Are you ready for some fooootballllllll ?????????
Dude, I’m tellin ya…………
Being Chicago-based, I went to the Cubs-WhiteSox game on Thursday the 3rd out at Wrigley. Mind you, I am a true-blue diehard Sox fan…..so it was a glorious 77 degree afternoon when they beat the Cubs 5-0. The tickets were free thru a friend. The Sox threw rookie Carlos Torres against Ryan Dempster. The kid throws seven shutout innings and Dempster took a hard-luck loss without even allowing an earned run.
Which is what leads me to today’s subject matter. Even with the enjoyable Sox win, Thursday’s game was the epitome of why baseball in Chicago is as good as over and LET’S GET READY TO PLAY SOME FOOTBALL !! What a mess on both sides.
In the first inning, the Sox put a man on second with one out. Gordan Beckham hits a bouncer back to the pitcher. The idiot on second breaks for third and gets caught in a sorry-ass rundown where he is quickly tagged out. Then everyone in the stadium looked up to see Beckham is chugging for second! The lead runner was on his way back to second when he was tagged out. What the hell is Beckham doing? The rookie’s questionable baserunning reminded me strongly of Alexei Ramirez’ baserunning last year for the Sox when he was a rookie. Several times last season, Hawk Harrelson, myself, and everyone else was asking, “What the hell is he doing out there?”
So Beckham is easily tagged out to end the inning on a baserunning doubleplay. Cubs fans loved it. For about 10-12 minutes. By then, the Cubs were back in the field and a routine pickoff attempt bounced off the webbing of 1B Jake Fox’ glove. The runner advanced and eventually scored for the first unearned run that directly led to Dempster’s loss. But the afternoon of errors and laughable follies was just beginning.
The man who practically sealed his way out of town in a single afternoon was Alfonso Soriano. He struck out three times leaving five baserunners stranded. His final strikeout ended the game with a man on first. The feeble, half-hearted swings he took in that last AB showed he has completely given up. He looked like a pitcher up there at bat. As Sox announcer Harrelson likes to say, “He pulled the string on him”. That’s because Soriano truly did look like a little kitty cat waving its paw at a dangling string. Pathetic effort.
But his most major offense was once again his fielding. The error he made by the left field foul line when his feet slipped out from under him and he fell on his ass…….I’m still laughing out loud every time I think of it. Pure Keystone Kops stuff. They ran a picture of him in the Trib and the Sun Times yesterday falling down. I’ve clipped it out and look at it for a chuckle every couple of hours. But the ball went to the wall and that was the end of the game for the Cubs. The crowd was booing Soriano mercilessly. And they should be. That’s what you get for 136 million bucks these days. Milton Bradley isn’t much better for the 30 million he’s getting.
The wonder of it is that the Sox didn’t make all of the fielding blunders. They lead the major leagues in errors and when you run the bases like they did in the first inning, it’s not hard to see why their season has been a bust too.
Which is why both teams are as good as done for 2009. Bring on the Bears. Bring on the NFL. The Bears go to Green Bay to play the Pack in the season opener. The media is acting like Jay Cutler is Y.A. Tittle, Joe Montana, and John Elway combined. The new Bears QB has a career .500 mark as a starter and has never sniffed a playoff game. But he is our new Sid Luckman. Right.
But with both the Cubs and the Sox hovering around .500 and doing little else, baseball in this city is finished for the year. The next 18 weeks are all about the Bears. Yes, both the Bulls and the Blackhawks will start their seasons during those 18 weeks, but until the Bears are out of playoff contention……..it’s all about them. We’ll start watching the Bulls and the Hawks religiously around Thanksgiving or so.
So OK……perhaps I’m a little over-excited about these Bears. If the romance and passion only lasts until they are out of playoff contention, let’s give it 9 or 10 weeks. By then, we’ll be 4-6 or maybe 5-5 and the playoffs will be a “must-win-the-rest” situation. Yup, Thanksgiving sounds about right. Then it’s the Derrick Rose and Jonathon Toews show.
But hey………….10 weeks of excitement from these Bears. Not too shabby. That’s about what the Sox and the Cubs gave their fans this year. So the Bears will be falling right into line with their Southside and Northside neighbors. Thanks again, boys.