By ‘strosrays
Wrigley Field Is Decadent And Depraved
Astros (1-5) at Cubs (3-3)
at Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL
a/k/a The “Taj Mahal”
Monday, April 9, 1:20 p.m. CDT – FSN
Tuesday, April 10, 1:20 p.m. CDT – FSN
Wednesday, April 11, 1:20 p.m. CDT – FSN
For those of you with “coverage” issues, the Monday and Wednesday games are also scheduled to be carried by Superstation WGN. . . I am not sure who does the Cub games for WGN anymore – my ability to focus on their telecasts, even if what I was focusing was mostly bile, decreased significantly after “Chippy” Carey left. The guys they have had the last year or two are basically generic, sorta like the non Milo-nese people who are in the Astros radio booth nowadays. Whatever their names are.
At any rate, you should be able to get the WGN games, no matter where you live. WGN is carried by every cable system from here to the Crab Nebula.
Projected Matchups from Astros.com
Monday
Woody Williams (0-1, 5.79) v. Ted Lilly (1-0, 1.29)
Woody Williams got knocked around in his first start, last Wednesday against Pittsburgh, and didn’t last five innings. I really don’t know what should be expected from Williams at this point. He is savvy; but there is a point somewhere where “knowing how to pitch” intersects with “diminishing physical gifts.” On the other side of that is diminishing returns. I am not saying Woody is there yet, but he can probably see it somewhere up ahead. . . Ted Lilly is your average everyday journeyman lefty. At one time it was thought his ceiling was high, but injuries and lack of control hindered his development along the way. He actually had a pretty good year in Toronto last season, though (15-13, 4.31, 160 Ks in 182 IP), and he was really good in his first start this year against the Reds. He is especially tough against lefties. Maybe Lilly has found himself now (he is 31). One thing he has never done is gone deep into games, so the Cub bully should become a factor pretty early on.
Tuesday
Chris Sampson (0-0, 0.00) v. Jason Marquis (0-0, 1.50)
”Biggio and Ev-er-ett, Sampson and da lineup,
Baby, you can bet they’ll win some games before July,
‘Cos if they don’t, the fans will show their ire,
And The Pinwheel’s blog will say ‘Gar to be…Fired’”
Wednesday
Wandy Rodriguez (0-1, 3.86) v. Rich Hill (1-0, 1.29)
Wandy Rodriguez was born 30 years too late. In the 1970s every team had at least one Wandy on the staff, sometimes two or three. Of course, that doesn’t do him – or the Astros – any good now. He pitched well in his first start though, last Friday against the Fifth-inals (temporary designation in honor of skipper Tony “It’s cold gin time again” LaRussa), and I think he may eventually surprise his detractors, given the chance. Rich Hill is a another ho-hum lefty in the Cubs rotation who had a nice 1st start, in his case against Milwaukee.
On Tuesday, the Puppies of North Chicago are giving away their version of a magnet schedule to the Wrigley faithful. I’m not sure why. The hard core Cub fans – which is to say the drunkest louts of all the drunken louts in the stands – don’t need a schedule. They are pulled to the park, rain or shine, win or lose, by a force they cannot understand or explain; a primal force, the same sort of thing that sends salmon backwards up a spillway, brings the swallows back to Capistrano each spring, and compels the lemmings to go ahead and jump headfirst off the cliff, en masse. All CubFan really needs is a big, square magnet he can stick on the ice box that says, “Every Fuckin’ Day!!”
Or, to quote the gifted soliloquist (and former Cub manager) Lee Elia, “Fuck those fuckin’ fans who come out here and say they’re Cub fans that are supposed to be behind you rippin’ every fuckin’ thing you do. . . The motherfuckers don’t even work. That’s why they’re out at the fuckin’ game. They oughta go out and get a fuckin’ job and find out what it’s like to go out and earn a fuckin’ living. Eighty-five percent of the fuckin’ world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here. A fuckin’ playground for the cocksuckers. . . ”
:sigh: Greatness like that just doesn’t come along every day, folks.
Injury Report
Chicago – Speaking of swallows at Capistrano, it’s spring, and Kerry Wood is on the DL again (along with Juan Mateo.). On the 15-day list now, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Wood gets moved to the 60-day soon. Oh, and Mark Prior is in the minors somewhere, trying to work out his chronic injury-related problems. My, oh my.
Houston – Backe and Gimenez are both on the 15-day, which I guess is some sort of procedural thing. We will see neither on the field anytime soon.
Our ‘Interesting Things To Look For This Series’
(a/k/a Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3)
- Alfonso Soriano in CF. Of course, the position Soriano really plays is “hitter”; but it should be fun and interesting to play a team with central gardening issues at least as significant as those of the Astros. Especially if it is cold and the wind is swirling – hey, it’s Chicago, and it’s April. Ought to make for some interesting paths to the fly balls. Right center field gappers (Lance? Luke?) should be especially interesting, since both Soriano and RF Jacque Jones are really fast guys with a sometimes tenative grasp of the subtleties of interactive outfield play. If, like me, you’ve never seen two Maseratis in a head-on collision but kinda want to, this series may be our best chance.
- Lou Piniella. I like Lou Piniella. He can be serious, and knows his baseball; but like some of the great managers he watched as a player, he also has a sense of the absurd, of baseball as theatre. A pasty, grim, manager-technician Piniella is not. The Cubs gig will probably be his last managing job; and while I cannot bring myself to pull for the Cubs under any circumstances, I wish Lou well. It would do to remember, too, that he is always a resting volcano, a Pinatubo in the dugout which might go off at any time with only the slightest provocation, usually from an umpire. If so, count on a high level of entertainment, which is a lot more than one could say about watching Chicago’s Northsiders in the Dusty Baker years.
- The weather. A few years back I suggested a weather icon somewhere here, maybe on the front page, for out-of-town games. The administrators at the time sensibly ignored this. Still, this time of year especially, it would probably do to have long-time OWA poster and pseudo government weatherman/operative Das guest in these previews. As the Astros swing through the northeast in spring, especially around the Great Lakes region, there is a good chance the weather will play a part in some of the games. And anyone who has ever played at any level knows it is not much fun to play baseball in the cold. Unlike football, where one can go into a game and get smashed to the ground a few times and have some fat-ass defensive lineman drool his snot on you and then kick you in the nuts as he’s getting off the pile, and feel like now you’re into the flow of the game. . . there is way too much standing around in baseball for anyone to ever really get warm. And the cold attacks one’s sense of touch, and baseball is above all a tactile game. That’s why the pitchers are always standing out there blowing on their hands. Baseball can be played, and well, in the sort of windy, drizzly, 30 to 40 degree temps currently forecast for this series. But its not meant to be.
- Ghosts. It’s not just the stumbling start the team has got off to. I’ve had Hunter Thompson and Jeff Bagwell on my mind a lot lately, among other things. . .
Fear and Loathing in the Aftermath
Hunter Thompson, of course, made a long, slow arc across the literary skies, before burning up and exploding on re-entry, right at the end of his trajectory. His writing prime was probably the mid-1970s, when he had a regular gig at Rolling Stone and his stories alone made that sometimes maddeningly obtuse broadsheet worth the price of purchase. Around that same time, in a stretch of 5-6 years, Thompson wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972, still one of the finest collections of political reporting by anyone, anywhere; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an extremely twisted look at American popular culture that got mangled in the Johnny Depp movie of the same name (not to mention in an earlier Bill Murray debacle); and in addition, he penned most of the stories that make up the stellar collection The Great Shark Hunt (including his coverage of the 1974 Super Bowl in Houston, and his memorable performance in the atrium of the Hyatt Regency there one night.) A lot of writers would kill for a run like that; but Thompson, like some great ballplayers, couldn’t quit while he was on top, and instead hung around, playing out the string. By the end, when he would show up sporadically in places like ESPN.com’s Page 2, he was basically incoherent, truly a caricature of himself (something he had begun to suspect he might become as far back as 1970 or so.) Still, there was always the chance a flash of the old brilliance would come through. Enough of a chance to keep a lot of people reading his borderline insane ranting near the end, hoping for a glimpse of the old Thompson.
It occurs to me this is sort of how I watched Jeff Bagwell the last year-plus of his career. As his deteriorating right shoulder rapidly robbed him of his ability to drive the ball to center and right-center, which I always felt was the wellspring of his offensive game, Bagwell became less than what he had been, and quickly. But still we watched. I know I did. It was too hard to rid oneself of the memory of his pure, violent prescence at the plate, and his grace everywhere else on (and off) the field. I wasn’t continuing to watch in order to pay some kind of tribute to him – Bagwell himself, had he heard of something like that, would’ve called “horseshit” right away. No, I was there because I thought he might still unleash himself on a fat pitch and make it disappear from the premises, post haste, like in the old days. And he did occasionally, too.
One of Hunter Thompson’s last regular gigs was as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. The former Gonzo Journalist, writing for a Hearst paper. Akin to letting Bags get away to spend his last few seasons with, well, the Cubs for instance. Anyway, I’d pretty much given up on Thompson by then, and didn’t take the trouble to get hold of his columns on a regular basis. But periodically a friend of mine would send me one, something Thompson had written about Dr. Neil Frank, or Jerry Falwell, or George Bush I. Thompson could still occasionally riff biting and hilarious when the spirit moved him. As I would read through these columns, I would smile, but also feel a bit sad. Thompson’s gifts were obviously leaving him, and an intermittent good column was like the brief, brilliant flare of a supernova, just before it burns out for good.
The last time I saw Jeff Bagwell play in person was late in the 2004 season, in the MMPUS against the Reds. At the time Bags was still getting by, but the decline had definitely set in; although no one then, me included, had any idea how quickly he would flicker and fade out. Anyway, in the bottom of the first against some nondescript Dickitie hurler, Bagwell hit a long, high drive to right center that left the park, well. . . elegantly, if not startlingly. It was a perfect example of so many of his 449 career home runs. This solo shot gave the Astros the lead in a game they would eventually win over the hapless Skyliners, but I wasn’t even thinking about that. I usually only make it over for a half-dozen or so games a season, and I realized I might have just seen my last Jeff Bagwell home run ever, in person. As it turned out, I had.
Bags’ impending retirement kind of got lost in the rush to playoffs and eventually the World Series in 2005. It was after the dénouement of that strange and bittersweet season, that I finally realized Jeff Bagwell was really, really gone. In fact, I believe I am still coming to terms with this; what probably brought on the latest fleeting bout of depression was “Jeff Bagwell Appreciation Day” at the park last Friday evening, and the news that the team will retire his number 5 in August. Kind of sad, ain’t it? Sorta like sitting around eulogizing Hunter Thompson, long after he exited the premises. Sorta like randomly daydreaming of a girl you dated long ago, in your carefree youth; you were crazy about her for awhile, but as sometimes happens, you gradually drifted apart from each other. Inevitably the two of you split up, and afterward you went along for a time, a few months, maybe more, thinking you had handled the breakup, had made your peace with it, and had moved on. Then all of the sudden one day, out of the blue, you realize. . . “She’s gone! My god, I’ve let her slip away. . . “
This series, with the Astros pounding lumps on the Cubbies, who are really only around for the pounding anyway, I will enjoy. But I’ll be a bit distracted, too, a tad pensive. . . I’ll be thinking about Jeff Bagwell, who used to feast on Cub pitching; about the good Dr. Thompson, who made perfect sense for awhile back when nothing much else did; and – after the late afternoon sun drops low, angling through the openings at the back of the grandstand, and casting long shadows across the expanse of the Wrigley outfield all the way out to the dead ivy on the walls – I’ll probably be thinking a little about Patricia —-, too; the great-looking off-blonde I met in a British Lit class my sophomore year. Her memory tends to creep back in whenever the melancholy does.
Bags, you go and have a nice life. Doc, I’ll see you on the other side. And Trish. . . Trish, I’ll be burning another candle for you, baby. One last time.
*********
Oh, yeah. Astros win the series, 2-1. Vicis exspecto pro nemo, quod vis est non affectus.
You may discuss today’s game in real time in the GameZone. And remember, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.