By Jim Coffman
When the Cubs win streak finally ended at nine with a loss to the Padres in the middle of last week, we had to stop saying “Why, I can’t remember the last time the boys in blue suffered even a single setback.” But with Sunday’s victory (3-1 over the Dodgers on ESPN) we can still say “So I guess the Cubs have decided against three-game losing streaks.” Plenty of pundits have pointed out in the last few weeks that the local squad is the only one in the majors that hasn’t put together a tragic trifecta this year.
The win that broke up a rare Cubs two-game losing streak was so gosh-darned pleasant that even analyst Joe Morgan didn’t seem as irritating as usual. It was pretty funny, though, in about the seventh inning when Morgan said he had a “trivia question” for broadcast partner Jon Miller. He proceeded to ask him “who hit the most consistently hard line drives you ever saw?”
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“Where would we look up the answer to that question Joe?” replied the always smooth-as-silk Miller. And then, after saying Dave Winfield hit the hardest line drives he ever saw, Miller wouldn’t concede the point Morgan was trying to make.
Morgan didn’t seem to understand that just because he and a few of his former-player buddies thought the correct answer was Al Oliver didn’t mean that everyone who had seen Oliver and Winfield play would agree.
Otherwise, the Hall-of-Fame second baseman went on a bit too long trying to explain the trouble the Dodgers have with a group of young players who are clearly good but won’t become great if they don’t find some peer leadership they respect and listen to. But his point was good. And Miller is as pleasing to the ear as any announcer this side of Vin Scully.
Other observations from a great night at an old and venerable ballpark (Dodgers Stadium):
* Jason Marquis pitched great but the guy who has driven Lou Piniella a little nuts at times with his control issues and other shortcomings this season and last couldn’t escape without at least one hiccup. Marquis pitched into the seventh inning, allowing two hits, one unearned run and no walks. He allowed a base hit in that frame but had already recorded an out. Piniella comes out to check on him and you can read Marquis’ lips as he says “I feel good. Real good.” So the manager leaves him in. And Marquis walked the next guy on four pitches.
That was the end for the starter and on came the reliever whose slider at this point has to rank as one of the top five single pitches in all the National and American Leagues.
* Carlos Marmol’s numbers have been staggeringly good so far this season and he just added to them Sunday. He now has allowed only 18 hits in 40 innings of work, an other-worldly ratio. He also leads relievers in both leagues with 60 strikeouts! There are all sorts of starting major league pitchers who don’t have 60 strikeouts. Carlos Zambrano has 63 strikeouts . . . in 92 innings!
It was cool that a national audience had a chance to see just how good Marmol and Kerry Wood are right now.
* Wood came in for the ninth, of course, and threw an extremely high fastball right off the bat and maybe that’s the solution to the only thing that has been a small problem for him – his penchant for hitting the first hitter he faces (which has led to, I think, three of his blown saves). You don’t have to throw it high and tight to make the hitter (and the guys on deck and in the hole) uncomfortable, Kerry. Just throw it high. Of course that works even better if the fastball is hitting 98 on the gun and the curve ball isn’t just breaking straight down, it is breaking down and then thinking about starting back toward Wood a moment before Geovany Soto hauls it in.
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After the Cubs I switched over to the NBA Finals, where the Celtics almost blew a 20-point plus lead in the fourth quarter before finally winning by a half-dozen for a 2-0 lead over the Lakers.
With about two minutes to go, for the first time in televised history, a sideline reporter reported something that was actually news and that actually made a coach look bad (sideline reporters are high priests in the cult of the coach that infects so much of national sports broadcasting).
Michelle Tafoya reported that Celtics coach Doc Rivers had told his team, which was busy almost blowing a huge lead, not to worry about the score. The important thing was to crank the defense back up and to not let the Lakers get comfortable heading into the next game.
Of course, the broadcast team of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson didn’t pick up on it. Because if they had they would have had to acknowledge that might have been the stupidest thing they had ever heard a coach say in the final minutes of a close playoff game. And national announcers just won’t say stuff like that (although Van Gundy is refreshingly willing to criticize all sorts of stuff).
The next game? Who gives a flying fusilli (mmm, pasta – and extra-wide to absorb more sauce) about the next game? Win this game and ensure this seven-game series eventually comes back to Boston – unless the Celtics win it in L.A. (the next three games are in the City of Angels).
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First, we had the D’Antoni Fiasco. Now what do we call the latest chapter of the Bulls’ search for a coach? It has to sound like a soap opera, what with Jerry Reinsdorf apparently telling Doug Collins “I love you like a son!” I can’t bring myself to offer you the low-ball contract I’m going to insist our next coach sign, especially after you violated my first rule: never, on pain of death, allow a close associate to leak information to the press about one of your business deals. Here’s what it was: another exciting episode of “One Coach to Hire.”
Oh by the way John Paxson, do not, do not, do not hire some scrub longtime assistant like Dwayne Casey (who was also an interim NBA head coach – you know, the one who takes over in the middle of the season after his colleague, a highly unsuccessful head coach, is fired – at least once I think) or Vinny Del Negro, a mediocre former player and only moderately experienced assistant the Sun-Times actually floated as a candidate Sunday.
Now you have to wait until the bitter end. You have to wait until the Finals are over and you can talk to Celtics assistant Tom Thibodeau (credited with orchestrating the defense that allowed the Celtics to pull away from the league during the regular season and which has done such a good job of shutting down Kobe Bryant these last two games). Perhaps you should also have a chat with Mr. Van Gundy (who has head-coached winning teams in New York and Houston) or recently fired Pistons coach Flip Saunders (led Detroit to the conference finals three years in a row!). And former Spurs coach Avery Johnson? Surely he has received some consideration?
I realize this is getting awfully embarrassing. You’ve signed off on coaching hires not once but twice only to see the ever-more-addled owner (you can’t possibly make fun of this latest stuff as much as it deserves) make an unbelievable mess of it both times. But you have to hang in there and hire one of these many fine candidates and you have to convince Mr. Reinsdorf to pay more than he is currently willing to offer.
Or you have to quit.
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Hey Jay Leno, I have a (free!) joke for you (I’m hoping no one prominent has voiced something similar yet). It goes something like this: “I hear there’s a lot of optimism in Chicago about the Cubs these days. They haven’t won a championship in a hundred years but people feel like this might be the team to finally do it. Me, I’m a skeptic. I figure, sure the Cubs will win the World Series. They’ll win it the same year the U.S. elects a black president.”
It isn’t good enough for Letterman but if the Cubs keep playing so well, I’m sure it won’t be long ’til I take my joke-writing to the next level.
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Jim Coffman appears in this space every Monday with the best sports wrap-up in the city. You can write to him personally! Please include a real name if you would like your comments to be considered for publication.
Posted on June 9, 2008