By Jim Coffman

When the Cubs needed a big hit over the weekend, Anthony Rizzo came through. A two-run homer on Saturday put the squad up for good in an eventual 3-2 victory and his ground single through the right side on Sunday drove in the first run on the way to a 3-0 win.
But he also showed us a new way to loaf. Okay, so it wasn’t really loafing but it was definitely evidence of casual disease. What else to call that annoying little eighth-inning sequence on Sunday when Rizzo declined to stretch for a throw from Darwin Barney on a close play at first? It must also be mentioned that he had a partner in crime (theft of an out from pitcher Travis Wood).
Umpire Paul Schrieber called the Astros’ Brian Bixler safe (almost certainly in an instance of “I’ll show you, you overconfident little whipper-snapper”) despite the fact that he was a half-step short.

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Posted on July 2, 2012

By Marty Gangler

Finally, a good week. Was it any coincidence that as soon as the Cubs announced The Riz was coming to town their season turned upward? I think not.
It was a sigh of relief for this team to finally get their guy here and slotted into the 3-hole. The rest of the lineup could breathe a little bit easier with the lineup-for-the-future suddenly taking shape.
And with Travis Wood recovering from an awful spring training to become a rotation mainstay just as Ryan Dempster and maybe Matt Garza are about to depart, well, it’s been a good week for Theo too. This thing just might work, except for one inescapable fact:

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Posted on July 2, 2012

By Roger Wallenstein

There they were yesterday. On my TV screen sitting in a golf cart. Looking, I thought, straight at me. Unsmiling. Stoic.
Whitey and Yogi. The enemy. The smug champions of pinstripes who played in what Sox broadcaster Bob Elson labeled, “The Main Arena.” I didn’t think I’d be affected, lo, these many decades later, but seeing Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra present for yet another of the Yankee Old Timers’ Days, my psyche went into mourning. All those heart-breaking, late-innings defeats 55 years ago. They still hurt.

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Posted on July 2, 2012