About 9:30 my wife goes, "It's gorgeous out. You should go to the game."
Huh?
Me?
I went online, found a killer seat for $90. I mean... I coulda gotten one way up top for $52, but it was my first game, so...
(Of course I forgot about the "fees", so add $32.)
Whatever, after this long miserable freaking winter I splurged.
And just driving to the park on a day the weather app says "80" will do magic things for your head.
I texted my parking friend Bernadette and had a spot waiting for me.
Walked to the Bernie's corner at Waveland and Clark and... will ya look at that.
It's Wrigley Field.
There is a day every year in Chicago, that first gorgeous day of Spring when EVERYBODY goes out and EVERYBODY is in the best mood they've been in for 6 months, and I walked right into it.
Showed my phone ticket and went immediately to the dog stand with grilled onions and cold beer.
And then... you know... walked up a tunnel, got visually hammered with all that green, and then nothin' mattered but baseball.
How lucky can I get?
I posted this picture on Facebook and captioned it: "I hate my miserable life".
The wind was blowing out non stop at about 100 mph.
There is Kyle Freaking Hendricks RIGHT THERE.
Old friend Dan Vogelbach leads off with a ground out. The next 2 guys Reynolds and Chavis smack the ball pretty good, but they both line out.
When the Cubs come up, I get my first live look at Seiya Suzuki.
In what would become the theme of the day, he gets a hit.
Shortly after, Happ drives him in.
Patrick Wisdom comes up, and that silly American Airlines logo looks like Wisdom shattered his bat.
He grounds out and, after the bases load, JHey pops out, and it's Cubs 1 Pirates nothin'.
It was the 2nd inning where things went so crazy I started to feel bad for Pittsburgh starter Zach Thompson.
Because the Cubs are hitting balls all over the place, Thompson's infield commits two errors and the Cubs put 8 more on the board.
Including a very loud and impressive 416 foot outtahere shot by Alfonso Rivas.
So now it's 9 nothin' and that half inning lasted so long I worried that Hendricks would be affected, but no.
He was masterful.
And after that, AFTER scoring the 9 runs in the first two innings, the Cubs did this the rest of the day: walk, hit by pitch, single, double, double, double, single, double, single, single, single, single, single, walk, single, single, single for a total of 19 hits on the day.
Pittsburgh mustered up 3, and never scored.
When Pat Hughes says "a laugher", this was the extreme definition.
I bought a couple filets on the way home.
They were delicious.
That's so cool you got to see that! What a romp!! All those great at bats and Hendricks was on top of his game!
A couple of games ago there was a high foul pop up down the first base line. Schwindel ran over by the tarp and the ball fell smack on the middle of the tarp. My immediate first thought: Rizzo would've caught that.
Still, this is an interesting bunch and the season is full of possibility! Thank God for baseball!
Posted by: Rich Beckman | April 24, 2022 at 12:32 PM
Hi Rich.
It was the BEST way to crawl out of my winter cave.
And yeah, we've been sort of blessed with amazing gloves over at 1st, and we'll see how Schwindel does. Rivas is supposed to be exceptional, too.
After the Pirates, it gets REALLY HARD. Braves, Brewers, White Sox and Dodgers.
If they can come close to .500 thru those, it'll be a miracle and you and me will be SO happy.
Posted by: Tim@Cubby Blue | April 24, 2022 at 02:07 PM