The Economist's Prospero blog piles on the Cubs after attending the Crosstown Classic last week:
Teams like the Cubs give people a safe space in which to lose. Fans get the benefits of commiseration without incurring any real costs. The predictable losers also allow other teams to win. So really the Sox fans should be grateful for the Cubs. Such losers may not be so lovable on scrutiny, but their ineptitude has an extra civic function: they take one for the team. They’re a sacrifice fly.
And on the Fourth of July, yet! Limey bastahd.
He may have a point, though.
Dusty Baker walks from the mound to the dugout at Wrigley Field for the last time as manager of the Cubs:
1 October 2006, ISO-200, 1/800 at f/6.3, 200mm, here.
Last night Chicago got hit by severe storms that included hurricane-force winds:
Violent storms raked large sections of the Chicago area Tuesday evening, knocking power out to nearly a quarter million Chicago area residents and transforming some thoroughfares into darkened obstacle courses, hard to navigate with streetlights out and debris, ranging from large trees to power poles and garbage cans, impeding if not entirely blocking travel. Police in some of the hardest hit areas were forced to light flares to mark fallen trees.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing transformers exploding at the height of the storms while others described some neighborhoods as "war zones" after the onslaught of storms.
... The storms generated gusts as high as 130 km/h at Wheeling and 120 km/h at Peru, Elmhurst and Wheaton.
I was inside, as you can imagine, as the storms ran over my part of the city, with horizontal rain and, well, lots of wind. At one point I watched the groundskeepers at US Cellular Field blown around as they tried to get the tarp over the infield.
Ah, global warming.
The 30-park geas can resume now that I'm done with school. Here's my progress so far:
[1] vs. Cubs
[2] Renamed Minute Maid Park in 2004
[3] I've decided
not to count parks that were rebuilt after I started this geas in 2008.
[4] Shea demolished in 2009; Citi Field opened 13 April 2009
Last edited: 20 April 2012. This page replaces the
original page started in 2008.
Still, when you see something like this, it hurts:
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When it finally ended, the Brewers wound up with an 18-1 win, sending the Cubs to their sixth straight defeat and leaving them a season-worst 14 games under .500 at 46-60.
The Cubs tied a franchise record with 26 hits allowed. The loss dropped them into fifth place in the National League Central, a half-game behind the Astros.
Acting manager Alan Trammell said before the game that "being professional" is one of the things the Cubs are looking for from their players as they play out the string. But acting professional and looking professional are two different things, and the Cubs haven't resembled a major league team since giving up a major league-record 11 straight hits on Friday in Colorado.
"This is major league baseball," Trammell said afterward. "You expect to be better."
Twenty-six hits? Eighteen runs? Wow. Just, wow.
Nothing special about the game, but I do love the shot:
Having the second-oldest ball park may give Chicago its largest outdoor party 88 days every summer, but I can't deny that other parks have better amenities. The steel troughs in the men's rooms, for example: ew. Now that Wrigley has a new owner, there's talk of expansion and renovation ahead of its centennial in 2014:
The project will be called "Wrigley 20-14" and include construction projects during the season so the Cubs can use it "for another 100 years," according to President Crane Kenney.
The focal point of the massive restructuring will be the long-talked-about "triangle building" to the west, a project that will include knocking down the outer wall on the third-base side to form a large open-air courtyard that would include concession areas and shops.
In the end, all of the concourse will be widened and include expanded restrooms, some of which will be completed for this season. It also means construction will be ongoing during the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
I think that will help make the games more enjoyable. Now all we need is a Marlins-style team of unknowns who play well together (instead of being the team where former stars go to die), and we might actually break the 101-year drought.
My cousin sent me this example of...something...but I couldn't stop laughing:
So what news story should I focus on today? The Cubs using the bankruptcy code to speed up their sale to the Ricketts family? General Motors ramping up production by 45% to see if we'll bail them out a second time? Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court?
No, I want to point people toward the Night of the Stripping Dead event at the Admiral Theater tomorrow night:
Exotic dancers and zombies, the two grand pillars of American subculture, have finally joined forces -- thus proving our nation's obsession with the walking dead has irrevocably crossed the line of mainstream consciousness, where now strippers are parodying a trend.
Wednesday night, club organizers are throwing an event...where professional makeup artists will transform otherwise pious dancers into undead dancers.
Riiiight.
For completeness, the Admiral Theater is on Lawrence just east of Pulaski.
The Twins hadn't even polished off the Tigers yesterday before Major League Baseball unanimously approved Tribune's sale of the Cubs to the Ricketts:
The vote was made during a conference call. Tom Ricketts, who has headed the sale for his family, could take day-to-day control of the Cubs by the end of the month.
Commissioner Bud Selig says the Ricketts family will be "great owners and custodians" of the storied franchise perhaps best known for a World Series championship drought that now stands at 101 years.
... The $845 million deal also includes Tribune's approximately 25 percent share of regional cable TV network Comcast SportsNet Chicago.
Oddly, this item was the top story on Crain's Chicago Business this morning but totally buried on the Chicago Tribune's own site.