The Chicago Sun-Times (the Windy City’s equivalent of the Boston Herald) tells us that Theo Epstein’s grandfather co-wrote the screenplay for “Casablanca,” the heart-throbbing cinema event that defined America two generations ago. Alright, big deal — but it’s good to remember that when grandma toddled off to see it, Franklin Roosevelt was president, American soldiers were fighting the Japanese at a place called Buna . . . and the Cubs hadn’t won the World Series in 34 years.
That was a little less than seventy years ago: the Cubs still haven’t won the series, the Japanese are now our friends and this guy — who didn’t even play baseball in high school — thinks he’s going to rescue the Cubs. Ha! Think of that: the arrogance. The fact that Theo & Company recently had a pretty good run in Boston (in the junior circuit — and for a team named for the color of their hosiery, no less), doesn’t mean squat. These are the Cubs. The North Side Drama Queens. The Palestinians of the baseball world. They don’t win. Ever.
Which hasn’t kept Chicago from being excited. “Terrific news,” says Bleed Cubbie Blue. “This is about as good a news as we can get,” says The View From The Bleachers. “Epstein is worth the sticker price,” notes The Cub Reporter. Okay, but before Cubs fans anoint Epstein “A-Number-One,” the King of Chicago, they should remember that he can’t hit, pitch or field — and neither can the Cubs. And that’ll be true this next year, and the year after, and probably the year after that.
How do we know? Because it’s been seven years since the Nationals arrived in Washington, and this year they finished a game under .500 — which is about where they were when they arrived in town. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in Washington at season’s end — because compared to where the Nats’ came from, one game under .500 looks and feels like success. The Cubs are worse, much worse. By mid-season of 2012, Theo will wonder what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
So while everyone in Chicago is calculating who goes, and when (and who arrives), Epstein’s first challenge has little to do with the team on the field. You don’t win without a strong front office and a patient fan base. Finding good young players and convincing Cubbiedom that this will take time (after 103 years, no less) will take some doing. And while he’s at it, he can deep six “the five B’s” — black cats, billy goats, Broglio, Brant Brown — and Bartman.
The “curse” (and how many are there?) is just an excuse. Truth is, the Cubs haven’t developed a good player since Mark Grace (Sandberg came via Philadelphia, and the Twins passed on Mark Prior to draft Joe Mauer), and team hasn’t brought in a good player from somewhere else since Andre Dawson walked into town. That should tell Theo something about the Cubs front office, which is as soft as a pillow. Always has been.
So if Theo is going to replicate for Chicago what he did in Boston — if he’s going to “play it again” — he can start with cleaning out the scouting stables. And he can tell Cubs fans to stop flying that “L” from a flagpole everytime they lose. Forget Brock for Broglio, forget billy goats, black cats and Brant Brown, forget Bartman and understand this — there isn’t anything lovable about losing.
Okay, okay. Enough of the negativity. It doesn’t take much to see that the problems the Cubs have don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but the greatest game I ever saw in my life took place at Wrigley Field on a hot August night in 2001. The Cubs were in the middle of a pennant race and won the game — and the fans nearly tore the place down. So Theo, listen up: if you thought there was pressure in Boston, wait’ll you get a load of this.
If you watched Tim Kurkjian last night on ESPN, then you know just how close he came to an on-air myocardial infarction. In the history of the game, he said, what viewers just saw was history — the best night of baseball ever of any regular season. The best, as he repeated, in 200,000 games. In fact, he’s right — it might well have been.
Unless, of course, you’re a fan of either the Boston Red Sox or Atlanta Braves. For both of those clubs, and their fans, the “night to remember” was a belly-up sinking that compared with the loss of the “unsinkable” Titanic: it just wasn’t supposed to happen. Fans will focus on the Red Sox, of course, but down in Atlanta the despair was as keenly felt. You only have so many shots at this, and this may be one of the Braves’ last.
“When you’re in a slump as a team, you find a bunch of different ways to lose,” third baseman Chipper Jones said after the Bravos dropped a nail biter to the Phillies. “Bats go silent. You get wild on the mound. You walk in runs. You find different ways to lose and we sure did over the past couple weeks.”
Okay. But still — the most improbable of improbables was not the Braves loss to Philadelphia (let alone the Redbirds whitewashing of the Astros), or even the fact that somehow the Tampa Bay Rays came back to take a 12 inning victory from the Yankees, but Baltimore’s epic ninth inning walk off victory against the Nation. “Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” the unsinkable Molly Brown said as she saw the Titanic go down, stern first.
And that’s what we all said, last night, when Robert Andino put a Jonathan Papelbon offering just off the glove of Carl Crawford in left field to score Noland Reimold and give the Orioles (the Orioles!) a walk-off 4-3 win in Baltimore. There’s a reason why fans keep their mouths shut when they’re watching a no-hitter in the ninth, just as there’s a reason why you don’t pitch Tim Wakefield eight times in the middle of a divisional race just so he can get his 200th win. (What the hell were they thinking?)
Here’s some other things you don’t ever do, no matter what. You don’t calculate that you have an inside shot just because the Rays are playing the Yankees, you don’t headline that you have “the best team ever” at the beginning of a season, you don’t describe the Iraqi insurgents as “pushovers” — and you don’t call a ship unsinkable when it’s sitting in Belfast Harbor: you don’t flirt with icebergs.
So . . . so don’t rewrite the rules. They remain, the rules. You don’t tempt fate, which is what the Red Sox did all of September, and it’s what they did last night. It’s call hubris, and it’s been around since Homer. “I’m pretty shocked,” Red Sox arm John Lester said. “Not only with the Rays game, but in our game, we’ve got the best closer in baseball. That stuff doesn’t happen to him.” Oh, c’mon. Sure it does. This is baseball.
Light-hitting Donnie Murphy took a Collin Balester offering deep into the bullpen in the 13th inning on Saturday, leading the Florida Marlins to a 4-1 victory over the Nationals at Nationals Park. The Murphy homer ended a solid string of relief innings for the Nats’ bullpen, accounting for the second straight loss to the Marlins in as many nights.
Of course, the big news of the night was the start of Stephen Strasburg, who pitched brilliantly through six innings, giving up four hits, striking out three, and walking none. Strasburg’s outing provided further evidence that the young righty is on track for a solid 2012, and is continuing his successful rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Phillies clinched their fifth straight N.L. East title with a 9-2 laugher over the St. Louis Cardinals. That the Phillies captured the flag is hardly a surprise, as their victory on Saturday showed. Roy Oswalt threw seven and struck out seven, with Shane Victorino and Raul Ibanez homering . . .
While everyone is tuned into the Rays-Red Sox match-up in Boston, the San Francisco Giants have been quietly sneaking up on the Diamondbacks. Last night, the McCoveys held off the Rockies for their seventh straight, while Arizona fell to the Friars. But Arizona’s lead might be too big to overcome: they lead the Giants by five games with ten to play . . .
You could almost hear the sizzle of doubt at Nationals Park last night: uber sub Jerry Hairston was being shipped to Milwaukee, Jason Marquis was considering boarding the red eye for Arizona, Roger Bernadina and Drew Storen were wondering whether they should make plans to rent an apartment in Minnesota and (worst of all), Yunesky Maya was preparing to take the mound for the slumping Washington Nationals. So there it was: a loss for sure.
But just hours later, Maya was celebrating his best outing of the year (and preparing for a stint on the disabled list — or in the minors), Davey Johnson was going on about “a very good ballgame,” Jayson Werth was being interviewed as “the player of the game” on MASN — and Roger Bernadina and Drew Storen were still plying their trade for the Washington franchise.
The short story is that Jayson Werth won the Nationals’ tilt against the New York Metropolitans with an attitude-lifting three-run first inning homer (it was all the Nationals would need in their 3-0 win), Maya pitched effectively through 5.1 innings and closer phenom Drew Storen registered his 26th save. It was hard to determine who was more happy: Werth or Maya.
“I’m tired of saying I’m close, but I’m working in the right direction,” Werth said following the victory. “I know why, I guess — it’s just a matter of having the right swing during the game.” Like Werth, Maya was in a sort of a rehab — spending most of the season trying to command his fastball and pick up his in-game pitching pace. On Saturday, all of that worked well: he threw 78 pitches, 52 of them for strikes.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Wilson Ramos went 3-3 in last night’s 3-0 win, proof positive that he remains amongst the Nationals’ most streaky hitters. He’s 5 for 6 over his last two games, which follows a stint in which he went 1 for 24. The Twins must have “traders” remorse. We read somewhere that Ramos’ name has been mentioned as one of the players the Twins would like to get in any trade for Denard Span. That would be a “no” . . .
John Lannan pitched into the sixth inning and contributed two hits, and catcher Wilson Ramos hit his ninth home run, as the Washington Nationals defeated the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field, 5-2 on Saturday night. The victory, sparked (oddly) by Lannan’s bat, brought the Nats back to .500 — one-half game behind the New York Mets in the N.L. East.
Lannan provided another solid start to what has to now be considered a very successful 2011 campaign by the savvy lefty. But Lannan’s hits were the surprise of the game. He had two in all, his first two of the year, and his first two in 32 at bats. “We have been taking a lot of BP. I have been struggling out there,” Lannan said after the victory. “I never was a really good hitter. Some days, I get good pitches to hit and I was able to hit it back up the middle. Every starter up here is difficult to hit.”
The Nationals were able to tack on runs in the otherwise tight ballgame when Ramos homered with one on in the sixth. The Ramos dinger landed well back in the left field bleachers. “We are used to one-run leads, but that was big. That made us all feel a lot easier,” Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson said of the Ramos home run. “He is a great young catcher. He is looking good.”
Lannan was helped by his bullpen, which held the Braves scoreless in the game’s last innings. Ryan Mattheus, Tyler Clippard and Drew Storen combined for 3.1 innings of work, giving up no hits and no runs. Drew Storen pitched the ninth inning, notching his 24th save. It was Clippard’s 24th hold.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: John Lackey’s in-game antics are starting to get old, according to the commenters on “Baseball Tonight.” Lackey threw up his arms during Boston’s 9-5 win against Tampa Bay yesterday when Marco Scutaro boofed a grounder and Adrian Gonzalez followed suit. Then Lackey let manager Terry Francona have it when he was lifted with two outs in the sixth, mouthing guttural out loud condemnations that anyone with eyes could lip-read.
Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams, who led three teams to the World Series, died this week at the age of 82. Perhaps most remembered for leading Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s to World Championships in 1972 and 1973, he cut his managing teeth as the skipper for the 1967 Red Sox. Just two years retired as a player (the last two with the Sox after stints with several teams) Sox owner Tom Yawkey tapped Williams to try to do something, anything, with the ninth place boys from Boston.
Williams, always known for his pugnacity, showed it early after being named manager. Giving his thoughts on the upcoming 1967 season Williams was confident in his squad saying, “We’ll win more than we lose.” The Boston press corps was incredulous. The Sox hadn’t done much in the way of winning since the ’46 campaign when they lost the Series to the Cards in seven games. And in 1966 they finished 72-90, 26 games out of the running. They were, in a word, bad.
A 10-game turn-around wasn’t impossible of course. But the Sox would field essentially the same team as the year before, Williams had never managed in the Bigs and, after all, this was Boston. Who did he think he was? A Depression-era kid, all Williams knew was hard work and the “kids” (as the Sox were affectionately known given that the vast majority of them were in their 20s) were in for a lot of it. A no-bull type of guy, all Williams expected from his team was their best. He got it.
John Lannan seemed sharp on Friday, retiring the first ten Rockies he faced before two straight singles in the fourth inning from Jonathan Herrera and Todd Helton put two runners on and brought Ty Wigginton to the plate. Unfortuntely for Lannan — and for the Nationals — Wigginton hit a screamer off of Lannan’s left cheek, sending the young lefty to the clubhouse with a nasal contusion (it could’ve been worse) and the Nationals into a funk.
Wigginton’s single scored Herrera and eventually Helton and Wigginton also scored, which is all the Colorado Rockies’ would need for a three run lead, and a 3-2 win against the Nationals before nearly 20,000 at Nationals Park. With Lannan out of the game, Davey Johnson was forced into his bullpen — long before he wanted to use any of his relievers.
As Washington has done most recently, Colorado won ugly. Relieving Lannan, Ryan Mattheus balked Helton home and then gave up a single to rookie Cole Garner. “I was put in a big spot there, and those are the spots I want to be in,” Mattheus said. “It got away from me tonight.” The good news for the Nats was that Lannan appeared to be none the worse for taking the Wigginton rifle shot off his face, and Wilson Ramos continued his hot hitting: notching a solo home run in the fourth.
Fight Night In Boston: The big secret (or not) at Center Field Gate is that the majority of our contributors (and here they are, all bundled up for that wicked cold Boston weather) are fans of “The Nation” (gag), and are inclined to side with their Beantown Boys if given even half a chance. That’s true, but with this caveat: they’re Boston fans in their spare time — when they’re not absolutely head-over-heels monkey nuts over their (and your) Washington Nationals.
