The Daily Parker

A few things of note happened while I was en route to San Francisco yesterday:

• The Cubs continued winning, taking their second in a row after the All-Star break and moving up to second place, though only because they've beaten up the hapless (25-63) Nationals to do it.
• Wisconsin officials announced a deal to buy new 320 km/h train sets for the Chicago to Milwaukee route. Initially plans call for allowing the trains to run at 176 km/h (40% faster than today) while a new, dedicated high-speed line is studied.
• In San Francisco, BART, the light-rail agency, averted a strike that could cripple the area's transportation system. The agency's employees unanimously rejected management's last contract offer and walked away from negotiations, but the two sides have since resumed talks.
• Finally, Walter Cronkite died last night at 92.

And that's the way it is.

Update: One more from my dad: a big weenie drove into a house in Wisconsin yesterday, no doubt because the driver was in mourning.

Cubs win their first game to start the beginning of the ending of the season at 1 game over .500. Hey, it could happen.

Heaven knows some teams need it.

With baseball taking a three-day break for the All-Star Game (tomorrow night in St. Louis), we take a moment to reflect on how much worse things could be for the Cubs. They wound up exactly at .500, with 43 wins and 43 losses, tied with Houston and 3.5 games behind St. Louis (49-42).

The real story, though, has to be how the Washington Nationals haved lost 61 games so far, the second time in a row they've dropped 60 before the break, putting them on course to lose120 games by the end of the season in October. It won't be the worst season in history (the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134), but it would be the worst showing for the Nationals.

There's hope. Last year they pulled out more wins in the second half, ending with a 59-101 record.

The Cubs, though: looks like perfect mediocrity, once again.

Update: Mediocrity, certainly; but possibly also bankruptcy, according to reports.

ESPN moved the start of last night's Cubs game back to 6pm so they could sneak in a second game after it, which gave me the unusual twin opportunies to (a) see the Cubs beat Atlanta and (b) get home before 9:30.

Otherwise, not much to report about the team, except—oh, right, I almost forgot—the Tribune sold them yesterday:

Tribune Co. has finalized a deal to sell the Chicago Cubs to a bidding group led by bond salesman Thomas Ricketts.

Documents describing the fully financed deal were sent to Major League Baseball over the weekend, a source familiar with the negotiations said Monday. The value of the deal is between $850 million and $900 million, the source said.

The agreement reached over the weekend still needs approval from 75% of MLB team owners, as well as creditors and the Delaware judge overseeing Tribune’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

I hear Ricketts is a die-hard Cubs fan, who met his wife in the bleachers, according to NPR.

My cousin turned a very large round number on Wednesday, so, being cruel, I took him to the Cubs game in Detroit. I'll have a rare back-dated entry about that in a little bit, with some kvetching about Amtrak; for now, just some pictures of the game.

But first, a non-sequitur: via Paul Krugman, today is the 35th anniversary of the UPC bar code.

Anyway. The game. Yeah, we didn't see this coming:

Unfortunately, that's what happens when you strand 13 baserunners and go 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position. Sigh.

The park, also, didn't seem to have any character, bad or good. Wikipedia puts Comerica Park in the "Retro Classic" category with AT&T Park and Camden Yards, but somehow it just didn't have the character of those two. Something about the late 1990s just didn't work with baseball parks. I mean, does the baseball park need a merry-go-round? Really?

Even the scoreboard is boring:

And one last thing: I still think my phone is extra-special-cool:

I love trains. I always have. All things equal (or nearly so), I'll take a train.

As a frequent visitor to Europe and the Northeastern U.S., not to mention living in Chicago, I have plenty of opportunities to ride efficient, clean, fast, punctual trains. (Take out "clean" and the El still qualifies. Return "clean" and take out "fast," "efficient," and "punctual" and the London Underground qualifies.)

Take the Acela: for about the same cost as an airline ticket, you can go from the U.S. Capitol building to the Empire State building in just under three hours, door to door. To do the same on an airplane would take significantly longer and cost more. Figure the time and expense of getting to National Airport and from LaGuardia or Newark, plus security lines, baggage checking if applicable, and traffic delays into the LGA-JFK-EWR nightmare, and now you're at 5 hours and significantly more money.

I'm writing this on the Amtrak Wolverine from Chicago to Detroit. Just a few minutes ago I read a recent article in the New York Times (Jon Gertner, "Getting Up to Speed," 14 June 2009) that discusses the planned high-speed rail connector between San Francisco and Los Angeles (and, ultimately, San Diego and Sacramento). It mentions, implicitly, the train I'm sitting on, as this route is one planned to get high-speed rail sometime in the 21st Century.

Right now the scheduled trip from Chicago to Detroit (383 km) takes about 4 hours and 45 minutes. Add in getting to Union Station (20 minutes, $2.00) and a cab to Comerica Park (15 minutes, $10), and the trip takes almost, but not quite, as long as traveling by plane. Of course, it's far cheaper; even in Business Class my round-trip is $74, compared with $179.20 for the lowest airfare I found in Coach (21-day advance purchase on both Expedia and Southwest).

Only, as of 2:45 pm we're only about 16 km past Battle Creek, Mich., 177 km from Detroit and two hours later than scheduled.

So far, the trip has entailed:

• A 30-minute delay at Union Station for an (ultimately unsuccessful) air-conditioning repair;
• A 15-minute delay just 1 km outside Union Station to let another train pass;
• 10 more minutes in Indiana, waiting for an oncoming train that would not have delayed us had we left on time;Half an hour in Battle Creek for the same reason;
• When we are moving, track so old and rickety that it feels like...well, not to put too fine a point on it, but: the El; and
• Do you remember how the air-conditioning repair did not succeed entirely?

About that last point: My G1 and Weather Bug tell me it's 36°C at my present location (Marshall, Mich.). So if the air-conditioning fails completely—it already has in one of the four cars on this train—we're going to melt.

In sum: while we wait until the launch of new high-speed rail service between Chicago and Detroit (2020? 2025?), the existing rail service between the two cities, like much of Amtrak's network, bears entirely too much resemblance to the rail service in the 1870s.

Matt, my cousin, with whom I'm seeing tonight's Cubs game (the reason we're going to Detroit), took Megabus. He has texted me at several interviews to mention how comfortable and on-time his bus is. Sure, I've got more room to walk around, but who wants to do that in a car with a failing air conditioner? Oh, and he has WiFi. Somehow. On a bus.

At least the power outlet works...

I was going to post about the virtues of the Cubs and the T-Mobile G1, but the latter revealed its limitations while I used it to extol the former. Suffice to say: Cubs won, G1 tied, and it's time to go inside.

Oh, good game. Very good game. It looked grim until the bottom of the 8th, when the Sox gave up a 4-run lead as the Cubs tied it up. Then Alfonso Soriano earned his paycheck today with a game-winning RBI in the 9th.

I also have to say, my new phone is so friggin' cool, it can do this:

...against the White Sox at Wrigley. Which, believe it or not, is more humiliating for them than the revelation that Sammy Sosa tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Neither of these things, you understand, is a surprise.

After suffering multiple beatings at the hands of Cubs players, the Gatorade machine in the Cubs' dugout will finally be rescued:

The machine, which replaced the decades-old water cooler that dispensed Lake Michigan water to thirsty Cubs players from Joe Pepitone to Mark DeRosa, lasted only two months. It was brought in this season as a way to enhance advertising revenues through a sponsorship with Pepsi, which owns Gatorade.

The Pepsi service technician who came out to fix the dispenser twice last week -- after a wayward punch by Ryan Dempster on Monday and Carlos Zambrano's bat-whacking episode on Wednesday -- will be glad to hear the news. He thought he might be on call the rest of the season.

Poor thing.