How Cub DNA got in my blood

Here are some thought and memories that Grand Dad Cub Fan wrote down for us. This was written by the man who is responsible for the Cub fandom in our family. This was written prior to the start of the 2008 season. - CubTattoo

I think I started being a Cub fan about 1938-40. As far as I know my dad never listened to any Cub games. My neighbor (Johnny Kenon) would go to a Cub game and when he came home he would tell me all about the game. He had an aunt who lived in Blue Island, Illinois, a suburb south of Chicago. He would drive up to her place, then get on the commuter train and go north thru Chicago to the ballpark. He would come back the same way after the game. I went with him this way to my first Cub game. It was also my first time in Chicago. His aunt got us the tickets. I think they cost $4.00 and we rode the train thru downtown Chicago to Wrigley Field. The train would stop along the way and by the time we got to the game, the train was always full.

At the game I remember sitting in the upper deck behind home plate. There 8 teams in each league. All teams were east of the Mississippi except St Louis. There were 2 teams in New York and Chicago. The National League teams were the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinal and the Cubs. When the regular season was over, the team with the best record played in the World Series until one team won 4 games.

Teams played 154 games a year. Each team played every other team in the league 22 times, 11 at home and 11 on the road. There were lots of double headers back then. They played double headers on most every Sunday and most holidays. The following day, teams were off for traveling. Teams traveled by train and bus.

P.K. Wrigley owned the Cubs. He also owned Catalina Island off the coast of California which is where the Cubs held spring training. I don’t know when they moved to Arizona. [It was 1952.]

The pitchers in those days worked hard and long. A lot of pitchers worked 450+ innings a season. Some had as high as 42 complete games as season. In fact, in 1926 a pitcher from Cleveland pitched a double header one day, went all the way in both games and won both games. I got my facts & figures out of a baseball book I have to compare pitchers back then with present day pitchers. Now it is not unusual for a manager to use 3 or 4 pitchers in one inning.

When the Cub team was on the road the Sox played in Chicago and the other way around. When the Cubs played at Wrigley Field the game was broadcast on the radio like it is now. When the Cubs were on the road the radio announcer stayed in Chicago and got a feed of the game thru Western Union. The announcer then put on the air. Later the announcer started traveling with the team.

I remember the Cubs playing in the 1945 World Series, but they lost to Detroit in 7 games. The goat was alive and well at that time.

Players did not have agents at that time. Each player represented himself in contract talks with the club. I think they always had 1 year deals. The average salary in 1942 was $6,400. I wonder how long A-Rod would have to play to earn that much [A-Rod makes $172,839.50 / game].

The Cubs improved a lot in 2007 over 2006 and hopefully 2008 will improve a little more, stay out of key injuries and have a little luck, maybe, just maybe they can get rid of the curse of the goat and this time next year the World Series flag will be flying high above the Wrigley Field scoreboard. 100 years is a nice round number for Cub fans and future Cub fans to remember.

-GrandDadCubFan

The Chicago Way

Check out the Hardball Times report on our game yesterday:

I hate Kevin Costner, but I will say that the Untouchables is probably his best movie.

The Sky is Falling, the Sky is Falling!

Despite taking 2/3 from the Cardinals this weekend and creating a 3.5 game lead over the Cards and Brewers, this weekend was a bad one for my Cubbies. The weekend ended last evening with news that the Brewers had just agreed to a trade for one of baseball's best pitchers and reigning AL Cy Young award winner, C.C. Sabathia. With the boost that this will give to the Brewers, the Cubbies postseason chances aren't looking promising. I expected both the Cards and Brews to drop off eventually, but adding one of the true aces in baseball will certainly revitalize the Brewers.

The question is, what can the Cubs possibly do to counter? There are some other pitchers out there like Rich Harden (the AL Mark Prior), AJ Burnett and Randy Wolf (who hasn't had an ERA under 4 since 2002). I like the prospect of Harden, but he's only once pitched over 128 innings in a season since his debut in 2003. I don't know anything about what kind of injuries he has had, just that he's always had one. I like Burnett as well, maybe that's the way to go. Hopefully taking him out of the AL East would have an even more positive impact on his statistics. If we do somehow have the prospects to get one of these guys, you have to ask yourself if it would be enough. No trade(s) we can make will have the impact of a guy like Sabathia (and his 2.16 ERA since April 22nd).

The other option would be to load up on more offense, but our offense has been pretty good thus far this season.

I Hate Joe Morgan

Joe Morgan on his very best day, is a totally incompetent baseball announcer for ESPN. On a normal day, he is a self-important hack who fabricates facts on the fly, refuses to even attempt to understand the most basic ideas about baseball theory and uses his stage and baseball stature to be a vindictive prick. I could write books on why I hate Joe Morgan. The main reasons are that he hates my favorite baseball player of all time, Ryne Sandberg (snubbed him at the HOF), hates the Cubs (a rival from his days with the Reds) and he is totally ignorant when it comes to statistics, sabermetrics and apparently history.

I watched my 1st place Cubbies beat the hell out of the 1st place White Sox this past weekend. On Sunday I got together with some of my Cubbies friends (and 1 Sox fan) to grill out and watch the game. We started up the grill around the 5th inning and it took some prodding to get the fire going. While that was happening, Baby Patterson hit his first Major League homer. I saw it happen, but missed the ensuing conversation on ESPN because I was watching from the porch. Sadly, despite my respect and admiration for Jon Miller, I typically tune-out on the audio for ESPN Sunday Night games anyway because I hate Joe Morgan.

The thing that I missed was a comment by Little Joe that fully enrages me. Read this blog excerpt:

In the fifth inning, when Eric Patterson hit a two-run homer into the wire basket that overhangs the right field wall, Morgan referred to the basket as "Banks Boulevard," and then went on to talk about how many Ernie Banks homers ended up in the Wrigley bleacher baskets back in the day - the implication being, of course, that many of Ernie's 512 career homers were cheapies, and that he would have hit considerably fewer without the help of those right- and left-field baskets.

The problem, of course, is that the baskets were installed in 1970 to keep bleacher bums from falling on the field and hurting themselves while reaching for homers. Ernie Banks only hit 7 more home runs in Wrigley Field after the baskets were erected in 1970 and we have visual confirmation that 2 of those homers did not land in the baskets. This means that at the absolute most physically possible, 5 of Ernie Banks' 512 home runs were hit in the Wrigley Field's basket. That, is probably also quite a stretch since you would be hard pressed to convince me that all 5 of the homers that we don't know where they landed, landed in the basket. It is totally conceivable that 0 of Ernie's 512 home runs ever fell in to a basket in Wrigley Field.

It brings up so many questions, but the most prominent is, why is Joe Morgan going out of his way to slander Mr. Cub? It speaks to my suspicions that he just hates the Cubs for some reason. Actually I have several theories on that, but it could also be homer envy. Joe Morgan only hit 268 career homers, just under half the amount that Mr. Cub hit. Honestly, that doesn't really make sense either. You could probably drive yourself nuts trying to figure this moron out. Just add it to the list of utterly ridiculous things this idiot has ever uttered while being a "professional" windbag.

thanks to: http://lavieenrobe.typepad.com/la_vie_en_robe/2008/06/basket-case.html

What Carlos does when He Isn't Chatting on the Net

hat tip: hardball times