Entries associated with the tag "Cubs":

The day after right fielder Kosuke Fukudome made his Major League debut against the Brewers at Wrigley Field, he blogged about it on his Japanese Web site. "I don't quite feel like a real Major Leaguer yet," he wrote, "but my first at bat was greeted by such amazing cheers and the Chicago fans, said to be especially tough, gave me such a warm welcome that I felt like I was truly a member of the team. I was so relieved!

"I couldn't help but laugh a little," he adds, "at the signs that read 'How unexpected!' (^_^;)"

Photos of Cubs fans carrying the signs he's referring to (see above) are all over Japanese blogs and news sites. Transliterated, the signs read "Guuzen da zo!"--the kind of thing you'd say if you bumped into someone you were just thinking about calling. "Guuzen" also means "chance," "sudden(ly)," and "accident(al)," and that's why it's such an endearingly curious way to welcome a talented new player; search "accidental" (and scroll down a little) on this popular message board for an ASCII art rendition of the joke.

From what I've seen, there's no disrespect meant to resourceful Cubs fans eager to reach out to Fukudome. As this blogger pointed out, online translators are likely to blame. Google Translate offers "Guuzen da zo!" as the translation of "It’s gonna happen" (look closely and you'll see the Cubs mantra on the back of the sign in the photo). And sometimes it shoots back the much less catchy and even more puzzling "Shinrai kachitoru okoru." I asked my old editor in Tokyo to help explain the translation. "'Shinrai o kachitoru' means 'gain someone's trust,'" he said, "but to stick 'okoru'* on the end is weird."

*to happen 

I'm not normally one to side with a corporation -- much less a big-bucks, major-league sports franchise -- against average citizens in anything resembling the right to privacy, but I love what's going on in Massachusetts, where the New England Patriots have won a court judgment forcing StubHub to release the names of season-ticket holders scalping tickets online. The Pats have a ban on their tickets being sold above face value, and state courts have sided with the team, in part because of state laws that allow a maximum $2 markup along with some form of service fee. (Some $125 tix have sold for more than a grand on StubHub.)

True, StubHub, a subsidiary of eBay, argues that the Pats are just trying to bolster their own TeamExchange service, run by TicketMaster. (The corporate ties run deep here.) But TeamExchange sells no tickets above face value. Compare all this to what typically goes on in Illinois and Chicago, where scalping has been taken off the streets and pretty much moved online or legislated to the rich and powerful through so-called ticket brokers, where sports teams do their best to discourage ticket resale at any price -- fearing it cuts into additional ticket sales -- and where the Cubs and the Tribune Co. have their own operation reselling tickets at far above face value, a practice endorsed by local courts in a ridiculous ruling and copied by others like the White Sox. It's not clear if the Pats will follow through on threats to revoke the season tickets of those who resell them, but if only our local franchises used their immense power to be so altruistic, albeit in draconian fashion. 

The New York Times's unfortunately named but generally excellent sports magazine, Play, comes out infrequently, so I tend to miss it when it comes out. As a result, I didn't find this wonderful profile of Kerry Wood from June until this week. It's by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, author of the classic Friday Night Lights, who's hopefully making a return to good writing after the overwritten, crushingly disappointing Three Nights in August. Anyway, this paragraph really got me:

"PITCHING A BASEBALL is, to put it mildly, a torturous and self-destructive act. Pitching is the fastest known motion in human biomechanics, the shoulder rotating at the rate of 7,200 degrees per second at its maximum, or the equivalent of 20 full revolutions per second. At the time of the ball’s release, the forces acting on the shoulder are basically equivalent to the pitcher’s body weight; they are akin to someone of similar size trying to yank his arm out of his shoulder socket. Right before release, the pitcher’s elbow straightens at a rate of 2,000 degrees per second, or the equivalent of 5.5 full revolutions per second. As Glenn Fleisig, the research director of the American Sports Medicine Institute, told me, the elbow was never designed for that type of stress."

Despite being defiantly anti-Cub, I can't help but root for Wood, one of the more tragic tales in baseball. And now that Rick Ankiel is back in the majors after reinventing himself as a power-hitting outfielder, I'm a little more hopeful about everything these days. 

With our baseball teams racing each other into the abyss heading toward next weekend's interleague city series rematch, the managers are doing their best to keep the media and the fans entertained -- with their quotes off the field. My favorite of the season so far has come from the Cubs' Lou Piniella, who when asked about the club's offensive woes said, "Let's talk about some bikinis on the beach or surfers on La Jolla." The White Sox' Ozzie Guillen is no piker in that regard, and offered this after the Sox' loss Monday night: "It's the same game over and over. It's like watching ESPN News after 11 o'clock at night, the same thing over and over for 24 hours." The Cubs may have won two in a row against the suprising Mariners, but both teams are still sitting well under .500, and after getting swept by Phillies, the Sox have lost an abysmal 15 of their last 18 games. The managers aren't managing so much as providing comic relief.

But you know what? Even when it comes to providing great quotes they're getting beat. My favorite sports line of the year so far came from none other than tennis's Maria Sharapova at the French Open. When fans booed her after she went ahead and served an ace when an early-round opponent tried to signal for a timeout, Sharapova ignored them and went on to win, saying afterward, "It's tough playing tennis and being Mother Teresa at the same time." Roll over, Leo Durocher, and tell Ozzie and Sweet Lou the news.

Kerry Wood just went on the DL, which means it's time for baseball. Even as a Cardinals fan, I can't find the Wood story anything other than tragic. Wood got oversold for one great game--"Mr. Jordan, meet Mr. Wood"--that's dogged him ever since. If the generous strike zone Wood had for his famed 20 Ks against the Astros had been a bit smaller, I think we'd all have a more realistic view of his career.

Speaking of Cubs tragedies, the New York Times has a long profile of Adam Greenberg, the prospect whose major league career may have been ended by a beanball on the first pitch he saw in the majors.

Jayson Stark reports some good news in his ESPN Insider blog: scouts are geeked about Jeff Samardzija (subscription necessary), whom you may remember as a long-haired wideout for Notre Dame. "Best arm I've seen.... they had to get him back to the minor leagues to keep Lou (Piniella) from taking him north." Then again, I have as much faith in Cubs pitching prospects at this point as I have in the Bush administration. We'll see how Rich Hill does this year and then I'll start listening again.

White Sox news... um, Jimbo's might reopen. John Danks is looking good, but all that means to me is no knuckleballs from Charlie Haeger. It's a dying art, and someone has to make sacrifices to support it.

After watching Lou Piniella's stint as a sedate, soft-spoken color commentator, I'm glad to see he's back in the dugout. Here's a nice clip from his time managing the beleaguered Devil Rays; it's about 20 f-bombs short on the Lee Elia index, but I reckon he's got a couple years in Chicago to set new standards for profanity.

I love spring training--the relaxed playfulness mixed with the gradual increase in the tension of the competition as the regular season approaches, pitchers running sprints in the outfield as the game goes on. And one doesn't necessarily need to be there in person. Chicago fans watching this this afternoon's spring exhibition rematch between the Cubs and the White Sox at Tucson Electric Park on Channel 9 got an unusual taste of that mixture.

With the game at the Sox' spring base, the Sox broadcast team of Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin Jackson was doing the call, joined in the booth in the second inning by Sox general manager Kenny Williams. In the bottom half Ozzie Guillen joined them as well, via headset in one of those midgame interviews that are such an intrusion during a real game and such a pleasant diversion in an exhibition. Williams remarked that he never got to talk to Guillen during a game and said he wanted Ozzie to get in "championship mode" and call a hit-and-run on the next pitch if Joe Crede got on. "Get a hit, Joe!" Hawk said. Guillen grudgingly said all right.

Lo and behold, Crede yanked a single into left. Guillen dusted off his intricate hand signals--he had to alert new third-base coach Razor Shines he was actually calling something--and Crede took off on the first pitch. The playful competition almost went awry when Rob Mackowiak fouled a bad pitch into the dirt and back up off the bill of his cap, almost getting hit in the face. "Kenny, you're gonna get guys hurt," DJ said. "That's why you're up here and Ozzie is down there."

Still, the unexpected aggressiveness paid off when Mackowiak singled the next pitch up the middle and Crede went from first to third. Both came in to score when Cubs left fielder Cliff Floyd misplayed a Tadahito Iguchi liner into a triple. The Sox went on to win, 7-6, after Sox closer Bobby Jenks blew the save in the top of the ninth, loading the bases, then giving up a three-run double to Casey McGehee. Mackowiak hit the game winner with his fourth single of the day.

Watching on TV was almost better than being there--almost. After all, it was 91 and sunny in Tuscon. 

SaveWrigley.com is petitioning Cubs fans to boycott the sportswear company Under Armour in response to their planned ads on the Friendly Confines' outfield walls. Me, I try to take the philosophical view.

1. The famous ivy was merely the first great brainstorm from genius huckster Bill Veeck, the man who brought you exploding scoreboards, Disco Demolition Night, Eddie Gaedel, the Comiskey Martians, and baseball player shorts. I think he'd find the ads profoundly uncreative, but his legacy has not been purity.

2. Remember how everyone was so upset about the lights? Oh, you don't. Ask your dad, kid.

3. Since this is about aesthetics, let's think about the purpose of architectural design and ornamentation. You could argue that, in pure aesthetic terms, the ads are a mistake. I won't argue with that. But I submit that, ideally, design should speak to the nature of an institution. And the Cubs are an institution that scalps its own tickets and drove out announcer Steve Stone because he had the temerity to be honest. So think of the ads as honest, resonant design.

4. By the All-Star break, the fact that Under Armour is picking up a chunk of fly-ball pitcher Ted Lilly's four-year, $40 million contract will seem like corporate charity.