Am I the first one to use that headline? God, I hope so. Anyhow, thanks to the rain, my DVR (despite being set to record The Tenth Inning and Reba) only recorded the first eight innings. I understand some people are flinging themselves from rooftops because the Cubs lost one extra-innings game. Wow.
Here are the positives. It’s about eight and a half hours after the first pitch of the 2008 season and:
- Now the Wrigleyville Chads and Trixies have TWO places to meet before games! Either by the Harry statue OR the Banks statue!
- No one has scored on Zambrano yet (and God damn, he was efficient).
- No one has gotten Kosuke Fukudome out yet. That was one of the best debuts for a Cub position player ever, and I didn’t even see the home run.
- Carlos Marmol is going to strike out a million guys this year, some of them on only one pitch. In 1.1 innings, he collected three strikeouts with nine pitches, throwing all but one for a strike.
- Everyone has beards! Except Theriot, because he can’t grow one yet.
- I’m crediting Ward with a double for his outstanding at-bat in the 8th inning.
- The Brewer bullpen still absolutely fukking sucks.
- After Theriot and Soriano’s 0-10, 4 K game between the two of them, Lou is one game closer to putting DeRosa and Fukudome at the top.
There are 161 more regular season games to go. Everyone relax, take a deep breath, take tomorrow off, and we’ll see you on Wednesday.
Just got home. Haven’t seen the home run yet either but pure awesome is everything about it.
Woody was due to be less than awesome. Just so happened to be Opening Day. The guy didn’t walk a guy in Mesa and hits Weeks to start the season. One of those funny things.
Howry’s now ruined two openers in a row (damn Adam Everet), and they were all right last year
Fuku’s home run was awesome. Brewers should have won easily, and saw some scary shit instead. Cubs need to take the next two to set a tone but, under the circumstances, Cubs showed some good stuff. Great pitchers duel
Oh, and Oleg–who sat in my seats, the bastage–reported that the It’s Gonna Happen docuhiness was prevalent but at least the Red Sox font was gone. But they supposedly had Japanese for “It’s Gonna Happen”. That sucks. The nice think about Fukkake is that he has no baggage coming in. Don’t hoist that shit on him. Leave him alone. Let’s see it happen first, douchebags.
When he hit the homer it was like Fukkake was raining down from the heavens…If that would have been a walk-off homer, the legend of Fukudome would have been signed, sealed, & delivered to Cooperstown.
But in all honesty, when Musburger announced the home-run, it TOTALLY sounded like he said “Fuck-U-dough-may”. With my MLB package on DirecTV, I’m sure I have many more opportunities to hear opponent announcers and espn/fox guys swear and not get punished by the FCC. It should be a hell of a season.
2 Questions:
1) Why did Lou put in Wood in a non-save situation?
2) Why pinch-hit with the pre-pubescent Fontenot, when you have Reed sitting on the bench with some power?
Other than that, it was a great game. Z was amazing, his fastball had great movement, and he struck out 5 with no walks…the best factoid of that entire game.
1) Brenly made a good point. With Wood’s history, Lou probably doesn’t want to get him warmed up and NOT use him.
2) I have no idea. Didn’t get to see that far.
Are you sure that that’s the best factoid? What about the fruit of Tony Gwynn’s loins beating the Cubs in extras on Opening Day in Wrigley? That has to be most excellent for Junior (the new one).
I’m feeling bad your Cubs lost, but hey, at least it was muy fantastico, until the end that is.
The Fontenot pinch-hit was my big question…WHY?
Z looked good, Pie still doesn’t have any concept of the strike zone (solid game in center, though), and Marmol was filthy. If somebody sets DLee’s clock forward to June, this team can make some noise.
Really, other than Soriano and Pie, it looked like the Cubs approached the plate with more discipline than in the past – it seemed like they spent most of the game ahead in the count, which prevented Sheets from really bringing his curveball to bear. Tough loss, but there’s 161 more left. Here’s to winning 94 of them.
Theriot looked pretty terrible up there, too.
You know what I found odd? On the SAC fly to Pie and on the 2-run(?) double to Fukudome, it seemed like the outfielders were playing REALLY shallow. I wonder if the wind was blowing in at the time? Seemed a bit strange, considering the situation.
The wind was all over the place today…it was from RF to LF the whole time, but whipped back and forth in/out pretty unpredictably. WGN actually had a nice little map of it during a rain delay, showing the swirl coming off the lake. Pie and the Dome need to learn to look at the flags pretty much every play, at least for the next month or so.
Re: Pie.
I really hope I’m wrong and the guy ends up being decent, but I fear that he’s received the NSBB kiss of death. Any time someone suggests that it might make sense to trade Pie now while he’s still considered valuable, all the tweeners freak out and bite their pillows. Some other notable guys recently supported by the NSBB community:
David Kelton
Hee Seop Choi
Bobby Hill
Scott McClain
Corey Patterson
Brian Dopirak
Jason Dubois
In conclusion, everyone over there sucks at knowing anything. And they LOVE their Felix Pie. Poor kid.
I’ve been to busy to post anything, but I’m wondering why Lou didn’t just sit everyone around in the pregame with a bullhorn and simply shout:
RUN ON KENDALL!
I mean, okay, Pie’s nut may be a little sore. Plus I I heard he may have tweaked something during the game, So his inability to steal second when he singled in the 9th inning and midget dwarf was up I guess is the safe move in April.
And in fairness to Fukudome, he probably doesn’t know about Kendall. I learned that Fuku got picked off because he misjudged a passed ball. Hopefully Lou sits him down and lets him know that, while you should never display such Murtonness uncertainty on the basepaths, if you ever find yourself in no-man’s land again with thar bag of throwing suck behind the dish, just run to third, son.
Oh and… RUN ON KENDALL!
1) I think he put Wood in because they had their 2,3,4 hitters coming up. If he gets them they don’t have to
face them for a couple of more innings. He probably figured they could win before then.
2) Pie was playing really shallow to have a chance to throw the guy out at home. He does go back on the
ball really well.
3) I, too was hoping they would run on Kendall. He didn’t throw anybody out in spring training(0-10).
Hopefully they didn’t run because it was so wet and not because they don’t realize how bad Kendall is.
4) Theriot and Soriano have to be moved down.
BK,
I was at the game in the bleachers. I was soaked and the outcome sucked. When Fukudome hit that homerun the place was shaking.
The “It’s Gonna Happen” guy was out in full force giving everyone those stupid signs. I yelled “Where is Randy Myers?” at him then he came across the street to tell me “Hey, you’re not funny.” I wasn’t trying to be. I was just telling him how much of a moron he is.
You know what WOULD have been funny? If he got hit by a bus crossing the street. You could have turned to the camera, shrugged your shoulders, and said, “I guess it happened!”
If people would STOP TAKING those goddamn signs from him, he’d eventually just disappear. I blame us, really. We’re also the reason The Hills exists.
im not sure if you were joking about derosa at the top, but i think it aint too bad an idea. i mean, hes a slower yet more powerful brian roberts. im sure if you take batting order into account, derosa would have at least 37* more runs than he had last year. now if we could get him to steal some bases and such, thats gold. but i dont see why we dont bat him up top. other than the no speed thing that is.
* i got this number from the len kasper edition of baseball forecaster.
I wasn’t joking. I have no problem with DeRosa and Fukudome hitting 1-2 (in either order). A .400ish OBP guy and a .370ish OBP guy at the top of the order would look pretty damn sweet.
And I know Aramis is slow as death, but I really hope Lou eventually swaps him and Derrek. If one of those two guys is going to get an extra 20 or so at-bats this year, I want it to be Aramis. He’s the best hitter on the team. I’d like to see a lot of “walk, single, three-run blast” first innings this year.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a lineup like this:
1. K-Fuk
2. D-Lee
3. Aramis
4. Soriano
5. DeRo
6. Han-Soto
7. Pie
8. Theriot
Lee gets on base at way too high a clip to lose ABs. Not to mention, unless his power comes back, he wouldn’t be as valuable hitting 4th. The only reason I wouldn’t want Fukudome that high is if he does show he has some real power in the states. In that case, I’d be fine with him hitting third.
But knowing Lee definitely would not be hitting 2nd, I’d take DeRo, Fukudome, Lee, Aramis, Soriano, Soto, Pie, Theriot. Yeah, DeRo isn’t the prototypical leadoff hitter, but neither is Kelly Johnson in Atlanta or Swisher for the Sox. But they’re leading off cause they get on base at about the same rate (Swisher at .381 and Johnson at .375).
Earlier today, I was lucky enough to attend the greatest opening day in my memory.
You guys mean it’s NOT gonna happen?
Weebs, that lineup would be great. The lineup with Theriot and Soriano 1,2 is the second worst lineup we could have. Only behind the pitcher and Pie leading off.
Theriot cant grow a beard because he’s probably probably only 18 or so
Wood pitched the ninth because I’m sure Lou wanted to get him into the opener, especially with a day off today, and because when you’re the home team, if you get to the ninth tied there isn’t going to be a save, so you’re basically treating every inning like it’s a save situation from there on out. Get ‘em out, get a run, go home. It’s not like he brought him into a game they were up by or down by six runs.
We need to start a trend of gleefully accepting the It’s Gonna Happen signs, then tearing them up right in front of the guy.
The problem is, that bastard made them REALLY hard to tear up.
Bring gasoline and matches.
I took the day off yesterday so I could watch opening day from the comfort of my couch. I nearly gave the cats heartattacks when Fuku hit the bomb in the 9th. They were peaceably asleep. Stupid cats, that’ll teach you to sleep through a baseball game. It sucked to lose, but holy hell, it’s one game. Why all the panic? There’s 161 of these fuckers left to go. I’m not worried and judging from the comments, no one here is, either. Thank God. People at work today are freaking out. “Wood sucks, Marmol needs to close, blah, blah, blah.” One game, people. Settle down. The only thing I dislike is the Theriot/Soriano 1-2 combination at the top. Shouldn’t at least one of your first two hitters have good on base percentage? Other than that, I’m not concerned. If Pie can’t figure out how to hit, I’m confident Lou will bench him in favor of (gulp) Reed Johnson. Marrioti is already feeling vindicated about Kerry Wood. Again, 1 game. Let’s not forget, Gagne got creamed as well. I have a lot more confidence in Wood recovering then Gagne. If Wood fucks up another 10-12 games, then we have a problem.
Yeah, I mean, it’s a loss to the Brewers, which is annoying, because Brewers fans are second only to Sox fans in “desperately trying to make us their biggest rivals even though we already have a much more historic rival serving as our biggest.” But it’s just one loss. We lost on Opening Day last year too. In 2006 we scored 16 runs. How’d that work out? Frankly, the fact that the offense was so anemic yesterday and we still almost won is probably a good sign; the top of the order won’t go 1-for-15 every game.
They may only be second to Sox fans in that category, but in the “Desperately Trying to Pretend We Followed This Team Before May of 2007, Despite My Obviously Freshly-Minted Throwback Brewers Cap That I Bought Two Weeks Ago,” Milwaukee fans take a back set to no one. Kinda cute, if by “cute,” you actually mean “pathetic.”
If you were there or know something about it, tell me just what impact the lowered field is going to have?
I heard something about a sudden rise by the bull-pen. I’ll take my answer off the air.
Nobody cares to mention the intentional base on balls to Prince Fielder to get to Ryan Braun? That scenario doesn’t seem to be a winner at any time when you’re facing this lineup. Lou simply blew it.