely peculiar subsitition at the end of the game. SS-turned-2B-turned-SS Ronny Cedeno put forth a solid effort tonight. He was 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored, made all the plays in the field he was supposed to make, and gunned down the lead runner on a nice heads-up play in the top of the ninth to prevent the winning run from reaching to third. It turns out that Ryan Dempster threw a bunch of walks and wild pitches (again), so the P-rats took the lead anyway. Regardless, Cedeno played very well.
Coming in for the save in the bottom of the ninth was right-hander Salomon Torres, best remembered for delivering the helmet-shattering beanball to Sammy Sosa in April 2004 at PNC Park that triggered the slugger's decline. Back in the present day, DLee and Jones struck out to begin the inning, then Murton and Blanco blooped a couple of singles into the short outfield. With Cedeno's spot due up next, Dusty had a pinch-hitter by the name of Freddie Bynum taking his warm up cuts. For those of you who don't know, Bynum more or less stinks. He has good speed but is a spastic at the plate and is troubled by routine plays with the glove -- he is the five years younger version of Jerry Hairston Jr. Looking back at the splits prior to tonight's game, it's tough to guess the better option versus Torres. Right-handed Cedeno was 0-for-3 lifetime against Torres, while left-handed Bynum was 0-for-2. Further, against all right-handers this season, Cedeno and Bynum's stats are more or less identical, with averages in the .265 range and on-base percentages around .300.
Now, any manager with a pair of balls and half a brain would have let Cedeno take his scheduled turn at bat. You cannot teach a player how to react to pressure; he must go out there and figure out get it done if he wants to be a baller. If the rebuilding plan includes Cedeno at either second or short next year, he needs to learn how to perform in exactly these types of situations. Instead, Dusty called for Bynum to pinch hit, thereby planting the seeds for the kid to become the next in line of players the fans despise but Dusty adores. After a halfway decent at-bat in which he fouled off a number of pitches and did a good job working the count, ultimately, as he has in 35 out of 113 previous plate appearances this season, Bynum struck out swinging, and the Cubs let another opportunity slip through their fingers. Game over. The unfathomable had become the reality.
I finished filling out all the boxes and played my customary numbers games -- figuring out in a backwards way how many double plays were turned, mathematically estimating how many runs should have been scored, and computing the starting pitchers' updated earned run averages. I circled the park once to let the lines at the El turnstiles die down, then I hopped the train home. I stopped at Tempo to pick up a bowl of split pea soup for dinner, said hey to my doorman, rode the elevator upstairs, undressed, and tried to digest the sublime ridiculousness of the night, from the star-crossed train ride right through the end of the ballgame, and all its disjointed layers of sorry, crackling melancholy.
I need a bucket -- I feel like I'm going to hurl.
posted by Pat at 11:53 PM
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