Day: April 15, 2004

"Things we should have thought of", or "Pat and Ron, Nor DNA Tap"

On the WGN Radio broadcast of today’s Cubs game, Pat Hughes thanked a listener for sending him and color man Ron Santo a book of palindromes. “Well be getting to that later on,” Pat said. I can’t think of a better gift for those two.

Now we get to see how Luke spells a weary groan in the comments.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, here’s Ron Santo on the Opening Day weather (This is from memory, so it’s not exact): “I remember Opening Day back in 1997 was so cold I couldn’t feel my toes. Of course, I can’t feel my toes today, either.”

Original comments…

Luke, hanger-on: !OooooooooO!

Steve: “Florida Marlins 4, Chicago Cubs 2 Day Game Played on Tuesday, April 1, 1997 (D) at Pro Player Stadium”

That must have been a cold day in Miami…..

Luke: Heh. Clearly Levi is remembering this cold day and this humbling loss to the Marlins. Low of 24, gusts up to 31 mph! My first Opening Day, and I think the first time I met Jim.

Levi: How embarrassing. Luke and Steve are right. I had the wrong week. By the time we saw the Cubs for the first time that year, they were already something like 0-6.

Steve will remember attending this game with me two days later. I remember the heaping plate of futility that Alex Fernandez served the Cubs that day, but I was surprised to learn it was so cold. I guess when you go into a game expecting a no-hitter and you come very close to seeing one, you don’t notice that you don’t notice your feet.

Levi: Also, if you look at that box score, you’ll see that “third baseman” Bobby Bonilla had already committed three errors.

Jim: And from today’s L.A. Times: “On this day in 1997, the Chicago Cubs set the mark for the worst start in National League history, losing their 12th consecutive game, 4-0 to the Colorado Rockies, and breaking the record of 11 losses in a row by the 1884 Detroit Wolverines.”

Ah, yes, that was the trip to Chicago where I had some sort of 24-hour stomach flu and spent the first day on the floor of Stacey and Nikki’s dorm room (although if you’re going to have stomach flu, Stacey and Nikki’s dorm room is a pretty good place to have it). Perhaps I caught the virus from the Cubs as they were leaving Miami, flying over Florida a few days before I followed them up north.

The secondary purpose of that trip was to meet up with some game show fans I knew from the Internet, and I was supposed to go with them to another Cubs game that week that ended up being snowed out.

Bobby V.

Stacey pointed out that my suggestion back on April 7th that the Cardinals pretend, for an important at-bat, that Albert Pujols is So Taguchi resembles former New York Mets manager Bobby Valentine’s greatest moment. To recap: On June 9, 1999, In the 12th inning of a game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Bobby Valentine was ejected for arguing a catcher’s interference call. He went to the clubhouse–presumably after doing a bit of dirt kicking and enthusiastic swearing–but returned a few minutes later wearing a disguise. After a while, the announcers noticed the stranger lurking at the back of the dugout, and a few days later, the National League suspended Valentine for two games and fined him $5,000.

The difference between Valentine’s approach and the one I advocated for the Cardinals is instructive. When confronted by the league about the disguise, Valentine fessed up. He argued that he wasn’t really trying to fool anyone, and he swore–despite seemingly contradictory photographic evidence–that he wasn’t in the dugout. But he never denied that the man with the big nose, glasses, and mustache was him.

Denying photographic evidence is a start–in fact, it will be a necessary part of my plan–but it has to be accompanied by an all-out denial on all fronts. The only hope of avoiding a lengthy suspension for Pujols, Taguchi, LaRussa, and probably me, too, is a refusal to accept that any type of evidence proves that the player who we claim is Pujols is not actualy Pujols. It’s hard to believe, given Valentine’s reputation, but in this case what did him in was not being stubborn enough. I wonder what Ari Fleischer’s doing these days. Given some of the lines he peddled during the last couple of years, this would be child’s play.

I wonder if Bobby Valentine would put up that kind of defense if you accused him of manufacturing that strangely orange tan he sports these days?

Oh, and the Mets won, 4-3.