Cubs series.... dammit

[RedSoxRooter]

Well this sucks. I was really looking forward to watching this series. Way more so than the Cards series.

 

But with the first game tomorrow starting at 2:20 pm I doubt I'll be able to skip out of work. I have a 3pm meeting.

 

Saturday's game is blacked out so it will have to be MLB radio for me.

 

Sunday night's game is great and all except it's ESPN and I have a 9am Monday morning f'n meeting. Dammit all to hell.

 

:angry:

 

I'm about to go all Kevin Brown on my livingroom wall.

[BigPapiEnFuego]

Crap, that sucks horribly. I wouldn't miss this for nothing. I wonder what kind of reception the team will get tommorow for winning the world series. I'm lucky though cause i get out of school around 2:25 and i get home about 2:45-55 so i will only miss maybe an inning.

[RedSoxRooter]

Here's a nifty article from the Chicago Tribune.

 

Many similarities between Red Sox and Cubs, but 1 big difference

 

Published June 9, 2005

 

A list of links between the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox is a ridiculously long one:

 

Bill Buckner, Andre Dawson, Fergie Jenkins … the 1918 World Series … Don Zimmer, Lou Boudreau, Joe McCarthy … the ancient-ruin ballyards … Lee Smith, Dennis Eckersley, Tom Gordon, Calvin Schiraldi … the curses, jinxes, goats and ghosts … Matt Clement, Bill Mueller, Mark Bellhorn, Nomar …

 

Even current Red Sox manager Terry Francona got 31 hits in 1986 in a Cubs uniform.

 

Yet for all they have in common, when the Cubs and Red Sox share a field (Wrigley) at 1:20 p.m. Friday, it will be for the first time since Sept. 11, 1918.

 

It is a clash Chitown and Beantown waited for and waited for, through a Great Depression and generations of—for baseball fans—even greater depression. It is a series each town gradually gave up waiting for, inasmuch as the chances of one of these teams making it to a World Series became increasingly remote, let alone both.

 

And now that it is here—the Boys of Slumber, brought together at last—what's at stake?

 

Absolutely nothing.

 

No diamond rings. No bragging rights. Not a bloody, blessed thing.

 

That's because a funny thing happened on the way to this historic first meeting between the Cubs and Red Sox in a regular-season game of baseball. This epic struggle between two born losers. This war of attrition between organizations that made "long-suffering" a part of the psychological makeup of each and every devoted, dedicated (OK, disturbed) fan.

 

Boston quit being a loser.

 

Who'd have thunk it? The "world champion Red Sox." It still sounds so peculiar to the ear, looks so queer to the naked eye. The mere image of Boston as a baseball winner is all wrong, as unimaginable as John Wayne on a surfboard or Paul Revere dressed in jeans. Boston is supposed to be a town of sad, recovering baseball-holics, much like some other fine city we know.

 

By winning the 2004 World Series—not by default over another bunch of losers, the Houston Astros, but over the quite successful St. Louis Cardinals, no less—the BoSox BoToxed their entire identity, remaking themselves as wholly and cosmetically as if they had injected collagen into their lips. They went from losers to winners, snip, snip, nip, tuck.

 

And, in the process, they have ruined everything.

 

A once-in-a-lifetime Cubs vs. Red Sox engagement should have been winner-take-all. It should have had fans from the Great Lakes to the fishing ports of New England on the edges of their seats, or spilling out of corner taps. Arguments and wagers galore: Bill Murray, John Cusack and Jim Belushi vs. Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Denis Leary, losers get out of show biz for good.

 

We can't even make this about "Which One's Worse?" anymore. At least if the Red Sox had gagged last October as they traditionally are supposed to, Wrigley's series this weekend could have encouraged us to poke fun at a couple of wallflowers being pushed together to dance.

 

But noooo, as Mr. Belushi's late, great older brother would have said. Boston had to go out and reverse the Curse of the Bambino and spoil the whole thing for us.

 

What are we stuck with now?

 

Curse Reversed vs. Cursed Worse.

 

It's not as much fun now reviving the lore. Like recollecting the way old-timers Frank Chance and Hugh Duffy did the same thing Francona has done—played for the Cubs, then managed the Red Sox. Or thinking of other pitchers of old who wore both suits: Dick Radatz, Dick Ellsworth, Dennis Lamp …

 

How about the Cubs' pitching coach, Dick Pole, who once stood atop mounds for the Red Sox? Or that great victim of fate, Grady Little, who came to work for the Cubs after being Trump-ed from his job as manager of the Sox?

No longer can we commiserate with Bostonians over their damaged psyches and painful losses. We cannot empathize and say, well, at least those poor slobs are as badly off as we are here in the eternally Second City.

 

And wait, it gets worse.

 

It was bad enough for Chicago's baseball fans—on both ends of town—to endure the Florida Marlins (twice, yet) and Arizona Diamondbacks becoming world champs, and the woebegone Anaheim Angels doing likewise, and even the Toronto Blue Jays transporting a World Series trophy to another country, for crying out loud.

 

But turn a page and check out today's standings. Guess who's in first place?

 

The Washington Nationals.

 

That's all we need, for the hapless, hopeless Montreal Expos to fold up shop, emigrate to another land … and then treat us as rudely as a French waiter by winning the 2005 World Series. Please, promise us this can't happen. Tell us that the suffering of "long-suffering" Washington fans will not come to an end.

 

If it does, Chicago's reputation as the baseball cesspool of North America will be dragged even deeper into the mud. And we will feel not scorn but sympathy from a triumphant, satisfied, curse-free baseball town like, God help us all, Boston.

 

mikedowney@tribune.com

[Sizzlin22]

This is gonna be a good series it's too bad Nomar's hurt though.

[BrentD22]

Man that sucks!

 

I am the Director of a Teen Center. The Red Sox are really big amoungst the teenagers so it's always great for me to watch a day game. The kids get all into it, yelling, screaming, and of course debating baseball. The first several innings of night game we usually catch as well, unless we are playing whiffle ball in the gym or something.

[yeszir]

I have no reason to not watch day games now, but I still hate them! I have to get up by 3! What the hell is this crap!

[RedSoxRooter]

Haha!

 

I have a plan!

 

Not to worry, I'll be catching both Friday and Sunday's game without a worry in the world! hehehehehahahahaaaaaaaaa

[Sox fan in Tex]

I'll be in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas doing something with my church. Doing things that I've never done before that you guys assume I do everyday: plant crops and all of that crap. This blows.

[BigPapiEnFuego]

Hehe, i missed most of todays game cause when i got home i slept from 3:00 until 6:30. I could hear the game in my sleep, cause it was on loud, so i know what happened. I'll miss tommorows game too cause i'm going to the mall, maybe

[soxie thefangirl]

this game was so awful. actually the most awful part was our pitching.

[Gambit]

Hehe, i missed most of todays game cause when i got home i slept from 3:00 until 6:30. I could hear the game in my sleep, cause it was on loud, so i know what happened. I'll miss tommorows game too cause i'm going to the mall, maybe

Luckily you didn't miss much today...

 

Matt