Cubby-Blue

Angel Guz(Becomes A)Man! Cubs 7 Cards 5

Well, how's your heart?

Finally feel like you're getting your fill of real baseball?

This Cubs/Cards series has been a freakshow of amazing performances.

And of course the biggie being Aramis Ramirez crushing a Dennys Reyes pitch out of the park with 2 outs and a man on in the bottom of the 11th for the glorious W.

But my heart was pounding more in the top of the 11th, when Angel Guzman came in.

You know Guzman - that injured guy?

In 7 seasons he's thrown about a hundred innings, has 8 losses and this many wins: zeero.

Lou's already used Cotts (can't talk about it), Marmol, Gregg, Heilman...

Only Luis Viscaino and young David Patton are still in the pen.

Guzman walks the first guy.

Peanuts and hot dog water well up in the back of my throat.

Then Adam Wainwright sacrifices the guy over, so there's one out, runner assumes the scoring position.

Guzman threw 23 pitches in the 11th, and I think more than half went to the next batter, Skip Schumacher.

If Shumacher gets on then...uhhhh, don't even think about who's in the hole yet.

Foul ball foul ball foul ball (how many?) and... STRIKE THREE!

And now it's ice cold Rick Ankiel.

He's 0 for 5 and looked pretty bad at the plate, but if he somehow gets on then OH MOTHER OF THE GOD OF HELPLESSNESS IT'S GONNA BE ALBERT PUJOLS NEXT!

And then poof, Angel Guzman became a man.

With all eyes on him, the pressure absolutely off the charts for an April baseball game, he sits the red hot Cardinals down in the top of the 11th inning, setting the stage for Aramis in the bottom half.

Angel Guzman gets his first major league win.

Amazing.

The Cubs play the Cards 16 times this season, with 13 of them done by July 12th.

So these early games are super important with the schedule being so Cardinal front-loaded.

It is raining as I write on this Sunday morning, and all I can do is hope that the wind blows in at 50 mph tonight so Terrible Ted Lilly can keep throwing strikes for ohhhh, 7 - 8 innings.

The bullpen is toast.

Last thing.

I LEFT MY FREAKING TICKETS IN MY OFFICE and had to drive all the way downtown leaving the kids in the car with the top down parked illegally while I ran up to get the tix, and then we walked into the park in the top of the 3rd.

Ouch.

Grabbed a dog for me and Wyatt - Emily's gone vegetarian and had a bag of carrots.

I know.

I love her anyway.

So I've got the grilled onions, mustard and some of those whole jalapeno peppers on there.

Take a bite, and a pepper literally explodes, shooting a stream of pepper juice all the way onto the shoulder of the guy not directly in front of me, but over one.

This is like some kind of pepper record for juice distance.

The stream is so big and lasts so long that the guy next to me has time to see and register the juice hitting the shoulder of the guy in front of him and then follow it back to the source, which was my mouth.

So the juice-shoulder guy is now looking around for whoever threw something at him, his girlfriend is looking up at the ceiling to see if something maybe leaked down from there.

And I say...nothing.

I have apologized for spilling beer or dropping a peanut shell or whatever, but a stream of warm pepper juice shooting from my mouth?

That's just so disgusting I can't even own up to it.

Anyway, Mr. Pepper-juice-shoulder guy, if you're reading this I am sooo sorry.

It just happened.

Cubs 8 Cards 7, And Miles' Perfect Description of Soriano

I was talking with Oif and Olson, just shooting the breeze about the Cubs.

Oif kept saying that Alfonso Soriano goes from totally little league to about the best player in the majors - and there's no real rhyme or reason for when or why it happens.

He's right, and it makes me crazy.

I was thinking how sometimes during games, I wanna scream at Alfonso for being so lame in the field, or seeming to not be able to resist the outside slider in the dirt and striking out with the absolute worst kind of pose.

Then he hits a smash single and takes second insanely crazily blindly and draws the throw which goes over the second baseman's head, and as if on purpose, he takes third standing up.

Or he fishes a line drive out of the corner and whips a curving rope to Geo, nailing the runner.

Or he did what he did yesterday, which was hit the game winning homer.

Then you go, "I SWEAR I take EVERYTHING bad back I ever even thought about you."

You just cannot forget that Soriano is capable of anything at any time, but still...

It's only 10 games into the season and he's already hit 5 out, but I was FREAKING at the strikeouts yesterday.

I guess I hold him to a higher standard (which I should considering the salary).

Anyway, later I was reading the Trib, and new Cub Aaron Miles put the whole thought in it's simplest form: "(With Alfonso) the thunder is always there."

The thunder is always there.

Man, that's perfect.

I still bet that most of the year I'll be thinking, "Alfonso's DUE."

But the beginning of this season, he's ahead of that curve.

He's winning games by himself, and yesterday against the biggest of rivals.

Cubs 8, Cards 7.

It's a good time to go watch him at Wrigley, which I think I will.

KIDS!

Get in the car!

Well, That Wasn't Any Good

You'll notice this illustration is from a Cub-Cardinal game in '03, where Flynn and I had a bird's eye view of an umpire being blind.

I missed yesterday's game - it's so super busy at work.

But I heard Milton Bradley got tossed after a questionable called third strike and the subsequent passion displayed to the home plate ump by our newest Cub.

As it was described to me, bases loaded one out Milton up, and he strikes out for out 2.

But if he'd have gotten the call, a run scores and then it's Derrek Lee and then freaking sooo red hot Kosuke Fukudome.

So you'd think maybe another run or so... 

But the ump's call changed the dynamic of the game, and the Cubs took no advantage of a bunch of Cardinal errors.

Cubs lose 4-7.

Ouch.

It's such a shame, really, that Milton's home debut turned out this way, but you move on, right?

Okay, today it's the kid Tony brought up, PJ Walters, vs. Carlos Zambrano.

One would hope that the Cub bats would force Tony to use his bullpen more today.

Alot more.

Go Cubs.

ps: MARTIN HAVLAT IS A GOD! Did you see the overtime goal? Hawks 3 Flames 2. 

Awesome. 

Tony LaRussa Comes Callin'

Pretty sure you heard Chris Carpenter is out for maybe 4 - 8 weeks or so with an oblique injury.

If you read the comments in that story, the fans in St. Louis seem to think it'll be alot longer than that.

If I was Tony LaRussa, I'd be in a back room somewhere talking to my GM and figuring out how to get more pitching kinda quickly.

I know they don't want to spend money in St. Louis, but this is a pretty serious gut punch so early in the season, and there's pitching out there.

If Carpenter's really down for awhile and the Padres end up sucking, of course Jake Peavy's name could come up which would make me crazy.

Anyway, the Cards come to town tomorrow at 1:20.

This is my favorite rivalry in all sports.

It'll be Sean Marshall in his starting debut vs. Adam Wainwright, who's 1-0.

The Cards called up a guy named PJ Walters to pitch on Friday to "protect a spent bullpen" - I guess they got used up in Arizona while the Cards won the series 2 games to 1.

You can read about their pitching plans for the weekend here.

Do you want to talk about Jason Marquis?

Didn't think so.

Lets just look ahead to a fabulous weekend of baseball.

Go Sean!

ps: if you didn't know this already, Chicago has it's own online ESPN called ESPN CHICAGO. It's like real ESPN, only they just cover Chicago teams. Go here and look around. It's so awesome. There's even a Chicago version of Sports Center! 

Photos From Opening Day At Wrigley

Man, it was it windy.

Tulips were growing in somebody's yard on Waveland. Nice.

Ridiculous lines in front of all the bars. 

This is Captain Morgan's. Remember, about a month ago this wasn't here...how did they do it?

Well,it isn't just pre-fab. Hard to see in the photo, but the structure is a skeleton with a soft plastic wrap around it. They'll be patching this place with rubber cement and bandaids, I'm sure. But there are a million big-screens in here, and business was (and will be) booming.

The "Opening Day" logo is always AWESOME.

Terrible Ted was magnificent!

7th inning stretch with Jody Davis and I'm pretty sure Rick Sutcliffe.

Of course, the fog.

Lastly, walking to where I parked I passed a tiny greasy spoon on Irving and remembered a long time ago eating there about 2- 3 in the morning.

Don't read this if you're easily grossed out.

Ordered a chili omelet.

I'm the only guy, there's a cook behind a stainless grill and a spent waitress playing one of those quarter poker machines non stop.

She gives me the omelet.

I take a couple bites.

The cook comes out, bored.

He says to the waitress, "Burned my hand yesterday, can you believe the size of this scab?"

He held out his hand and sure enough a scab, size of a silver dollar pancake.

That, my friend, will make you feel pretty unusual.

It's possible I neglected to pay, I remember leaving kinda quick.

Anyway, all said it was a fabulous opener.

Now...bring on the rest of the season!