By Jim Coffman
Just when I thought being a Cubs fan couldn’t possibly get any worse . . .
I mean, how much did that suck on Saturday and Sunday? Cubs players, these games matter a little more, right? It isn’t exactly complicated. At least you competed on Friday. The rest of the weekend was a monstrosity as the White Sox polished off a sweep at Wrigley.
I took in the final seven-and-a-half innings on Saturday evening from a stool at the beer garden behind Justin’s, which has been at the corner of Roscoe and Southport for just about forever.
The White Sox built what appeared to be an insurmountable 4-0 lead before I even had a chance to settle in. Fortunately one of the bartenders is an old friend of mine and so it wasn’t too tough to distract myself for long stretches.
The bar food rates with bar food anywhere (I highly recommend the steak wrap with spicy guacamole), and they have devoted a few tap handles to the good stuff (I chose Dogfish Head’s 60-minute IPA) and it added up to a couple hours well spent. Except for the fact that the Cubs never made a real run and the guy running the broadcast for Fox developed an unhealthy obsession with one Cubs fan-Sox fan couple in particular.
They must have shown us this Sox fan guy and Cub fan girl 20 times during the game. Early on, of course, the guy was cheering and the girl was sitting there quietly. In the ninth, when Joe Mather and Alfonso Soriano hit meaningless two-run homers, the girl had the chance to stand and cheer. She had attempted to do her part by adjusting her hat but when you looked at it, you realized it wasn’t a rally cap, it was a rally visor. It is hard to believe in the power of a rally visor and sure enough the Cubs came up well short – a 7-4 loss.
As for Sunday, well, talk about a man against boys: Jake Peavy versus the scrubby Cubbiess just wasn’t fair. As one of my Sox fan friends described it, Peavy could just pitch around the dangerous bat or two in the lineup and then strike out whoever needed striking out, oftentimes using pitches in the dirt to accomplish the task.
The wind was blowing out at near gale force but the Cubs never managed to loft even one power fly ball into the jet stream. The final score was 6-0 and it wasn’t that close. A week-and-a-half ago, the Cubs were on the verge of improving their record to something better than what the White Sox had at the time. Now the Sox are back at .500 and I’m thinking I may spend the rest of the summer checking the minor league baseball results before the Cubs’.
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Relive The Horror
Game One:
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Game Two:
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Game Three:
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 21, 2012