My beloved Cubbies just swept the Red Sox at Fenway. Mounting a 19 hit attack that yielded 16 runs scored andincluded 4 home runs, home runs not generally counted upon by the players who hit them, we journey on to Washington for a weekend series with the Nationals. After the worst March record in team history (ha ha they played one game in March {but lost it}, things didn't get any better in April or May. June however, brought the first monthly winning record in June since 2007.
The Cubs are pretty close to the laughing stock of baseball. I understand this. This only makes me root more for them. After years of spending money to watch the Cubs, I watched in dismay as the Ricketts* family bought them, Wrigley Field and a 25% stake in the Comcast baseball network for a reported $845 million. Dismay because much of the Ricketts family's politics are to the right of Attila the Hun, but the managing partner, Tom is a pretty good guy, moderate in his politics and a Northwestern Grad. He seems intent upon creating a good product on the field, but alas, as is my right, his father and brother's views make the team I love, an automatic boycott. That means when my friend calls me up and tells me he's got two for a Cubs game, I have to tell him no thanks. Parking, concessions, anything that contributes to the Ricketts family coffers will not come from me. It's like as if Charles and David Koch bought my favorite team and because they're such 'marons', I couldn't go anymore. Is Joe Ricketts as bad as Fred Koch? Pretty close. Life is complicated sometimes.
That aside, the Cubs who have not appeared in a World Series since 1945 (lost to the Tigers) and have not won a series since 1908. Invariably the jokes come fast and furious. The best one is to paraphrase the old line, "well anybody can have a bad year." In the Cubs case, you remove year and insert century.
Well the Ricketts' having spent all this dough for a team that is famous for one of the two most quaint (if not antiquated) ball parks in baseball, needed to bring a winner to the North Side. (The White Sox own the South Side-- that is where I live and suffer not being being able to go into White Sox bars wearing an Cub paraphernalia without risk of getting my ass kicked. {I'm serious} ). They decided that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery so they went out and hired Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer, both alums of the Red Sox when in 2004, they finally broke their curse and rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the LCS to the Yankees to win 4 straight and then beat the most consistent team in baseball in the past 15 years, the St Louis Cardinals to finally emerge victorious in a world series. At least the Red Sox had been to World Series' more than the Cubs. When you finally get off the "schneid" , get the monkey off your back and win, you start to think maybe we can win more than one. That has happened to Sox and Theo Epstein and his staff were at the helm for this miracle.
July 5th 2014: FLASH. Yesterday, the Cubs rode a nice pitching performance along withsome timely hitting to a 7-2 win over Washington in the opener of a weekend series. Promptly after the game, the club announced that it had traded Jason Hammel and Jeff Samardzija to the Oakland Athletics for their top two prospects, SS Addison Russell, Pitcher Dan Straily and OF prospect Billy McKinney.
We'll see what the mood is like today. trades that subtract two of your best pitchers can either be a shock and send a team into a real downer or they can be seen as a challenge for those left behind . There will be more trades and the stockpiling of position players doesn't bode well for the following current Cubs; Junior Lake, Darwin Barney, Ryan Sweeney or pitcher James Russell- because you can't have two Russells on your major league roster. That's just bad luck.
Good news is a 4 game winning streak, a sense of "fuck management" if they think we're going to lay down and die by the remainders. Next 7 games (2 against Washington- a division leader) and the Cincinnati Reds ( a 5 game series including a doubleheader on Tuesday the 8th.) will reveal whether they tank or plow on. I think the latter.. But I'm a fan.
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