Category: chicago national league ball club

Sosa hurt by being forced to bat sixth – Santo Domingo’s “HOY”, via AP via ESPN

And by now, I don’t want to talk about ANY of it.

Awesome Google Translation: I know that I failed in something and I assure to you that I will request excuses for that reason, but really I felt very mistreated

Steve Stone Resigns!

ChiTrib

I really want to write a 5000 word rant about how this is the end of everything, how it says many bad things about the whole orginization and how the difference between SUCKING and NOT SUCKING can really come down to a Hallmark card,.

But I have to wake up in – oh crap, 4.5 hours – and I’m not exactly typing in my sleep here. So tommorow? Tommorow.

(MLB Japan)

Just after the leadoff home run in Game 7 of the NLCS, I text messaged M

“Who are we rooting for?”

Didn’t hear back from him – till after the Game was over.

“red sox”

(someone’s a genius)

What the heck is with a game getting done at 10:30? GOOOOOOO NL style baseball.

Boston vs New York
Houston vs St. Louis

Hey Scott (and Sven). I think I know a little bit more what an O’s fan (and Blue Jay fan) feels like now. Darn those big market Astros and Cardinals!

Things I haven’t seen mentioned much
– Once again, Fox is doing the dumb thing where Game 2 of one series (ALCS) goes head to head vs Game 1 of the other series (NLCS), which one you get on Fox depends on what your local station feels like putting on, and the other one may air on your local Fox Sports Net.
– The original schedule for the LCSs had each series having one day game and one night game on the weekend. Sometime yesterday, that magically changed into the ALCS getting both night games and the NLCS getting both day games.

I’m sticking with teams that wear red.

If you believe the consensus at ESPN.com, the winner of the World Series will be the Boston Red Sox. Out of the 16 predictions they list, Pedro’s team has the plurality.

For all the talk about how all eight teams could possibly win, the experts don’t think it’s very likely that most of them will win. It’s 13-3 against the Braves, 14-2 against the Twins, and 15-1 against the Dodgers. Braves (Buster Olney) and Twins (Jim Caple) have single votes for making it to the World Series, but none of these three apparently have a hope of winning it all.

Half the experts pick (or wishcast) a Yankees/Red Sox rematch – much more surprising is 62% picking a NL Central rematch, and no one picking Braves/Dodgers.

I think I’ve committed to Twins, Red Sox, Cards, Braves, Red Sox, Braves, Red Sox, but I’ve got a few hours left to change my mind.

So. How was your week?

Mine was all sorts of agony. Nothing especially dramatic, just the kinda aggravating real life adventures in the category of “stuff I don’t talk about here” which kinda put a stressful damper on my mood. The kind of week where you hope to be able to escape your day to day drudgery by throwing yourself into your favorite sporting team’s glory.

That did not quite work out.

I don’t know if I want to spend ten words talking about the last week for them or ten thousand – not confident in getting out what it feels like either way.

I kind of feel guilty in even wallowing in despair ⁽¹⁾, because I know there’s been other teams in other years who had it just as bad or worse; that Toronto team, the ’67 Phillies, the ’51 Dodgers all had bigger leads and bigger collapses than this 2 game drop. Even this year, it’s not like Oakland fans and Giants fans aren’t feeling great, and it’s not like this even unique in the Cubs history (the ’69 collapse everyone’s comparing it to this week ⁽²⁾ and the 2001 collapse no one ever talks about.)

But, as much I want to step back and take it all in dispassionately, never using ‘we’ and objectively justifying all I say, I can’t manage to put any rational perspective on this. We should still be playing and we’re not and I don’t understand why it was allowed to happen. Some problems we were dealt (injuries), but a lot of the problems were self-caused or ignored. Jim Hendry made great moves by picking up Nomar and Derek Lee, but did he get the bullpen help we so obviously needed throughout the whole year? Dusty might have gotten one whole more win out of this team this last year, but he made tactical mistake after tactical mistake down the stretch and ran any hot reliever he had into the ground while turning the rest of his bullpen to rust, and for all his talk about doing research on matchups and trends, why didn’t he ever seem use that knowledge during the most obvious situations; even the most banal college drunk figured out Remmy couldn’t get out a left hander out when he needed to, but Dusty kept throwing him out there regardless of the numbers.

It’s all such a depressing wasted golden opportunity. For all the talk – reassuring talk in the face of darkness – about this being part of a long run of contending teams, who knows if that’ll actually happen. Pitchers aren’t stable things, and there’s no reason to be sure they’ll all get it better next year than they did this year, assuming they even find a fifth starter. Without a massive influx, the offense sure isn’t getting better. You can’t be sure you’ll ever get another chance to make it all work, and certainly not as good a chance as the Cubs had here, and it all was wasted.

The fans of ’69 had to wait 25 years to get another playoff team. It shouldn’t be that long, with an extra playoff birth available (and in 25 years, I’m sure they’ll be more Wild Cards given out than that), but you never know. 2001 had one less win than this team, and completely fell to pieces the following year. You don’t know.
Like I was going for, four tangents ago, most of me wants to wait to talk about this in any rational degree until my thoughts by this aren’t dominated by depression of our failure and anger/hurt feelings for the reasons causing the failure. I don’t what fragments of the team are going to be left if I do wait, though, because the huge aftershocks of the collapse: the whole Steve Stone mess (what scares us all is everything Steve said was absolutely 100% correct, and the club is treating him like an insane heretic), Chip Caray deciding to go to the Braves ⁽⁴⁾, and Sammy’s No Show, bridging the gap from this nightmare season to next nightmare’s season, where Sammy’s pending free agency ⁽⁵⁾ is the Sword of Damocles above all. Assuming it even makes it that far: this situation has all the makings of my favorite player leaving my favorite team before next season. There’s a lot to talk about

heart ripped out, heart rebuilt, heart ripped out

not a good day. for a multitude of reasons.

(those reasons do not include “upper case being broke”. shift doesn’t feel worth the effort.)

HOU --- 3 50.32 OFF
SFG 0.5 4 23.68 Williams @ SDP Eaton
CHC 0.5 4 27.30 Prior v CIN Harang
SDP 2.5 4 00.43 Eaton v SFG Williams

So bizarre. Feels like they should be about ten games back by now. And yet, if the Cubs win out, they’re at least playing on Monday. What the heck ever.

Thought I heard Steve Phillips says “Adam Eaton has no heart” this morning on ESPN Radio. Won’t need won to beat a guy coming back from injury and to secure the ERA Title.

To finish a thought from last night:

FOUR WAY DANCE

Ignoring the miracle needed for this to happen, seeding would be completely random. Which makes no sense to me, but then they’re using coin tosses instead of head to head records.

– Cubs will send the best pitching 4 of their starting 5 to try and take this.

THU: Mark Prior (6-4, 4.27) vs CIN Aaron Harrang (10-9, 5.03)
FRI: Kerry Wood (8-8, 3.58) vs ATL Mike Hampton (12-9, 4.38)
SAT: Carlos Zambrano (16-6, 2.60) vs ATL John Thomson (14-8, 3.73)
SUN: Greg Maddux (15-11, 3.88) vs TBA

Gotta assume the TBA is going to be a September callup, and the Brave starters will be on a short pitch/inning count.

And now the rest of the world has ticked me off and wasted my time, so everything else gets scrapped.

I can not go to sleep.

I’m very tired. I’ve been lacking sleep all week.

My mantra has been to not get too far up or too far down on one day. Until the last meaningful day of the season, everything can change. Like the last week hasn’t proven that.

And whatever happens in this Giants game means nothing if the Cubs don’t win tommorow. No amount of intense viewing will change that. I might as well go to bed and find out what happened int he morning.

I can not go to sleep.

I think I’ve got some leftover pizza. Stupid Phil Nevin.