By Ricky O’Donnell
I never understood why baseball teams have such trouble playing on the road. It’s one thing in football, where crowd noise can affect communication at the line of scrimmage. But in baseball, the crowd cheers at the same time anyways, right? Just pretend they’re rooting you on!
Whatever. As was evident this past week, both stellar baseball teams in this city can’t seem to figure out this road thing just yet. The Cubs and White Sox are both juggernauts at home; back-to-back sweeps really aren’t all that surprising.
I was in attendance for Game 3 on Sunday, so here are some observations from sky high in the upper deck.
* The best moment of the game, and possibly my life: I don’t remember which player was up to bat or even what inning it was (let’s say around the third), but a Cubs batter hit a rocket, the type of shot Hawk Harrelson would have described as “right size, wrong shape”. That is to say, the ball had home run distance but was clearly foul. So the crowd does a collective “sigh/whew” but two Cubs fans in front of my start going crazy, celebrating the home run. They’re cheering, jumping up and down, slapping hands, the whole bit.
Naturally this caused an uproar of laughter from the White Sox contingent in my section for at least a minute. As soon as it died down and things got real quiet, someone said “If that’s they do after a foul ball, I hope they don’t start making out after a hit!” Good times.
* There were some good creative signs at the game- though nothing topped the epic MARIOTTI LOVES COCK sign I saw at a Sox game earlier this year (I don’t know what I love most about it, the irrelevance or the vulgarity). The best sign from Game 3 read: Obama, McCain, Alexei with a giant check mark next to his name. Of course Alexei isn’t over 35 and was born in Cuba so it’s impossible, but come on, it would be pretty sweet.
* The incompetence of the CTA has been a big issue in the city lately, as we here at Beachwood have chronicled. I took the Red Line with two friends from Roosevelt to the game, and it was insane. People were literally crammed like sardines into every car, and I’d say ours was at least 30 or 40 people over capacity. As soon everyone was positioned and the train took off, I yelled “Oh man, I think I’m gonna puke!” to the delightment of no one besides for myself.
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Week in Review: A dominant, 5-1 week for the Sox. While sweeping the Cubbies is always fun, it’s almost more impressive that they were able to sneak by super-prospect Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers. With a name as cool as Clayton Kershaw, I don’t think that kid can fail.
Week in Preview: Three against Cleveland and four against Oakland. I have a good feeling about this Indians series, mainly because we’re running this column a day late this week and the Sox already clubbed the Indians Monday night. While we’re here, and I’ve never seen anyone raise this point: Travis Hafner was clearly on steroids, right? The guy was a beast, but the last two years he’s fallen off the face of the Earth. Funny how those things happen after the MLB starts testing.
Fields on the Farm: A .251/.327/.474 line from Fields isn’t all that impressive in AAA. If the Sox continue to win, I think there is a good chance fan favorite Joe Crede is re-signed. It is worth noting that Crede uncharacteristically leads all third basemen with 16 errors.
The Missile Tracker: If we stole Marty’s bit of comparing Sox guys to characters from Happy Days, Alexei would clearly be Arthur Fonzarelli. It’s a little known fact that Ramirez actually got to this country to waterskiing around sharks, so, I mean, that pretty much clinches it.
Eat it Cubs fans: “God likes the Sox too.”
Over/Under: 3.0 – The projected season ERA for 22-year old Sox starter John Danks. For those who haven’t been paying attention, Danks has quietly become the ace of the Sox’ staff. He’s got a 1999 Pedro Martinez-like 2.6 ERA so far.
Beachwood Sabermetrics: A complex algorithm performed by The White Sox Report staff using all historical data made available by Major League Baseball has determined that someone really needs to get the Nick Swisher-Orlando Cabrera handshake on YouTube.
The White Sox Report: Read ’em all.
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Ricky O’Donnell is the proprietor of Tremendous Upside Potential , a contributor to the Sun-Times’s Full Court Press and a lot of other things.
Posted on July 1, 2008