Please don’t jump on the wagon. Trust me when I tell you that as a fan of the Cubs for 15 years, coming from a dedicated Cub family that dates back to '48, I don’t need disgruntled Devil Ray fans jumping into the boat and claiming they’re big Cubs fans when they don’t even know who Augie Ojeda is. If you’re interested in the Cubs that’s fine, but don’t try to sell yourself as a ‘die hard’ anytime soon.
If you want to jump on a bandwagon, root for the Sox, they’re used to it. I was amazed at how many Sox fans there were last season…and miraculously…this year…gone. Interesting.
Um…I’ve been a Cub fan for the last 17 years. My first year watching them was the magical season of 1984 (fuck you, Steve Garvey!). My recently deceased father hooked me on them. My first trip to Wrigley, I got to sing with Harry during his last year. Do I qualify as a bandwagon jumper, or a diehard?
Superdude, I don’t know if you took offense to my comment, but you shouldn’t have. Of course you’re a real fan. I’m talking about people like my boss, for example, who wouldn’t know a baseball if it crawled into his lap, calling his clients and saying “we should go to a Cubs game! they’re going all the way this year! We cubs fans have been waiting for it for years!”
He’s never spoken of baseball before. Fairweather fans are worse than naysayers in my opinion.
Nah, you’re okay. I can’t be offended. I was referring to how my first year as a Cub fan was 1984, when they would have went to the Series if it weren’t for Steve Garvey. Since my first year was a division title, anyway. So, jarbaby, are you going to be attending the ChiDope festivities?
Cubs picked up the Brewers set-up man, David Weathers, today. He’s got a great ERA and has been pretty effective this year. We lose Ruben Quevedo and another minor leaguer and we get Weathers and a minor leaguer.
Ack. Bad. Evil. Bad. Quevedo could come up and pitch right now probably as well as Weathers*. Plus, we wouldn’t have to deal with him beating us senseless for 10 years.
*This is before making allowances for the fact that Don Baylor hasn’t the least clue about what he’s doing.
Hopefully, the lineup will continue to be McGriff at 1st, Stairs in LF, and Deshields at 2B/3B, forcing at least one of Young and Coomer to sit their sorry butts on the bench.**
**Again, assuming this will happen is giving Baylor much more credit than he deserves.
Hell, the last time a team made the playoffs with a manager this clueless was probably the '84 Cubs. Or the Cards last year. Take your pick.
Gotta admit. Baylor does some truly weird-ass things.
But lifting Stairs from the lineup would be a bad bad thing. Lifting Stairs would be an even WORSE thing if it meant replacing him with someone who’s OPS is .200 WORSE! Agh!
My ideal cubs lineup? Glad you asked!
2B Young (if he could remember that a walk is as good as a single)
3B Cairo (somehow, he learned to hit, sorta. And he can get on base)
RF Sosa
1B McGriff
LF Stairs
SS Gutierrez
C Machado (Hundley, if he can prove he remembers how to hit)
CF Tucker
Leave Coomer and Mathews on the bench…just in case. When White comes back throw him in CF and hope for the best.
And here are my bona fides…
10 years ago I got a wicked concussion. When the doc was checking me out I’m told the only thing I could be lucid on was the 1989 Cubs starting lineup. Boy was that a great year!
And I hear that Griffey guy is unhappy in Cincy. We could use a center fielder!
Well, I’d much rather sacrifice Coomer and Matthews to the baseball gods, as it’s the only possible way they could help the team, but leaving them on the bench is ok.
And, lest we forget, we have the guy who was the team’s second-best hitter until he broke a knee coming back relatively soon. Even if he only has one good leg, he’ll be about a hundred times better than Coomer. Sosa, McGriff, Stairs, White, and Mueller sounds like a fairly decent lineup to me…
On a side note, am I the only one who thinks of Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop when Ron Coomer’s name is mentioned? (“It’s not a Coomer”)
My crystal ball tells me that the Cubs are going to beat the Pirates in Pittsburgh 4-1 to bring their record to 89-69 on September 26. This win will clinch the central. At that time the Astros will be hosting the Cards and playing their asses off scoring an Enron Field standard 14 runs to the Redbirds 7, but that win will be the Astros 84th with only four games remaining. The Astros will be watching the playoffs because the second place NL west team, the Arizona Diamondback will win their 91st game that same day. At that point Arizona will be trailing LA by one game in the standings, and preparing to host the Dodgers for the final three games of the season.
I am a lifetime Cubs fan, and moved to Denver 3 1/2 years ago. I haven’t been back to Wrigley since we’ve moved. Of course, I am heartbroken that I am not in Chicago to share all of the joy of the winning season.
My family and I will be in Chicago the weekend of August 11th, and I begged my husband to get some tickets for the Sunday game through one of his restaurant contacts. He said he will and of course, promptly forgets. So I bugged him about it AGAIN yesterday.
He called me today at work to tell me that the strangest thing just happened. He had just walked into one of the stores he manages (Uno’s), and who should be there, but the Sam Adams beer vendor from Chicago. My hubby mentions to him that we’ll be in town and his wife is a longtime fan, blah blah blah.
Anyway, guess who’s got 4 tickets to the game on August 12th? Isn’t that cosmic?
I may be late to the thread but anyone that knows me knows I have been tracking the magic number since I first mentioned it in an email to a friend when it was 104.
Don’t forget that Bill Mueller is soon to be back in action and he was doing a fair piece of contact hitting before breaking the knee.
As for the Astros, there is a reason that in spite of their vaunted offense, they are 4.5 games out. Even if they had great pitchers, Enron turns every team into the 1927 Yankees. Astacio went from the worst pitchers park to the 2nd worst. I’ll go on record as saying he will end up losing 20 games this year. Houston has no pitcher that other teams look at and fear. Wade Miller is young and doesn’t exactly have a history of major innings or high pressure outings.
The Astros will have to win with their hitting but it will take a lot of 7-5 contests. The Cubs now have the depth and pitching to win consistently in close games, or slug fests.
I can’t wait to see the blimp shots of Wrigley come mid-October. The streets will be as packed as the stands, and even louder. You could sell tickets to be on Sheffield or Waveland. I’ve alread given notice to my boss that I won’t be into work that week if things pan out.
