By Marty Gangler
The Cubs ventured into Pacific Standard Time last week and rewarded fans with insomnia or up late like I was with a crying baby still early in his rookie year (still undetermined if he’s left-handed, but by God we’re gonna try!). And speaking of crying babies, how ’bout Big Z?
Anyway, you don’t have to stay away from Wrigley Field when the Cubs are on the road. On off-weekends, the Cubs offer 90-minute tours of the Friendly Confines for 25 bucks a crack. So my wife and I headed over to Clark and Addison (you can park on the street on off-days!) to check it out. And I have to say that for an old building, well, that place looks . . . old. And pretty cramped and dilapidated and behind the times, and did I mention cramped and old? All of those people who think this place is some kind of baseball shrine that should never be touched up again should go on this tour. You’ll see a place where they’ve shoved square pegs in round holes at every turn. Maybe this is blasphemy, but go check it out; you’ll be surprised how dysfunctional the place is.
We saw some pretty strange things too, and compiled a list of what goes on at Wrigley Field while the team is away.
* Mark Prior keeps sneaking in to do towel drills for old times’ sake.
* Sam Zell constantly reprices every seat, bat and ball with one of those grocery-store thingies.
* Yosh Kawano urinates in the lockers of players he doesn’t like. And those he does.
* The grounds crew is totally growing pot behind the ivy.
* Ron Santo sunbathes nude at third base.
* Grounds crew re-enacts the Bartman ball over and over and over. Still not old.
* The ghost of Dusty Baker walks back and forth from the dugout to the mound. Grounds crew must clean-up the trail of toothpicks.
* Equipment managers still disposing of Sammy Sosa’s corked bat collection.
* Jim Hendry gets picked off first in imaginary game.
* Food and beverage division practices watering down beers and making hot dogs even smaller.
* John Cusack and Jim Belushi sing 7th-inning stretch as part of new off-day guest singer series.
* Billy goats left out of their pens to chew outfield grass.
* Bob Brenly actually throwing darts into the Cubs dugout.
* Mark Cuban already practicing obnoxious screaming at home plate umpire about balls and strikes calls from a first-base box seat.
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Week in Review: The Cubs took two of three from a bad Padre team and split a four-game series with the DL-impaired Dodgers.
Week in Preview: The Cubs come home for a three games against the struggling Braves and then head north to play the struggling Blue Jays. Wait, they still play baseball in Canada?
The Second Basemen Report: Seven games this week and three starting second baseman. Mark DeRosa got five start and Ronnie Cedeno and Mike Fontenot got one start each. Cedeno also got a start at shortstop and Alfonso Soriano continued to play centerfield. And rumors about a Brian Roberts trade – to either Chicago team – are back. You know, just like Jim Hendry drew it up.
In former second basemen news, Joe Morgan never played for the Cubs, and if he did he wouldn’t have been as good as Sandberg despite what Morgan thinks. Morgan is a douche. He is not missed.
The Zam Bomb: Big Z go boom! Blames water coolers for hanging pitches.
Lost in Translation: Cubbio Fan-sans is Japanese for making way too big a deal over the fact that one of their players is Japanese.
Sweet and Sour Lou: – 71% sweet, 29% sour. Lou is down four points on the Sweet-O-Meter this week due to knowing that his ace pitcher is a complete head case and also not playing that well on the road. And like your real crazy drunk uncle, Lou is concerned that you aren’t behaving yourself at sleepover camp but as long as you act like a real good boy at home he’ll live with it.
Center Stage: Jim Edmonds got five of seven starts and looks like the main man as long as he hits adequately. But then, same thing could be said of Reed Johnson.
The Cub Factor: Catch up with them all.
Beachwood Sabermetrics: A complex algorithm performed by the The Cub Factor staff using all historical data made available by Major League Baseball has determined that it’s hard to pitch in a straitjacket.
Over/Under: The number of people who will ever get through to Carlos Zambrano: +/- .5.
Mount Lou: Lou moves to status level as the realization of counting on a very important unstable starting pitcher has begun turning solid rock into molten anger magma deep under the surface. Expect a stupid question this week to prompt Mount Lou into a small eruption. Experts point to the Thursday post-game interview.
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Posted on June 9, 2008