Hey, we're all pros here, right?
Card carrying seasoned veterans of watching the Cubs and their losses.
Over time, I've learned to not put much importance on winning or losing on Opening Day.
It's just so fabulous that the Season Has Begun.
Yesterday was no different.
I watched the game some, but also spent alot of time chatting and taking in the experience, which was overall pretty spectacular.
The day was gorgeous.
Well, it was before the wind picked up to about a hundred and stopped allowing the sun to fool you into thinking it was even semi-warm.
Because in reality it was freezing.
Barking vendor beers are $7.50, I think I paid $6 for a freshly made dog with the grilled onions at a stand.
Guess what?
I didn't care, and they were amazing.
Ryan Dempster's first pitch got semi-smoked, but he looked like a million bucks out there.
And...I guess we should talk about what went wrong, becuase what went wrong was everything the New Management hoped would not.
Aggressive baserunning on day one went 0 for 2, with Soriano getting thrown out stealing and pinch runner Joe Mather trying to go home on contact and getting tagged out in such a non-dramatic fashion that you hardly noticed. It was like one moment you were thrilled that Ian Stewart had just hit a triple and the tying run was 90 feet away. Mather comes in to pinch run, I lean down for a peanut, I look up and the crowd groans and Mather's getting up and trotting home.
Bad, but this new aggressive baserunning is way too easy a target to be angry about.
Give it a little time.
Fielding.
Stewart got an E on what I think was his first chance to field a ball at Wrigley.
Nerves.
DeJesus missing that wicked fly to right.
He's new so the wind's going to mess with him some, and that same sun is the one that makes the 5,000 drivers in front of me on the Kennedy forget how to drive.
Patience at the plate and working the pitcher.
Jeff Baker got a walk, but I didn't notice any really long at bats except for Adam LaRoche's.
Which brings us to Kerry Wood.
I was talking to Mark Carlson and his daughter Leah through the first two walks.
And I knew what was coming, so after about maybe 6 pitches to LaRoche I said, "Well, I think I better run to the men's room before the inning ends and the traffic gets bad."
In reality, I couldn't watch.
Ran down the tunnel and prayed for a loud cheer.
Instead, I heard the gasp.
So this loss wasn't really a sudden kick in the nads like losing to the Sox when they tie it in the 9th on a homer off then-closer Dempster by AJ Pierzynski, where you get so mad you see red and wanna kill something.
Yet it wasn't just your average Cub loss where maybe there could be some unexpected drama at the end but still you left in the 6th because you could feel the L.
No.
This game was a shame.
It was a shame because Ryan Dempster deserved to start off the season with a shiny Win for his excellent efforts, and instead the veteran guys - Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol - gagged it up.
Just a shame, guys.
And I decided I was going to make some icons for just these kinds of games that fall into a classic category of Cub losses.
You can help me with the names of the other types of losses as the season goes along.
I have tons of photos from the game, and I'm to do a demo on blog posting later today, so I'll do an actual posting for that and put them up then.
Sorry about the game.
Don't be overly discouraged, let the New Regime try their stuff, and lets see what happens.
I promise Kerry Wood and Carlos Marmol aren't going to be a terrible tag team all the time.
