At last night’s Cubs game, the notoriously impatient Corey Patterson received a loud outburst of cheering and applause from Section 528 when he took a ball on the first pitch, something very few of us had ever seen him do.
Later in that at-bat, though, when he swung and missed at a terrible curveball out of the strike zone, he got roundly booed by the same large group.
But he righted the balance on the Corey-o-Meter later by receiving a standing ovation from our section for taking a walk.
As the scoreboard graphic of a phantom gliding down to first at the Metrodome will tell you, “Walks will haunt.” If only the Cubs–who seem to understand it on the pitching side–could realize that they are capable of doing some haunting themselves.
Or, for the sake of my Cardinals, maybe it’s best that they don’t.