Cubs Tied for First!

WC’s Opening Day Checklist

√ Watch classic baseball movie, Bull Durham.

√ Listen to the late Steve Goodman’s “Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”

√ Dust off the genuine Wrigley Field bleacher seats in the garage

√ Renew subscription to MLB Baseball Mobile Edition

√ Check the standings for the first time in 2013

YES! The Cubs – probably for the last time this season – are tied for first place.

Play Brawl!

Who says the Cubs can’t hit?

Oh, WC meant “Play Ball!”

R.I.P. Virgil “Fire” Trucks, 1917-2013

Back in the early 1970s, WC studied antitrust law under Prof. Paul Slater. Prof. Slater had been involved in parts of the baseball antitrust litigation. Slater was also a Chicago Cubs fan, and would take some of us up to do baseball antitrust work in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. These field trips usually involved some quantities of Falstaff Beer and watching the Cubs lose. WC hasn’t had much need for antitrust law, but the field work made WC a life-long Cubs fan. 

Famously, the Cubs last appeared in a World Series in 1945. Or as the late, great Steve Goodman put it,

The last time the Cubs won the National League Pennant
Was the year we dropped the Bomb on Japan

- Steve Goodman, “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”

Virgil Trucks, 1917-2013 – Photo by Gary Tramontian

The Cubs lost that World Series of course, in no small part because of the efforts of starting pitcher Virgil Trucks. Trucks missed two seasons serving in the Navy in World War II and was discharged less than two weeks before his start in the second game of the 1945 World Series. Because of the War, the Major League Baseball had waived the rule requiring players to have been on the team’s roster by September 1 to qualify for post-season play. He defeated the Cubs in that game. Think about that: the Cubs were defeated by a man who had not thrown a pitch in major league baseball for two years. He held the Cubs scoreless for four innings a few days later, in Game 6, although he didn’t have a decision in that game. At his death, Trucks was believed to be the last surviving member of either team in that World Series.

After the 1945 Series, Truck went on to have a distinguished career with the Tigers, the St. Louis Browns, and the New York Yankees. He is one of just five pitchers in Major League Baseball history to throw two no-hitters in one season. He was on the All-Star team twice, and retired as a player in 1958 with a career record of 177 wins and 135 losses. Trucks was the uncle of Butch Trucks, a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band, although he may not have been much of a fan of rock music.

Trucks went on to a long coaching career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Atlanta Braves and the Tigers. He was also a terrific spokesman for Major League Baseball and the Detroit Tigers, much-loved by the fans and, by all accounts, one of the nicest guys in the game. He died in Alabama after a brief illness at age 95.

R.I.P. Virgil Oswald “Fire” Trucks. One of baseball’s gentlemen.

2012 in Review: Sports

The Big News in sports for 2012 was the NFL’s sudden realization discovery that football is bad for you. Specifically, that serial concussions work terrible damage to the brains of its athletes. Not that the NFL is actually admitting anything; there are lawsuits, after all, and we can’t have any damaging admissions. The NFL is overwhelmingly America’s favorite professional sport. But the cost turns out to be much higher than the extortionate tickets. Suetonius is still apt: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant. But you’d think we’d outgrown death sports.

The news for professional hockey, another brain-damaging recreation, would be equally bad, except that there isn’t any professional hockey. The NHL is on the verge of losing its entire season over greed. Again. If you are asking yourself, didn’t we just do this, the answer is that the lessons of 2005 are lost on players and management. You can’t blame that failure to learn on concussions.

Major League Baseball was badly embarrassed when the National League’s Most Valuable Player tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. He got off on a technicality – the chain of custody on the sample tested was flawed – but it’s not what you can call a “clean” result. Oh, and the Cubs lost. Again. 104 years since winning the World Series. But who’s counting? Luckily, the Astros were epoch-class awful, and spared the Cubs the additional ignominy of the worst record in the National League. Unluckily, the Astros jump to the American League next season.

This was a summer Olympics year, officially the XXX Olympiad, hosted in London. 204 countries participated, with 85 of them winning one or more medals in the 26 sports and 39 disciplines. WC didn’t watch them.

Another hero bit the dust when seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong was busted for cheating and using performance enhancing drugs. He was stripped of all of his trophies and banned from cycling. He maintains his evidence through a kind of passive-aggressive jujitsu. by which he refused to fight but denied everything.

And America’s obsession with professional reports remains just short of criminal. The average salary for an NFL quarterback is $15 million. The average NBA basketball player makes $5 million. The average MLB baseball player made $3.4 million. The average school teacher, a far more important and consequential job, makes a little over $40,000 a year. Think about that when you are watching the Super Bowl this year.

Maybe next year.

Eamus Catuli – AC0467104

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

- A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Green Fields of the Mind

Another Cubs’ season lurched to a close. The Cubs managed to be even worse this year than last, slipping below the dreadful 100-loss benchmark to 101 losses. Ten games worse than last year, which was very bad itself.

They call it “rebuilding,” WC understands, and there’s certainly room for that. The basic problem for a Cubs fan is that the team always seems to be “rebuilding.” In 1975, in the bleachers at Wrigley Field, WC met a 66-year old Cubs fan, who told WC he hoped to see the Cubs win the World Series before he died. That didn’t happen. Any smugness, any certainty that WC’s fate would be different, that WC would certainly see the Cubs win it all, that smugness and certainty have leached away over the years – decades. Each year is a new year. Each year is a new hope. But as the supply of new years dwindles, it breaks your heart.

Sure, the Cubs have new owners, and the new managers are the folks who brought the Boston Red Sox a World Series trophy. There’s hope. You can always find hope. it just gets harder.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

- A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Green Fields of the Mind

Postscript: For those who need an explanation of the title.

Finally. Ron Santo Inducted Into Baseball Hall of Fame

Ron’s Widow, Vicki Santo, with Hall of Fame Plaque

It’s bittersweet, because Ron Santo didn’t live to see it. But his widow, Vicki Santo, speaking Sunday at the 2012 Hall of Fame induction, did a fine job. To quote Bleed Cubbie Blue’s Josh Timmer, “Vicki Santo just hit Ronnie’s last home run for him.”

The Hall of Fame selection process may be deeply flawed. But the honor is real. Congratulations, Ronnie.

 

Baseball Under the Midnight Sun

It’s no news to Fairbanksans, but last Thursday night – well, really Friday morning – the Alaska Goldpanners, Fairbanks’s summer league baseball team, won the 107th Midnight Sun Baseball Game. WC was there. At least through eight innings.

This game has been going on for a long time. Longer than it has been since the Chicago Cubs won a World Series. Which is essentially forever. And, so far as anyone knows, it has always started about 10:30 PM, and always been played without artificial lights. That’s right, a baseball game centered on midnight and played in natural light.

Midnight Sun Game – Photo by Sam Harrell, News-Miner

Clunky, homely old Growden Field was packed for the game. The opposing team was the Everette, Washington Merchants. And from the beginning, the game was bizarre, even for a Panners game. In the top of the first inning, Everette sent its batters to the plate in wrong order. After #26 got a single and drove in a run, Panner Manager Jim Deitz ambled – Deitz always ambles, and it’s worth pointing out this belly crosses the foul line two full steps before the rest of him – Deitz ambled out to inform the umpire of Everette’s sin. The result was an automatic out for #26, and the run taken off the boards. In about 50 years of watching baseball, that’s a first for WC.

In the bottom of the fourth, a Panner batter hit a line drive that struck first base on the fly, bounded 20 feet in the air over the head of the surprised Everette first baseman, to score a hit and a run. WC has seen bad hops, but that one probably wins a prize.

In the sixth inning, very shortly after WC’s neighbor commented that batted balls never struck the lights, a foul ball off the bat of an Everette player did just exactly that, striking the lights along the left field light. The lights were off, of course, but it was another first for WC.

There were lots of walks, lots of errors and lots of managers jawing umpires about their calls. And the home plate umpire’s strike zone expanded throughout the game. WC was sitting right behind home plate. The umpire was not a small man. At least two full home plates wide, by WC’s estimate. If WC could see the ball strike the catcher’s mitt, you can be pretty sure it was out of the strike zone. By the seventh inning, the strike zone had also crept down to the batter’s ankles and up to the batter’s ears. If the ball didn’t actually hit the dirt or the batter, it was generally a strike, Perhaps it was the low light.

But the game was still fun. There were some fine plays, as well as some brutal errors. The low sun angle in the hour before sunset always makes throws from third or shortstop very tough to see and to field. Routine throws to first base were very exciting. The Everett third baseman made a brilliant catch of a Panner line drive, moving to his right, robbing the Panners of an extra-base hit.

So you had everything you could hope for in a Midnight Sun Game. Good plays, excitement, a lead that changed hands several times and a win. Here’s to 107 years <clink> and hopes for another 107 to follow.

Cubs Tied for First!

Yes, WC does this every spring. Yes, the post is almost identical every year. WC promises to stop when the Cubs win the World Series. In the meantime, and on a brighter note than the recent obituaries:

It’s probably the oldest Opening Day joke in baseball, a running gag for more than one hundred years. The Cubs are tied for first!

Of course, on Opening Day, when all the teams have 0-0 records, everyone is tied for first. While WC lived in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune would run the stale gag as a banner headline on the sports page.

WC has zero expectations for his team this year. They got nothing but new management. Theo Epstein, stolen from the Boston Red Sox. But it took even Theo a few years to break the Curse of the Bambino and get the BoSox a World Series. He’s not going to end the longest losing streak in professional sports this season.

The Cubs got close against the Marlins in 2002. Then Bartman. And then the horrible meltdown. There’s exactly one player left from that team, Kerry Wood, and he’s no longer a starter and spent a couple of years in exile. Nah. The Cubs got nothin’.

But still, it’s Opening Day[1]. We’re going from the season of no baseball to the happier world of six games a week until October.

Tonight WC will perform his annual pre-Opening Day rituals:

√ Watch Bull Durham

√ Clean the Wrigley Field bleacher seats in his garage (yes, really)

√ Listen to the late, great Steve Goodman sing “Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request”

√ Renew his subscription to MLB.com

and then wait impatiently for the sweetest pair of words in English: Play Ball!

____________________

[1] Yes, technically there were the two Mariners-A’s games in Tokyo last week. It doesn’t count.

WC’s Epic Fails: First Cubs Game

WC attended law school in Chicago, Illinois in the waning days of Boss Daley. In fact, the first thing WC saw on arrival at the law school campus was a cop taking a bribe on a parking violation. WC arrived on August 25, 1972. The morning of August 26, 1972 was given over to “orientation,” where they utterly failed to tell us the important stuff. (Don’t walk west of State Street after dark. Beware of dunes of dead fish washing up on the lakeshore. Pedestrians never have the right of way. Cops are never your friend.)

Fergie Jenkins of the Chicago Cubs pitches in a game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

But in the afternoon, a few of us headed north on the State Street ‘L’ (which is actually underground and not elevated at Chicago Avenue) to attend a Cubs baseball game. WC’s first Cubs game, ever. First ‘L’ train ride, ever. After settling in the bleachers ($2.00 tickets for the front tier of seats), WC watched the Cubs play the San Francisco Giants in the warm afternoon sunlight, with Fergie Jenkins on the mound for the Cubs and, eventually, Randy Moffitt (Billy Jean King’s brother) pitching for the Giants. At that point in WC’s life, he was sort of a Giants fan, the Giants then being the MLB team closest to Fairbanks. WC was the only Giants fan in the bleachers that afternoon.

WC also had his first Falstaff beer that afternoon. It was awful. Hog piss and soap suds. WC had attended undergraduate school in the Pacific Northwest, where the cheap beer was much better. But WC was a country mouse, so he kept his opinions to himself. The beer went largely undrunk. WC’s new roommate, John Freechak, was less restrained. John was from St. Louis, was an anti-fan of the Cubs, and freely shared with the rest of the crowd in the bleachers his strong, loud, largely obscene opinions on the quality of the beer, the quality of the Cubs and the quality of Cubs fans. He succeeded in annoying all of the true Cubs fans around him.

It was a very good game, with the lead changing hands several times. The wind was blowing out, which meant that a routine fly ball would get a wind assist out of the park and onto Waveland Avenue. There were at least 30 hits. And at least 8 home runs; Billy Williams and Ron Santo each had two. After 9 innings of play, the score was tied, 9-9. So in failing early evening light, we went into extras.

The Giants were retired without scoring in the top of the 10th inning, on a nifty double play line drive to the pitcher and a quick toss to first base. In the bottom of the 10th, Jose Cardenal singled. Billy Williams moved Cardenal to third base on a single. Rick Monday then struck out with runners on first and third. Ron Santo came up to bat, and the Giants chose to walk him. So the bases were loaded when Joe Pepitone came to the plate. Moffitt’s first pitch maybe – maybe – brushed Pepitone’s uniform. The umpire called it as a hit batsman, and Pepitone, without lifting the bat off his shoulder, “drove” in the winning run and the game ended with a Cubs win, 10-9.

Freechak was furious, and loudly protested what he saw as an unjust ending. It was too much for the Cubs loyalists around us, who dumped at least three half-full plastic glasses of Falstaff beer over Freechak’s head, soaking him and splashing WC pretty badly. That was annoying enough that WC threw his largely untouched beer on the folks he thought had soaked Freech and splashed WC.

One thing led to another, and before very long Freech, another new law student and WC wound up in the holding pen under the left field stands, cooling our heels, and stinking of bad beer, under the baleful eye of three security guys. Readers will note the guys who threw the first beer didn’t get detained. Eventually, the stadium manager turned up, chewed us out for a while, and banned us from Cubs games for three weeks. Ordinarily that wouldn’t count as punishment. You know, it’s the the Cubs. But the Cubs mounted a 12-4 record over that period, and then finished the season on the road. So we rode home on the ‘L’ in the dark, stinking of beer and looking like something the cat had dragged in.

WC learned later from Prof. Paul Slater that if he had offered $20 to the stadium manager to “pay the laundry bill,” the ban probably would have been lifted. But WC was still a country mouse at that point, and didn’t yet understand how Chicago worked.

But somehow WC started following the Cubs from that point forward, and sank into his 39 year addiction to a hopeless, hapless ball team.

Did you know it’s only 71 days to Opening Day?

2011 in Review: Sports

As WC did in 2009 and 2010, WC will undertake a brief review of sports in 2011 before we mercifully leave the poor, maimed calendar year behind.

The Chicago Cubs finished 25 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central, in next-to-last place. Nine games worse than last year. Sigh. Bless the Houston Astros. The Cubs were truly awful. One hundred three years and counting. Some other National League team from the Central Division ended up winning the World Series. The American League continued to play some other game where the pitcher doesn’t bat. And yet another MLB star – this one the National League MVP – was outed as a user of performance enhancing drugs. On the brighter side, Major League Baseball survived another year with Bud Selig at the helm.

Ron Santo was selected to the Hall of Fame – the year after he had died. The Hall of Fame and its bastard selection process are despicable, as WC has argued before. But belated recognition of a great baseball player is fractionally better than a continuing exclusion.

Apparently there are other sports besides baseball?

American football, at all levels, was revealed to be a cumulative long term hazard to the health of the players. Repeated concussions, even symptom-free concussions, can cause very severe brain damage. Amazingly, this continues to be news to the National Football League.

Hockey, at all levels, was revealed to be a cumulative long term hazard to the health of the players. Repeated concussions, even symptom-free concussions, can cause very severe brain damage. Amazingly, this came as news to the National Hockey League. “I went to a hockey game and watched brain trauma occur.”

The National Basketball Association players and owners demonstrated that, no matter how many billions are available, it’s not so much that you can’t fight over it, killing the first third of the regular season. But it’s all right, pro basketball fans, playoffs once again will last into mid-summer. Presumably, some folks watched in 2011 and will watch in 2012 to see who won. WC didn’t and won’t.

Apparently auto racing, and specifically NASCAR, remains the most popular sport in the U.S. WC has never understood sitting in stands for hours, damaging your hearing and watching internal combustion engines waste fuel. Is this a southern thing? Is it a white thing? WC still doesn’t get it.

ESPN, the Eastern Sports Network, continues to believe there are no college football teams worth noticing west of the Rockies except Southern California. The Oregon Ducks didn’t help by choking in the BCS Championship Game. Boise State finally lost a game and, in sharp contrast to other 10-1 teams, was relegated to something called the MAACO Bowl, administering an object lesson to Arizona State. Yet EPSN continues to pretend the west doesn’t exist.

And despite the buckets of ink, petabytes of digital content and the passionate beliefs of a depressing high percentage of Americans, including WC when the Cubs are involved, none of it really matters. It’s entertainment. Sometimes farcical. In the case of the Cubs, almost always farcical. But passion is unrelated to importance in the real world. Despite what LSU fans may think.

Santo Finally Makes Hall of Fame; WC Remains Furious

Ron Santo

For decades, Ron Santo, former Cubs’ third baseman, has been the best baseball player not be be in the baseball Hall of Fame. Today, one year after his death, 37 years after retiring from the game, Santo was finally elected to the Hall of Fame.

WC won’t go through all of the numbers, but here are a few: 9 All Star Games, 5 Golden Glove awards, 342 home runs, 1,331 runs batted in and 4 30-home run seasons. He led Major League baseball in assists (contributing to getting a baserunner out) every year from 1962-1968.

Despite having juvenile onset (Type I) diabetes, in an era when treatment was much more problematic, Santo played 1,536 games during the decade from 1960-69. Only two players played more games in that interval.

Outside of the ballpark, Santo was a tireless fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, raising more than $40 million in contributions.

Santo spent the last 21 years of his life as a color commentator for the Cubs’ games radio broadcasts on WGN. Despite amputations of both feet as a complication of his diabetes, and cancer, Santo put his heart and soul into his broadcast job.

So if Santo finally made it into the Hall of Fame, why is WC furious? Because it finally happened only after Santo was dead. In a way, election now is cruel, denying to a great player and a great human being a great triumph. It’s a sadly belated recognition of decades of injustice.

Better late than never can still be too late.

So the honor is bittersweet to WC. Richly deserved, but laced with certain knowledge that the Hall of Fame and its cumbersome election processes did a great man a great wrong. WC’s congratulations to Ron’s widow, Vicki and his kids. WC’s scorn and contempt to the Hall’s flawed selection process.

WC’s buddy Al Yellon, at Bleed Cubbie Blue, is more charitable and says,

Congratulations, Ron, for an honor long deserved, and better received now, than not at all. Don’t be sad on this day because he’s not here. He wouldn’t have wanted that; last year, in eulogizing him, Pat Hughes reminded all of us to remember Ron with a smile. Do that on this happy day, and also, let’s turn this into the biggest celebration the Hall of Fame has ever seen.

WC will click his heels today in celebration.

The Ron Santo Heel Click

Eamus Catuli – AC0366103

Who says the Cubs can't hit?

Another Cubs baseball season has staggered to a wretched end. Eamus Catuli - AC0367103. A miserable 71-91 win-loss record.

A season ending with a loss to the lowly San Diego Padres. Along the way we had the childish tantrums of Carlos Zambrano, the firing of GM Jim Hendrie and the crushing ineptitude of new manager Mike Quade. And shocking displays of child abuse.

Thank God for the Houston Astros, or the Cubs would be the team with the worst record in the National League.

The late Bart Giamatti wrote,

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

The Cubs, of course, break their fans’ hearts every year. But despite all that, here’s nearly as good a line from Rogers Hornsby, one of the great Cub players of history:

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.

Maybe next year…

Million Dollar Arm; Five Cent Head

For serious Baseball fans, the movie Bull Durham is a kind of Fan’s Guide to the Game. Consider an early  scene, where the manager and coach of a Carolina League team are explaining to an experienced player why he is back in the Carolina League:

SKIP: ‘Cause of Ebby Calvin LaLoosh. (beat) The Big Club’s got a hundred grand in him-

LARRY He’s got a million dollar arm and a five cent head.

SKIP –we had the gun on him tonight– the last five pitches he threw were faster than the first five. 96 miles an hour, 98, 97, 97. 97. (beat) He’s got the best young arm I’ve seen in 30 years.

LARRY But he ain’t quite sure which plane he’s on, y’know what I mean…

The Cubs have a player named Carlos Zambrano. He might be the very model for Nuke LaLoosh. Except that Zambrano has ten years in the majors. He’s thirty years old. He just acts like he is a teenager. Consider the following chronology:

June 2007: Dugout fight with catcher Michael Barrett spills over into clubhouse. Barrett ends up in the hospital. Ends in lovefest, before Barrett gets traded.

May 2009: After ejection, Zambrano impersonates umpire by giving him the thumb, then hurls a ball toward left field, attacks Gatorade cooler with a bat. Suspended six games and fined $3,000.

September 2009: Rips Cubs fans for booing him after an erratic outing. Zambrano: “I thought these were the greatest fans in baseball. But they showed me today that they just care about them, and that’s not fair.”

September 2009: Insists 2010 will be different: “Like Arnold Schwarzenegger said, ‘I’ll be back.’ Believe it. All new episodes — next year.”

March 2010: Guarantees in a Chicago Tribune interview that he has changed. Zambrano: “For real. I am almost sure — 99.9 percent. When you’re sure of something, you go ahead and do it — and execute it. Seriously.”

June 2010: Engages in heated shouting match with Derrek Lee in dugout at U.S. Cellular Field, leading to suspension and anger management counseling.

February 2011: Announces in spring training ”I’m cured” because of anger management counseling.

June 2011: Calls out Cubs as “‘embarrassing” and a “Triple-A team,” while throwing Carlos Marmol under the bus for giving up game-tying hit to Ryan Theriot on a slider.

August 2011: Serves up five home runs in 10-4 loss to the Braves, ejected for throwing at Chipper Jones, cleans out locker and announces his “retirement.” Cubs subsequently place Zambrano on 30-day disqualified list, without pay. Zambrano is expected to appeal.

Zambrano’s problems aren’t as much anger management – although as the chronology demonstrates, he has anger management issues – as emotions management. A call from the umpire that doesn’t go his way and he loses control of his emotions, his pitches and his play. It’s an ugly sequence. Cubs’ fans have seen it dozens of times. While Zambrano is capable of amazing stuff, including a no-hitter against the Astros three years ago, it’s rare for him to be able to channel his emotions through an entire game, let alone an entire season.

On August 12, Zambrano ‘s pitching was really bad, and baseball fans were “treated” to another spectacle of an adult having a teenager temper tantrum. Except this time, after being ejected, Zambrano cleaned out his locker and left the stadium, telling everyone he was “retiring.”

That  might be acceptable in politics – “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore” – but in baseball you don’t walk out on your teammates and your team. Zambrano is done as a Cub. The only question is what Zambrano does with himself. The Cubs are through with him and, based on media reports, so are his teammates.

Good riddance. There are some good memories, Carlos, but mostly the memories are of deep frustration with a player who has immense talent and no discipline. Like Milton Bradley, but less surly.

Good luck.

The Tenth Time Is the Charm

It took ten attempts, but the dreadful Chicago Cubs managed to win three games in a row for the first time this season on Sunday afternoon. It helped that they were at home. It helped they were playing the Houston Astros, who are actually have a worse record than the Cubs. And it took ten innings. It was the first time they have won three games in a row at home since late July 2009.

Ten attempts. Nine previous times this year they had managed to win back-to-back games, but were unable to create a pitiful run of three. In fact, it took 102 games.

The Cubs have so many things wrong with them that it’s not possible to fit them all into a reasonable length blog post. But here are some of the awful realities. These stats are from MLB.com. It would be too depressing to see how the team ranks in more sophisticated statistical analyses.

• The Cubs have committed the most errors in baseball, 88 through Sunday, 10 more than the next worse-fielding team. Defensively, they are the worst.
• The Cubs allow the most opposing players on base of any team in Major League Baseball. The Cubs’ pitching is nearly as bad as their defense.
• The Cubs batters have gotten the fewest walks in Major League Baseball. That speaks to poor pitch selection and bad plate discipline. The very expensive, aging and half-crippled Alfonso Soriano is probably the worst offender here. He swings at the first pitch, not matter what or where it is.
• The Cubs have the fewest stolen bases in the Majors.
• The Cubs score the fewest runs of any team in the Majors when the Cubs do actually manage to get runners in scoring position.

So, as a team they can’t pitch, can’t run, can’t field, can’t hit and can’t score. So it’s not surprising that their longest winning streak is three games, came 102 games into the season and was achieved against the lowly Astros.

The Cubbies are on a track to a 100+ loss season. They are really, really bad. Again. Still. Three consecutive wins is a feeble kind of success. Hard core Cubs’ fans cling to the pitiful streak as a kind of life ring in a bad storm. But we don’t kid ourselves, either.

The Cubs Are Really Bad Awful

As many readers know, W is a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan. The Cubs have already slid to next-to-last place in the National League Central, with a record of 20-25. They are actually worse than the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The statistics-loving Sabermetricists, who analyze (and over-analyze) every aspect of baseball stats, have concluded the Cubs now, a quarter of the way through the Major League Baseball season, have a 3.3% chance of making the World Series. WC didn’t realize the odds were that good.

The new manager, Mike Quade, seems to have a gift for bad decisions, and an unhealthy tendency to champion mediocre pitchers. The starting centerfielder is out indefinitely after taking a fastball to his face. Three of the starting pitchers are out with injuries (not that they were very good, anyway). The starting catcher is injured. The starting rotation allows more runs than any other team in the National League. And the only statistic in which the Cubs lead the majors is Runners in Scoring Position (RISP), which are opportunities lost.  That’s appropriate.

“You know the law of averages says:
Anything will happen that can.”
That’s what it says.
“But the year the Cubs last won a national league pennant
Was the year we dropped the bomb on Japan”

- Steve Goodman, “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request”

Maybe next year.

Doomed from the Start

Dooming your children from the start

WC is shocked that parents are so irresponsible as to doom their children before their first birthday. An entire life as a Cubs fan? This kind of child abuse should be reported.

Cubs Tied for First!

It’s Opening Day. WC has performed all of the required Cubs’ fan rituals:

• Watched Bull Durham
• Listened to Steve Goodman‘s “Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request”
• Renewed his subscription to MLB.com
• Dusted off his souvenir Wrigley Field bleacher seats

“Hey Ernie. Let’s play two!”

Update: WC’s email suggests that non-baseball fans do not understand the title of this post. Sigh. On Opening Day, all of the teams have the same record, zero wins and  zero losses. So the Cubs are tied for first place with everyone else. It’s also likely the last time the Cubs will be in first place. Sheesh.

Second Update: No, WC did not invent the line. It used to be featured on the front page of the sports section of the Chicago Tribune every Opening Day. The joke was that the Tribune owned the Cubs MLB team.

How to Make Dave Winfield Commit an Error (Revised)

For the next week or two, WC will be revisiting earlier posts to Wickersham’s Conscience. For most readers, these older essays will be new. For those who have read them, well, WC thinks they are good enough to be worth reading again.

Dave Winfield was a superb member of the Alaska Goldpanners 1971-72, a summer league team in WC’s hometown. He’s the only pitcher to ever throw a no-hitter for the team (13W-4L), he was most of the offense (.308 BA, 72 RBI, 8 SB), and he was a great guy. WC has his autographed Goldpanner jersey somewhere. But WC made him commit an error in 1974.

It was the second games of a Cubs’ home stand against the Padres. June 18, 1974. By the seventh inning, the Cubs were trailing 7-1, and WC had been drowning my sorrows in lukewarm Falstaff beer in the front row of the bleachers for more then two hours. Another ex-Goldpanner, Rick Monday hit one his patented, towering, warning track fly balls. LF Dave Winfield was camped under it, waiting for it to come down. He was maybe ten feet from WC.

WC screamed, “Goldpanners,” as loud as he could. Winfield looked over his shoulder at WC, and the ball dropped in front of him. He was still a few years from his Golden Glove string, but still. He picked the ball up and threw it in to hold Monday at first. He glared at WC and shook his head.

The Cubs still lost, despite a small rally in the bottom of the 8th inning. And Dave Winfield is in the Hall of Fame. But WC can take credit for causing a Hall of Fame baseball player to commit an error. If WC ever meets him in person, WC will blame the beer…

The Christina Green Memorial Fund

Nine year old Christina Green was buried today, the first of the victims of the Tucson murders to be buried. Her death troubles WC the most: what kind of society cannot protect its children? What kind of work might she have done? All cut off. Such a waste.

Christina Green is also a part of the extended Cubs family. Her grandfather was Dallas Green, former manager of the Chicago Cubs. The man who brought Ryne Sandberg to the Cubs. The man who got the Cubs to the playoffs back in 1984.

For those who may be so inclined:  The Green family has asked that anyone wishing to make a donation in Christina’s memory do so by logging on to the website of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona and clicking the link to the Christina Taylor Green Memorial Fund.

Or you can contact the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona by e-mail at christinataylorgreenmemorial@cfsoaz.org or by calling 520-545-0313.

Or you can send a check to the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona, In Memory of Christina Taylor Green, 2250 E. Broadway Blvd., Tucson, Ariz. 85719.

 

2010 in Review: Sports

The Chicago Cubs finished 16 games behind the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Central, in next-to-last place. Sigh. They were pretty awful. One hundred two years and counting. Some National League team from the west coast ended up winning the World Series. The American League continued to play some other game where the pitcher doesn’t bat. And yet another MLB star was outed as a user of performance enhancing drugs. On the brighter side, Major League Baseball survived another year with Bud Selig at the helm.

There are other, less important sports than baseball. Let’s see. WC will think of one in a moment. Oh, golf. In 2009 Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalante, his reputation, his integrity and possibly his marriage. In the words of The Capitol Steps, he couldn’t keep his bowsers truckled. In 2010, he did the same thing with his golf game. WC can be corrected on this (the subject isn’t baseball), but Woods, for the first time as a pro, went the year without winning a tournament.

American football, at all levels, was revealed to be a cumulative long term hazard to the health of the players. Repeated concussions, even symptom-free concussions, can cause very severe brain damage. Amazingly, this came as news to the National Football League.

The National Basketball Association playoffs once again lasted into mid-summer. Presumably, some folks watched to see who won. WC didn’t.

Apparently auto racing, and specifically NASCAR, remains the most popular sport in the U.S. WC has never understood sitting in stands for hours, damaging your hearing and watching internal combustion engines waste fuel. Is this a southern thing? Is it a white thing? WC doesn’t get it.

ESPN, the Eastern Sports Network, continues to believe there are no college football teams worth noticing west of the Rockies except Southern California. Despite a series of humiliations and five losses, post-season ineligibility and finishing tied for third in the Pac 10, USC remained the darling of ESPN. Five Pac 10 teams were ranked in the BCS. Seven teams are in post-season bowl games. Boise State finally lost a game and, in sharp contrast to other 10-1 teams, was relegated to something called the MAACO Bowl, administering an object lesson to Utah. Yet EPSN pretends the west doesn’t exist.

And despite the buckets of ink, petabytes of digital content and the passionate beliefs of a depressing high percentage of Americans, none of it really matters. It’s entertainment. Usually farcical. In the case of the Cubs, almost always farcical. But passion is unrelated to importance in the real world. Despite what Auburn fans may think.

R.I.P. Ron Santo, 1940-2010

Ron Santo is the greatest third baseman not to be in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Overlooked by both baseball writers during his eligibility and by the various veteran’s committees during his long broadcast career, his absence from the Hall of Fame is a damning indictment of its deeply flawed selection processes.

But Santo wasn’t particularly unhappy about it. As he said to a Wrigley Field crammed past capacity with deliriously happy Cubs’ fans on September 28, 2003, “This is my Hall of Fame.”

Santo died while WC was in Antarctica. WC wanted for the Cubs to win the World Series while Santo was still alive. WC wanted Santo to make it into the Hall of Fame while he was still alive. It didn’t happen.

But WC doesn’t want to talk about Ron Santo and the Hall of Fame or Ron Santo and disappointment. For WC, what Ron Santo will always stand for is dealing with adversity and never letting it affect you, your attitude or your approach to life.

Santo had juvenile onset diabetes. He was insulin-dependent every day of his stellar baseball and broadcast career, never made a big deal of it, played through all of the wild physical swings involved in the disease, with skill, distinction, intensity and absolute determination. During his extended broadcast career on WGN Radio, he suffered not one but two amputations as the disease increasingly impaired his circulation. But he never, ever, not once complained about the pain, the difficulty of dealing with prostheses or the pain he was in.

He was a major fund-raiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Among other things, he helped negotiate deals with corporate sponsors who would donate money for every walk a Cubs’ player got during a game. He sponsored countless events for JDF.

And Ron Santo, like many of us, was a committed Cubs’ fan. When the Cubs would make some incredibly bone-headed, stupid mistake that would cost them a critical game, or a playoff, or a pennant, his near-moan “Oh, man.” echoed in every fan who was listening.

He’s past all the pain. To quote the late Steve Goodman, also a Cubs’ fan, “He’s got season tickets to watch the Angels.” But he remains an example, in every way, for each and every one of us.

The coming seasons won’t be the same without you, buddy. Those first few games without you in the broadcast booth will be tough. But thanks. You were the best.