By Jim Coffman

Love ’em or hate ’em, is there a manager-pitching coach combo in Major League Baseball half as good as Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan? What they have done in St. Louis this year with a pitching staff of has-beens and never-weres absolutely defies belief. And every time you think, OK, now they’ll finally start to fade away, they do something like come back from a crushing Friday loss (20-2) to knock off the previously scorching Phillies twice over the weekend.
I’m running out of superlatives for the Cubs at this point and the boys in blue even supplied lovely, if redundant, storylines over the weekend with former Blue Jays Reed Johnson and Ted Lilly coming back to haunt their old team in successive games.

Beachwood Baseball: The White Sox Report The Cub Factor

But so far this year the Cardinals are an even better story. With the second win over Philadelphia, they moved to 13 games over .500. Heading into this week they have the second-best record (42-29) in the National League.
And the Redbirds have done so despite a pitching staff that was as shaky as an earthquake going into the season and which has suffered through several big-time aftershocks.

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Posted on June 16, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

At least for a young fan like me, everything before 2005 feels like forever ago in White Sox World. There are so many vivid images from that season that will forever be burned in any fan’s mind. I think that’s part of the reason the earlier portion of the decade seems like such a blur. Carlos Lee and Magglio Ordonez played for the Sox in 2004? Really? My memory starts after Torii Hunter plowed Jamie Burke.
But then something crazy happened. The Sox signed Esteban Loaiza.
In 2003, Loaiza possibly put together the best regular season of any White Sox starter ever. Yeah, 2003. That wasn’t really that long ago. But when Loaiza trotted out of the bullpen against the Twins last week, it was clear this wasn’t the same guy who won 21 games one season. The dude could barely crack 80 on the radar gun. Jordan faxing in “I’m back” this was not.

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Posted on June 16, 2008

By Marty Gangler

The big issue this week is Alfonso Soriano’s injury and him being out six weeks. Oh, and the Cubs went 5-1 for the week and are currently 20 games over .500 – yeah, that’s not a typo, 20 games over .500. For anyone who thinks the Cubs are in trouble because of the Fonz going down for awhile, let me tell you this: Stop it. They will be fine. And Uncle Lou likes getting his hands dirty with lineup changes, so he might even prefer this.
Sure, when Soriano is super-hot he can carry a team, but this team doesn’t even need that now. They’ll probably be better off changing things up. I mean, being 20 games over .500 is probably boring. Winning all the time has to be kind of bland after awhile. Imagine going to the park and having no idea what position and/or spot in the batting order you will have. That’s got to be pretty fun, right? At least it’s not boring and honestly Soriano was the most boring player in the line-up.
Okay, he wasn’t boring at the plate, and yeah, it was always a crap-shoot in the field on any fly ball so that wasn’t boring, but he was boring in the sense that he always has to bat first. What a snoozefest at the lead-off position. And really, as a Cub fan we really need some excitement. Honestly, have you ever watched a Cub team that you knew would score like this team? It’s like, when Reed Johnson hits a three-run homer in Toronto instead of going crazy I just go “Hey, I wonder if that means he’s going to play center more once Soriano’s back.” And then I wonder what will happen if Edmonds keeps hitting. Even a tremendous outing by Jason Marquis seems like old hat now. We Cub fans need some excitement, and lineup changes might just be what the doctor ordered. I for one am really looking forward to it.

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Posted on June 16, 2008

By Jim Coffman

When the Cubs win streak finally ended at nine with a loss to the Padres in the middle of last week, we had to stop saying “Why, I can’t remember the last time the boys in blue suffered even a single setback.” But with Sunday’s victory (3-1 over the Dodgers on ESPN) we can still say “So I guess the Cubs have decided against three-game losing streaks.” Plenty of pundits have pointed out in the last few weeks that the local squad is the only one in the majors that hasn’t put together a tragic trifecta this year.
The win that broke up a rare Cubs two-game losing streak was so gosh-darned pleasant that even analyst Joe Morgan didn’t seem as irritating as usual. It was pretty funny, though, in about the seventh inning when Morgan said he had a “trivia question” for broadcast partner Jon Miller. He proceeded to ask him “who hit the most consistently hard line drives you ever saw?”

Beachwood Baseball: The White Sox Report The Cub Factor

“Where would we look up the answer to that question Joe?” replied the always smooth-as-silk Miller. And then, after saying Dave Winfield hit the hardest line drives he ever saw, Miller wouldn’t concede the point Morgan was trying to make.
Morgan didn’t seem to understand that just because he and a few of his former-player buddies thought the correct answer was Al Oliver didn’t mean that everyone who had seen Oliver and Winfield play would agree.
Otherwise, the Hall-of-Fame second baseman went on a bit too long trying to explain the trouble the Dodgers have with a group of young players who are clearly good but won’t become great if they don’t find some peer leadership they respect and listen to. But his point was good. And Miller is as pleasing to the ear as any announcer this side of Vin Scully.
Other observations from a great night at an old and venerable ballpark (Dodgers Stadium):

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Posted on June 9, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

We all know Orlando Cabrera has his faults. This has been discussed over, and over, and over. Well we’ve got a new one this week, and it’s his most egregious yet: Orlando Cabrera likes Nickelback.
Cabrera: “I like Nickelback. Really. I love Nickelback.
He sounds convincing, right? I mean, we already know he likes to party. What’s better than drinking tequila and listening to “How You Remind Me”? Nothing I tell you. Nothing at all.
While Cabrera listens to the worst music of any Sox player (I believe it’s a scientific fact that you cannot do worse than Nickelback), the rest of the guys have their faults, too. I always thought one of the coolest parts of being a professional baseball player would be getting to choose your at-bat song; apparently the White Sox hitters disagree. They suck at liking good music. So here is some advice, Sox hitters, to make you guys look a little cooler before coming to the plate.

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Posted on June 9, 2008

By Marty Gangler

The Cubs ventured into Pacific Standard Time last week and rewarded fans with insomnia or up late like I was with a crying baby still early in his rookie year (still undetermined if he’s left-handed, but by God we’re gonna try!). And speaking of crying babies, how ’bout Big Z?
Anyway, you don’t have to stay away from Wrigley Field when the Cubs are on the road. On off-weekends, the Cubs offer 90-minute tours of the Friendly Confines for 25 bucks a crack. So my wife and I headed over to Clark and Addison (you can park on the street on off-days!) to check it out. And I have to say that for an old building, well, that place looks . . . old. And pretty cramped and dilapidated and behind the times, and did I mention cramped and old? All of those people who think this place is some kind of baseball shrine that should never be touched up again should go on this tour. You’ll see a place where they’ve shoved square pegs in round holes at every turn. Maybe this is blasphemy, but go check it out; you’ll be surprised how dysfunctional the place is.
We saw some pretty strange things too, and compiled a list of what goes on at Wrigley Field while the team is away.

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Posted on June 9, 2008

By Rick Kaempfer

The Cubs Answer Man returns to answer all your questions as we once again go down that road . . .
*
With the recent surge by the 2008 Chicago Cubs, your mind has probably wandered to that same place my mind has wandered. It’s obviously meant to be this year.
With that as a given, I realized it was time to get more information about the city’s plans for the big celebration. I picked up the phone and called the spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, Cindy Gatziolis.
Cindy, a Sox fan, was kind enough to answer all the questions that Cubs fans have swirling around in our brains. If I’ve missed any, feel free to e-mail me, and I’ll call her to follow up.
*
Q: Will a scoreboard be set up on stage at Orchestra Hall for the away World Series games so fans can watch someone manning the ticker and turning on lights to represent which runners are on base like they did in 1908?
Cindy: We’re moving it to the Bean, because it’s a new century.

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Posted on June 4, 2008

By Jim Coffman

I understood it was miserably cold Tuesday evening at Wrigley. In fact, it was worse than that – it was angrily cold. And fans reacted in kind, i.e., cursing out the weather incessantly as they waited for concessions at the central, double-counter purchase point in the upper deck (I heard three different people say “I can’t believe it’s so effing cold!” when I went to get fries in about the fifth inning). So it was obviously a tough night. But still, the folks booing Jim Edmonds were driving me nuts.
The Cubs scored three runs in the seventh inning to seize command of an eventual 3-1 win over the Dodgers that would ensure they remained a couple games in front of the Cardinals (in the loss column) atop the Central Division. Sure it’s still early, but we all prefer the view from up here don’t we? We’re all fired up at this point, right? But after the runs came home, Edmonds made the last out. And the boos cascaded down.

Beachwood Baseball: The White Sox Report The Cub Factor

The weather did make it a bit tougher to look on the bright side of Cubs baseball even given the fact the team started the evening in first. And therefore I was willing to cut my fellow fans some slack after they let Edmonds have it after his first couple at-bats. But the booing after the bottom of the seventh was some of the stupidest stuff I’ve ever heard at a ballgame.
And at this point, let’s make sure we get one thing straight: No one was booing Jim Edmonds because he used to play, and oftentimes star, for the Cardinals. No one.

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Posted on June 2, 2008

By Ricky O’Donnell

If this is how things are when they’re winning, I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if these White Sox lose their footing. Just look at this week’s Orlando Cabrera fiasco.
We suspected Cabrera may become a problem a few weeks ago In an attempt to get a couple errors off his record, Cabrera started a firestorm. Suddenly his manager didn’t have is back, he had cut off a newspaper, and he was no longer deemed a leader. Overnight, Orlando Cabrera became an idiot. All this while the White Sox still sit atop the AL Central.

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Posted on June 2, 2008

By Marty Gangler

Holy crap. The Cubs are rolling. I mean they are rolling like a big ball of stuff down a big-ass steep hill. And I just want to let all Cub fans know that I am not going to talk about the following things because they Cubs had such a good week.
* You can still throw a dart into the Cubs dugout . . .
* You could throw a dart at a schedule and have a hard time landing on a team worse than the Rockies.
* You could throw a dart at Ted Lilly and not know whether you’ve just stuck Good Ted or Bad Ted.
* You could throw a dart at Jim Edmonds and probably get away with it, but tests are still inconclusive.

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Posted on June 2, 2008