Musings of a Baseball Fanatic: Chicago Cubs

The Cubs try to polish off the Brewers and move above .500 for the first (and hopefully, only) time this season. The Cubs got an offensive explosion in Game 1, and while Dempster wasn't sharp, he did what he had to do to win. With a big lead, you want to throw strikes and make the other guys put the ball in play. When you do that, chances are you're going to get outs. Braun hit a 3-run HR, but you can't keep both him and Fielder down indefinitely. He can hit all the 3-run HRs he wants as long as we have a 7-run lead. In Game 2, the Cubs made a fantastic comeback against former Cub LaTroy Hawkins. With none on and two outs in the 8th, the Cubs scored 4 runs to take a 7-6 lead and win the game. Marmol was fantastic again in the ninth, striking out the side for the 3rd straight outing. Here's to today's game, and let's get out brooms out!

I managed to scrounge up tickets to all three games of the Braves series in Atlanta. Weather was perfect for all three games in Atlanta - a rarity - although the pollen was fun to deal with. According to weather.com, an "extremely high" pollen count is when over 120 particles of pollen congregate in a cubic meter of air. For the Wednesday game in Atlanta, the pollen count was 5,733. That's 5,733. Once more, 5,733. Needless to say, my nice black car collected a interesting yellow tint by the time we were through there. As for the baseball, about everything that could go wrong in Atlanta did. Game 1 was a disaster - Carlos pitched like he usually does in Opening Day games (poorly), and despite a promising start, we got shellacked. The umpires didn't help much, either - Ramirez got doubled off on an absolutely atrocious call in center. Incidentally, had the call been made correctly, the Cubs would have had the tying run at the plate. These things tend to even themselves out over the course of 162 games, but that's a tough call to stomach and the guy wouldn't even ask for help. Pathetic. The bullpen was also atrocious. After Marshall's masterful performance***, the bullpen couldn't get anybody out. Samardzija walked anyone who came into the stadium. Grabow was bad. Ugh. Terrible. Game 1 is a big blue flag, 16-5.

Game 2 started out much better. Dempster pitched extremely well. We managed to lead for most of the game until the bullpen decides to implode again, giving up a GW HR to Jones. Waste of a great performance by Demp.

For Game 3, I think Wells had seen enough, and he turned in a great outing of 6 shutout innings. The bullpen held together, and Marmol made Heyward look very, very, VERY bad on a three-pitch K in the 9th. I was really ready for that. The Braves fans seemed to think that Heyward was going to hit about .576 with 312 HRs and 9,873 RBIs this year, which may have been a record or something. It was about damn time we did something to that guy - he had gotten belt-high sinkers all series long before Marmol. About damn time somebody brought him down a peg.

One thing I really like about Turner Field is that there really isn't a bad seat anywhere. I'd been there a couple of times before - for 2 games in the 2003 NLDS and once for a 4th of July series with a buddy of mine from Emory University. For Opening Day we splurged and had great seats, in the 7th row behind the tarp on the 1st base side. The next two games we had upper deck seats, but they were right behind home plate. Great, fun weekend all around - sponsored (of course) by our good friends at Pabst Blue Ribbon. I think we helped their flagging stock prices significantly this weekend!

***Marshall is the unsung hero of the Cubs pitching staff. What I like about the guy is that he's been shuttled back and forth from the rotation to the bullpen, but he's never complained or moped about it. All he does is go out there and do his job, and he's been very successful in both roles. He's really a class act and a great guy to have on a pitching staff - I wish we had a few more Marshalls on the team.