Come in off the ledge. Turn off the car and open the garage door. Untie the noose.
There’s a reason the League Championship Series is best of seven. If anything, the beginning of last night’s game brought back memories of the Cubs easily pounding the Padres in game one of the 1984 playoffs, and we know how that one turned out.
The Cubs had a homer, a double, two triples and four runs in the first inning last night. You figured they could put it on cruise control the rest of the way. But that, of couse, wasn’t the case.
These are the Cubs, after all.
True to form they gave the lead right back, and then some. Carlos Zambrano, the guy who never gave up two homers in an inning and only nine all year, gave up three in a span of four hitters in the third.
Normally, the Cubs curl up into the fetal position and wait for the kicking to stop. Not these Cubs. They fought back to tie the game a six in the sixth. When Regular Joe finally faltered (you knew it would happen, and he might as well get it out of his system now) the Cubs trailed 8-6 going into the ninth.
But Sammy Sosa picked a hell of a time for his first postseason homer, waiting until two outs in the ninth to jack one onto Waveland.
We know how it ended. It ended with Dusty Baker outsmarting himself and trying to sneak Mark Guthrie through the 11th. Pinch hitter Mike Lowell greeted the soft tossing lefty with a homer to center. The sad part, Guthrie ONLY giving up one run in an inning is a good outing for him right now.
And so, the Cubs are down 1-0 in this best of seven. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that until they lose a game started by either Kerry Wood or Mark Prior, they’re still in the driver’s seat. Last night was a freakish one at Wrigley. It’s October and the thin blooded Marlins are in town and for some reason it’s 75 degrees at game time. It’ll be nice again tonight, though Mark Prior could care less about time or temperature. But when the Cubs and Marlins come back next week, it’ll be nippy. Just the way we like it.
It was a strange night all around. Fox had Al Leiter stuttering and stammering in the broadcast booth–making Steve Lyons almost seem competent–and tHom Brennaman had the Paulie Walnuts hair thing going. Juan Pierre referred to the “walls with the ivory on them”. The Cubs were hitting. Carlos was getting weak pop ups early (in retrospect, a bad sign for a sinker ball pitcher). Weird hard shelled lady bugs were crawling through every crack in Desipio HQ. Then, late in the game, a series of about 50 “nulls” popped up out of nowhere in our GameCast. They didn’t do any damage, they just managed to screw with things enough to continue the “out of kilter” nature of the whole evening.
The Cubs seem to be taking the loss in stride. They figure that:
a) If they score eight runs in any other game they’ll win it easily.
b) The Fish used up all of their hits in game one. Plus, Juan Pierre is likely to run into the ivory tonight and never be heard from again.
c) The Cubs’ Alex Gonzalez looks like he finally has found a clue at home plate. Let’s hope this continues for at least another week or two.
d) Their playoff pitching strategy is to have the starter get though the seventh so the only relievers we need to see are The Farns, Remlinger and Regular Joe. You know why, now.
e) Game one was a “must win” for Florida. If they’d lost to a starter other than Wood and Prior they were in trouble. Now the pressure shifts back to the Cubs. They can’t lose games two or three. Though, I have a hunch that they won’t.
So, relax. You don’t need to completely freak out unless the Cubs lose tonight. Then, you can run the streets trying to commit suicide by cop.
We knew all along that the Cubs were using the Diamondbacks’ World Series win strategy. You only win games started by your two best starters. You lose extra inning games in heartbreaking fashion. Your offense sputters and halts and does just barely enough. But hey, it’s a proven forumula! Now all we need is for Dusty to grow that mustache out to cocoon like fullness to give us the full “Brenly effect.” OK, maybe not.
Besides, everybody picked the Cubs in six or seven games. Not four. So just cut it out. All is well. Nothing to see here. Please move along.
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Mark Guthrie to pitch to Mike Lowell? Really? Are you sure about this?
Gruddy picked a bad time for the Cubs first error of the postseason.
Dusty and Jack aren’t saying just yet who will pitch game four. Dusty’s being coy, Jack just can’t remember the guy’s name.
Sammy hit his huge ninth inning homer into the street and into a throng of morons who should have been somewhere actually watching the game.
Mike Downey would like a recount.
Just as we suspected, Dusty sent Guthrie out in the 11th so Lenny Harris wouldn’t pinch hit. Somebody needs to hit Dusty with a frying pan every time he forgets Lenny sucks.
The mere sight of the Cubs hanging a jersey in the dugout makes me cringe. Just take the damn thing down. Santo’s number is flying on a freaking flag pole. You don’t need that creepy DK 57 vibe running through the dugout.
Teddy Greenstein does a little GameCast work. Not his best effort.
Ed Sherman on the Jeff Santo documentary about his dad.
Sherman explains how tonight’s live coverage of both LCS games at the same time will work. If you don’t have FX you’re not going to see one of the games. Oops. Well, I do. But I won’t be using it. I could give a whit about Boston-New York.
Mariotti puts down the doughnut to jump off the bandwagon. I like the part where he says the Cubs couldn’t hold a 6-6 “lead.” Huh? There’s a famous “Ferris Bueller” line in there somewhere.
The Marlins have never faced Mark Prior. Just a hunch, they won’t like what they see tonight.
The NCAA is going to move the three point line back nine whopping inches! Yeah, that’ll discourage shooters, it’s what, a quarter of a step farther back. Wow. The biggest impact will be on the custodians who have to remove the old line and paint a new one on the field house floor. Why bother?
The Wizard of Roz on Santo’s potential surgery. They might remove his bladder? Wow. I don’t even want to think about that. Roz goes on to say that Dusty has “burned out” Zambrano. Shut up. The reason the Cubs are in the postseason is because of the way Wood, Prior and Zambrano pitched in the second half. If Carlos it’s tired, it’s not because Dusty burned him out, it’s because he’s 22 and has never thrown this many innings before. But if Dusty had “rested” him along the way we’d be watching somebody else playing the Marlins in the LCS and wonks like Rozner would be ripping Dusty for “babying” his pitchers. I expect more from Roz than a Skip Bayless-esque hatchet job.
Stewey mocks Michigan for getting derailed by less than super teams, Oregon and Iowa. I think it’s funny, too.
Uh-oh, look who’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week. I’ll give you a hint, he’s wearing Mark Prior’s glove.
Ah-nuld is officially the Gubernator of Cal-ee-for-nee-yah.
Did he have a heart attack? Yasser, he did.
Maria Shriver won’t be able to cover politics for Dateline NBC anymore. They cover politics on Dateline NBC? I thought they just interviewed the McCaughey quintuplets every other week and did stories on trucks that explode?
A Pennsylvania man who posed as a doctor and cut the penis and testicles off another man is going to trial. “Oh, is that wrong? Should I not have done that? Oops!”
Sheryl Crow was being stalked by a former Navy SEAL. I’d just like to note that I’ve never been in the Navy SEALs. I did see the Charlie Sheen movie, though.
Maryland’s first lady wants to shoot Britney Spears. How…nice?
I want to go to drunken German grown up kindergarten!
America’s finest news source on what we need $87 billion dollars for to rebuild Iraq.
Please, please, please for the love of all things holy, Cub fans -DO NOT DO THE TOMAHAWK CHOP! It was funny during the first inning of Friday’s game, but it has gotten progressively worse since then. How about revisiting the nice "let’s go Cubs!" cheer?
I’d almost rather hear "Cub Busters!" blare over the Murph’s speakers than watch Cub fans do the chop. Almost.
You caught that, huh? I snuck that in the seventh paragraph, assuming that most people crumple up the page after two and begin wiping the dingleberries from their hineys.
For such an observant eagle-eye, you will get a free one-year subscription to People Magazine. I’ve been told that if I move 100 subscriptions, the folks at People will finally consider hiring me, so I can breathlessly pursue Ben and J-Lo’s every step; they’re so much more glittery than anything Sammy has done. Kisses!!!
Let’s put the blame for yesterday’s loss right where it belongs, on the grounds crew/maintenance staff. Mike Lowell’s homerun just barely made it into the basket in centerfield. The basket, of course, is there to prevent fan interference. Well, there are no damn fans sitting in the hitting background! Take that part of the basket down. Ah, well, got to grasp at something. This morning on the Score, they were bemoaning the fact that the Cubs don’t have a good long relief pitcher. Um, does anybody have a good long relief pitcher? A long man, by definition, is a guy who sucks too much to start, and can’t be trusted to hold any kind of lead. Well, at least with Mr. Prior on the mound tonight, I doubt we’re going to see much action in the pen.
Juan Pierre is likely to run into the ivory tonight and never be heard from again.
Juan Pierre is a piano player??
I normally am a big Rozner fan, but I do not agree with his assessment of Dusty having burned out Zambrano. Carlos is always close the emotional edge when he takes the mound and last nigt he looked more nervous than a virgin on prom night.
Just out of curiosity, was Juan Pierre born on the border of Hati & the Dominican Republic? That would explain why he’s named in both Spanish & French.
I like to call him Jean Pedro.
Did you notice how many times I mentioned that after the first inning, the Cubs didn’t get a hit for X number of batters/innings? I felt that item of info was far to important not to pound into the ground about, oh, 300 times! I forgot how much I hated tHomAs when he was a Cubs broadcaster. I do believe I hate him more than Chip!
You have to hand it to tHom though, nobody does that fake DJ, listen-to-how-deep-my-voice-is thing better. He puts Chip’s fake DJ voice to shame. And I love his I’m so sensitive to latino viewers pronunciations: Alex Gohn-zalez; Julio Frahn-co. I’m waiting for H-r-r-r-r-ah-meees Hr-r-r-meeer-r-iz. Combined with Psycho and the horribly out-of-his element Leiter that is one boothful of bad announcing. There is good news however. I was reading about Rush Limbaugh in Newsweek, and apparently taking large quantites of Vicodin can bring on sudden deafness (which Rush had a while back , you may remember). So that would be more enjoyable and less messy than sticking the rusty scissors in your eardrums. Add 6 or 7 beers, and you’ll feel just like Bret Favre on game day!
Guys, turn on the radio and listen to Hughes and Stone. I used to hate turning off the TV sound, but these guys are brutal.
I am calling for a jihad against any fan doing the Mock Chop. If you are at the game, these people need to be assaulted.
Leon Durham will throw out tonight’s first pitch. He will be wearing a Grudzielanek jersey. But it will still be a better pitch than Guthrie can throw.
Leon is throwing out the first pitch? For a team that is trying to ignore the past, they sure are dredging a lot of it up lately. The mention of Leon has triggered my memory of 1984 (when I was in fourth grade). The day after the fateful game 5, I was nearly inconsolable. My dad (who is one of the most resilient Cub fans I have ever seen) was the first person I saw that morning, and he hit me with this one: "did you hear about Leon Durham? He tried to kill himself last night!" "What, how?" I said. Then the punch line "he stepped in front of moving truck, but luckily, it rolled right through his legs." Thanks dad, you raised a Cubs fan who’s almost as sick as yourself.
That was my attempt at sick humor to link Mark G’s error to Durham’s as a "game-loser" in Cubs’ playoff history. Sorry if I misled anyone. I doubt if they could find Leon right now, anyway.
No need to apologize Dave, I’m just dumb.
Now to copy a cheesy ESPN segment…
It’s time for "Stat of the Night"…
Which Cub has the following statline for his postseason pitching so far?
1.0 IP 3H 3R 3ER 2HR 0K 0BB 27.00ERA
Leave your guesses here, the first person right gets absolutely nothing!
Uh, that’d be me, BC.
No relation.
I’m sitting dead red.
Who is Fox going to add to the telecast announcing crew next? Jim Leyland? Jeff Torborg?
I’m coming back to get you Cubs people again tonight… Then again, I’m a White Sox fan, so I don’t know anything other than reprehensible behavior.
Jack McKeon.
WGN Pre-Game Show analysis:
According to this Chicago Tribune writer, Paul O’Sullivan, there is "some concern" about putting Mark Guthrie back in the game…
Really??? Wow, I didn’t know THAT was the case.
WGN Pre-Game Show analysis:
Isn’t it obvious Dan Roan’s and Steve (Middle in) Stone’s pieces of the program are taped?
I think it is.
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