prototype

OK:

Things are going half-decent, although I feel like I'm a car stuck in neutral heading down a hill. It's pleasant enough, but I don't have much control over what's going on, and I'm anxious about what's at the bottom. Assuredly, I am not the only person feeling this way.

Tonight I made some pretty decent pasta, though, and here's how to do it: buy some assorted fresh herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary, and basil; the first three often come packaged together), chop them up, squeeze a quarter-lemon over them, cook them in a saute pan in slightly-browned butter, add cooked pasta, drop some crushed, toasted pine nuts on the whole shebang, eat. Assuming you have butter and pasta, you could make about four pounds of this stuff for like $10. A year out of school, I still think about eating well for cheap. Makes me want to move into my own place.

Lombard Fantasy Football League News!

Somehow, I am 3-5 with the following lineup:

QB: Marc Bulger, Brad Johnson, Trent Green
RB: LaDainian Tomlinson, Jamal Lewis, Jerome Bettis, Rudi Johnson
WR: Santana Moss, Peter Warrick, Ike Hilliard, Ashley Lelie
TE: Jeremy Shockey
K: John Hall
D: Philly Iggles

Admittedly, I have no world-beaters at flanker, but the only guy even remotely close to me at RB has Priest Holmes and Stephen Davis. And Kerry Collins at QB, so I should be 6-2 like him, right!? Gawddamn! Things are looking up, though, and I can still make the playoffs. I think I'll go ahead and do that. Fade to Styx, "Fooling Yourself."

So, the Cubs lost. They really blew it, having positioned themselves as well as they possibly could have to win one of the last three games in the series and losing badly in all of them. And as sportswriter Bill Simmons teaches us, there are different levels of losing. For a Cubs fan, Game 6 was clearly a Stomach Punch game, while Game 7 was a Dead Man Walking affair. I still. Can't. Believe. Prior lost that game.

Here, though, I'd like to address talk of the blasted Curse, and that Steve Bartman or whomever was to blame for the loss. The only Curse visited on Cubs can be found in the history of their management. The Wrigleys and the Tribune Company are exemplary owners from the standpoint that they exploit their business climate to maximum effectiveness. The Wrigleys ran the Cubs, in a tradition continued by the Trib, as a moneymaking venture. The goal of the Chicago National League Ball Club is to make money, which it assuredly does, year after year. Secondary is the goal of winning championships. As long as this continues to be the Cubs' ethic, they will continue to fail to deliver a championship to the most faithful and ardent fans in any sport.

In fact, it is their very zealousness that helps prolong Cubs fans' disappointment. Cubs fans will show up regardless of the product on the field; given this, it's easy to see why the Cubs' management has never felt the need to field a true winner, which generally requires the expenditure of a lot of money. Think about it: how long has it been since the Cubs truly fielded the best team in baseball, without question? The answer is 95 years, which drought is inexplicable given the resources of both the Wrigleys and the Tribune Company, and the Cubs' prominent standing in the national media. Inexplicable, that is, except for the fact that the Cubs don't have to field a winner to make money. In virtually every other market, there is pressure on sports teams to produce a quality product in order to entice fans to see games. Not so the Cubs, which is an irony so comic it's tragic. Regardless of whether or not they build it, we will come.

I probably sound bitter, but I think I'm entitled to a little bitterness. I will continue to support the Cubs--you'd have be delusional to support this team based on their record of success (or lack thereof). But baseball's playoffs show us most clearly the sports truism that renders luck as the residue of design. The Cubs, as long as I've been following them, have never truly been designed to win. This moderates my enjoyment of them slightly, but it still would have been so sweet to look forward to watching Game 1 tomorrow night. Alas, I will not be watching Marlins-Yankees. A ratings disaster for Fox, I'm afraid. Pity.

When you're a Cubs fan, even if you don't know the meaning of the word Schadenfreude, you learn very quickly to practice it whenever you can.

Last night was as devastating a loss as I've ever experienced as a sports spectator. Actually, after a lifetime of sports involvement, last night was as devastating a sports loss as I've ever been involved with in any way. It changed me, somehow. For awhile, I actually lost faith in my capacity to experience joy. That's unbelievably childish, but I have given myself to this Cubs team in such a way that I am unprotected from the strong emotions that sports stir in me. It was really, really tough to take, even this morning. I didn't sleep well.

But there is still hope. I believe there can still be joy in Chicago tonight. The possibility of excitement still exists. We'll see if this philosophy will last--I need about 4 1/2 hours and I'll get back to you.

I absolutely believe in the Curse of the Billy Goat. After 58 years of frustration, last night finally convinced me. The Cubs are done. Best of luck to the Marlins in the World Series. After all, their wizard of a manager, Jack McKeon, has done this to the Cubs before--there's no reason to think that tonight's game will bring any relief to the Cubs or their fans. We're done. Finished. Out of the picture. See you in 60 years.

Beckett is pitching really, really well right now. But hitting exactly zero balls hard over the first few innings, the Cubs have settled a bit and are starting to see the ball really well. It remains to be seen if Dave Veres can hold the Marlins down (I'm not holding my breath), but Sammy, Moises, and Aramis (who very nearly jacked another homer 2 innings ago) are up in the Seventh. I feel good about this. Moises has got to do something, man. LET'S GET SOME RUNS!

It's no secret that the Cubs' trio of Kenny Lofton, Aramis Ramirez, and Randall Simon have aided the team tremendously since all were acquired mid-season from the Pittsburgh Pirates. But I still find it hard to believe that a group of players acquired for basically nothing have improved their collective performance so markedly while playing for the Cubs. The whole situation runs counter to the expectations of Cubs fans everywhere.

The Cubs have a rich tradition of getting players who perform well for other teams, then play like dogshit for Chicago. The list of players fitting this description is long and distinguished ("like my Johnson," as Slider would say), including, but not limited to, the following:

Candy Maldonado
Danny Jackson
Todd Hundley
Antonio Alfonseca
Felix Heredia
Fred McGriff
Moises Alou (I'm sorry, but he'd hit .312, .355, and .331 the three years before he came to the Cubs. Now, he struggles to hit sac flies.)

As you can well imagine, these players invariably become the most despised figures on what are otherwise well-liked Cubs teams, as the intersection of high expectations and poor performance produces yet another disappointing Cubs season. I personally blame Fred McGriff for the Cubs' collapse in 2000-2001; although his numbers were OK, his presence seemed to bring an attitude of crapulence to a team that faded down the stretch. So imagine my surprise when my initial assessment of the Cubs' Jose Hernandez-for-Lofton-and Ramirez trade ("One dead body for two live bodies, I like it") turned into the Understatement of the Year. To wit:

Kenny Lofton's Postseason: .455 OBP, 10 R, 3 RBI, 4 stl
Aramis Ramirez' " : .390 OBP, 6 R, 10 RBI, .714 slg
Randall Simon's " : .444 OBP, 4 R, 6 RBI, 1.222 slg

The Cubs have 52 runs this postseason, and these guys have scored almost 40% of them. Randall Simon has 6 RBI in 18 at-bats; over an entire season, that would project to 166 RBI (that's a lot). My point is, these guys are HUGE right now, and I love them. I'm just unable to accept the fact that Cubs made a great move mid-season that's paying dividends in the playoffs. If the Cubs win 1 of their next 3, I may cry. "Strong men also cry. Strong men...also cry."

Again, I have no idea if the Cubs are going to win, or not. I was thinking earlier in this game that baseball was so predictable, as in: I knew Kerry Wood was going to blow the lead in the 7th. It just happens that way: you watch enough baseball, and a sense of inevitability develops. Some things seem as certain as gravity. Then Randall Simon comes up: I could not have been more surprised by that home run. It's one of the things I like about baseball, that it can be so familiar, but so surprising. Here's a semi-tangential rant, however:

I don't know how much Moises Alou is making, and I don't care HOW MANY hits he got in the NLDS: MY #4 hitter doesn't come up needing to hit a fly ball to score a run and then pop the goddamn ball up. MY motherfucking cleanup hitter gets a sac fly, at least. Here endeth the rant.

I don't know whether or not the Cubs are going to win tonight, but Sammy Sosa just hit a home run so long I was able to recite the entire Pledge of Allegiance before it came down. He hit it OVER THE CAMERA BOOTH just to the left of dead center field, a home run so long as to restore one's faith in humanity. He hit it to a place in which no discerning fan would ever dream of having a chance to catch a batted baseball on the fly, to a place in Brad Penny's heart that says: "Maybe I don't want to mess with Sammy tonight." Brings a tear to the eye.

It's like I said today: it's not so much that the Cubs are doing great, I just enjoy the fact that there are more Cubs games on TV.

Today was another in the recent series of beautiful fall days, and this evening brings the first League Championship Series game to Wrigley Field since 1989. Much is good. I might get a Carlos Zambrano jersey at some point, depending largely on his performance this evening.

I'm honestly amazed at my emotional investment in this year's Cubs, despite the obvious supporting evidence that's appeared here and elsewhere to those who know me. My pulse rate after the eigth inning of Tuesday's NLDS Game 1: 120.

So my beloved Cubs enter this evening's game in Atlanta needing a victory to advance; a loss will send them back to another long offseason of restless anticipation about next year. Not to overstate it, but this is probably the best opportunity the Cubs are going to have to win the World Series in my lifetime. There is no clear favorite among the seven remaining playoff teams; even the normally dominant Yankees have looked vulnerable at times and have already been beaten by the Cubs in 2 out of 3 games earlier this year. The Braves are slight favorites to take the National League, but they enter tonight's game sharing the Cubs' fate: win and advance, or lose and go home. The Cubs' lineup, stacked with dominant pitching, gives them a favorable matchup against any team they'll face, and the hitting is as good as it's been since I started seriously watching them in the late eighties. (Consider that Sammy Sosa, twice RBI king of the National League and holder of the single-season record for highest percentage of runs produced on a team, is this year not even the Cubs' RBI-leader.) Considering the relative mediocrity of the rest of the league, and combined with the fact that the Cubs are unlikely to be this good again in the forseeable future, the obvious conclusion emerges: if the Cubs are to win it all, they need to do so now.

A fan of just about any other team could not rationally make the argument I've just made. Consider the Florida Marlins, a team that has twice in the past six years done what the Cubs have never done: advance to the next round of the playoffs. The Marlins have been very bad in most of the intervening years, but they do not have the history of consistent failure that defines the Cubs. I can't anticipate a radical shift in the Cubs' fortunes--Dusty Baker's recent efforts notwithstanding--because the historical data obviously fail to support this conclusion. But a Marlins fan can likely rest assured that, once in awhile, their team will be pretty darn good, at least good enough to win a playoff series once a decade or so. The Cubs, by contrast, have not won a playoff series since 1908.

It's against this backdrop of high hopes and historical failure that the drama of tonight's game fully emerges. It is the most meaningful Cubs game since they lost Game Five of the LCS in 1984. Before then, they had not made the playoffs since 1945. I'm not enthused about the possibility of waiting until I'm 62 to see the Cubs near the Series again.

I am enthused that the man with the most direct control over the destiny of this team is Kerry Wood, the first glimmer (along with Sammy Sosa) of true Cubs greatness since the heartbreaking teams of the late '60s. Since his 20-strikeout game in 1998, and especially since his great performance in Game 1 of this year's series vs. the Braves, Wood has been the man to whom Cubs fans pin their highest hopes. Tonight, we find ourselves faced with the delightful and unique possibility that we were right about him. Wood will bring heat, Sammy will bring lumber, and the Cubs will, tonight, bring their fans their first playoff series crown in 95 years. GO CUBS!

Oh, it's October already. Uh, I went to San Francisco, I am living and dying with the Cubs (playoffs, baby!), Rick put in his 2 weeks at work (although he may not quit), and I'm kind of not looking forward to the winter. Things are going OK, I guess. It looks as if work may get appreciably better quite soon, although who knows what will happen in that den of liars. I have a developing need to smack a fastball really hard. Totally discombobulated.