Bill Roper's Journal

The Eighth Notes headed home after lunch today. Finn was good enough to drive them down to Hobart to meet their mom for the trip back to Noblesville, which was good, as I really wasn't up for a multi-hour drive today. Everyone seemed to have a good time and the dogs adored the attention. :) The next step in cleanup is figuring out where to store all the parts of the new blender...

I have an appointment with the opthalmologist tomorrow afternoon and we'll see what he has to say about my eye. I am hoping that this was a random, isolated incident, but long-term diabetes is not good for these things, so we'll see. Well, I *hope* I'll see. Right now, the vision in my left eye is actually pretty good except when I'm looking at a white computer screen and the cruft in the eyeball becomes *really* obvious.

And I finally launched the second half of the APBA baseball season for the computer division today. The good news is that it is *much* faster to play games on the computer than it is with cards and dice, so we should be able to catch up fairly quickly.

The Cubs lost game five of the NLDS to the Brewers tonight, 3-1, up in Milwaukee, ending the Cubs season. Each team held serve in their home games, which is why you play for home field advantage. This time, it was to the advantage of the Brewers who had a tremendous second half to end up with the best record in the league.

The good news is that this means that the Dodgers will need to travel to Milwaukee to begin the best of seven NLCS. And if the Brewers hold serve...

Right now, I am rooting for a Brewers vs. Mariners World Series. Neither team has ever won the World Series, so that matchup would guarantee at least one new champion.

And that beats seeing the Yankees win. :)

The Cubs won and have tied up the series with the Brewers. The Saturday game in Milwaukee will determine the winner.

This is better than I expected.

After having managed to miss all three of the Wild Card games that the Cubs played at home due to work, I am (as the song says) "taking the afternoon off" tomorrow to go to game 3 of the NLDS tomorrow. The weather is going to be seasonally chilly from the look of things and I am trying to decide how much coat I need to wear.

The Cubs are currently trailing the Brewers 0-2 in the five-game series, so it will be win tomorrow or stay home. (I'd say "go home", but the Cubs *are* at home, so...)

We'll see how it goes.

The regular baseball season is over and the playoffs are beginning. And for the first time in a while, the Cubs are in the playoffs, having gotten into the Wild Card round.

Where they have been gifted with 2:08 PM start times on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I am not sure that there is any reasonable way that I can get there, but I'm going to think about this a bit more...

The Cubs got out to an early 6-1 lead over the Mets tonight, but giving up five unearned runs to the Mets took care of that problem. The Mets eventually won by the score of 9-7, which was good for the Mets, but not very good for the Cubs, because the Padres beat the Brewers tonight, moving them within a game and a half of the top NL wild card spot, currently occupied by the Cubs. This is important, because only the top wild card team actually gets to play home games in the first round.

Overall, this is not a good time to lose five games in a row. It is better than losing five games in a row in the playoff rounds, but since that's impossible, well...

And the Cubs won tonight's game over the Braves by a final of 4-3.

When I stopped to use the toilet on the way out of the park, I left my open scorecard sitting on the shelf above the trough. The fellow next to me commented that it was an ugly scorecard in the sense that the Cubs had scored four runs in one inning and done essentially no hitting during the rest of the game. I allowed as to how this was true, but a win is a win. He agreed.

I was going to go to tonight's Cubs game when the friend I was planning to go with asked me if I had looked at the forecast lately around 4:30 PM. I looked at the forecast and decided that the chances of the game starting before 10 PM were minimal at best, so we decided to bag it. Less than half an hour before the scheduled game time, the Cubs decided to bag it to, so now those tickets are for a day game tomorrow. I will not be there having both work and a doctor's appointment, so we are going Wednesday night instead.

The good news is that I was able to finish up the side project at work today since I wasn't taking off early for the game, so it is off my list.

I went down to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs vs. Red Sox game today. The Cubs had won the first two games of the series handily, but today the Red Sox were pitching their ace, Garrett Crochet, who I had drafted for my fantasy team this year, so I had a certain amount of conflicted interest in this game. (I also have conflicted interests hoping that the Cardinals might overtake the Cubs, but the Cardinals are failing so dismally in this task that I can pretty much stop worrying about it.)

Crochet did not have his best stuff today, but pitched around a lot of trouble and was trailing 1-0 after six innings and 100 pitches, as the Cubs starter only allowed two hits to the Red Sox in what was an absolutely miserable performance on their part. And then Craig Counsell took the Cubs starter out and brought in a reliever when the tying run was on third in the top of the sixth after some excellent baserunning by Duran. This successfully squelched the threat.

It was in the top of the seventh that I went into "bad home team announcer mode" as I was commenting on the game to my friend Allan. The new reliever, Ryan "Do I Have Any Stuff Today?" Pressly entered and walked the leadoff man. I said to Allan, "The Red Sox have yet to get a hit with a man on base today." This prompted the then-current Red Sox hitter, Abreu, to launch a two-run homer into the right field stands giving the Red Sox the lead.

In the eighth inning, Counsell decided to try a usually better reliever, Drew Pomeranz. Pomeranz has pitched quite well this season and came into the game with an ERA below 1. But he gave up a walk and a single, followed by a force at third base, giving runners on first and second with only one out and Alex Bregman coming off the bench on his scheduled day off to pinch hit. At this point, I turned to Allan and said "Pomeranz has a spectacular ERA, but if Bregman gets a hit here, it is going to be going above 1."

Bregman then hit a three-run homer into the left-field stands, roughly doubling the still-impressive ERA. At this point, Counsell apparently said to hell with it all, pulled Pomeranz and brought in a reliever with a distinctly *unimpressive* ERA, Ethan Roberts. I forget what I said when Abreu came to the plate with two outs, but it must have been good, because he then hit his *second* home run of the game.

Clearly, I should shut up for the Cubs' own good...

The Cubs lost 6-1, but did win the series against the Red Sox. The Brewers beat the Dodgers today to sweep that series, take their winning streak to 10 games, and move into a first place tie with the Cubs.

Yoicks.

The trade deadline is approaching. As nearly as I can tell, the Cubs wish list should include some relief pitching (frequently cheap), a starting pitcher (not cheap), and an actively good third baseman (definitely not cheap at all). It's going to be interesting to see what they actually get, but this is clearly the best Cubs team in a long time and -- with no guarantee that Tucker is going to resign with the team -- maybe the time to push some chips into the middle of the table.

The Cardinals meanwhile are showing every sign of being a team that needs to be a seller. The question there is going to be can they get enough back for what they've got to sell to make selling now worthwhile, or should they wait until the off-season? But at least three of their relievers who might be trade targets are free agents at the end of the season, so -- for them at least -- waiting is not an option.

There are a lot of *very* good questions out there.

I took a day off from studio work today, because I went to the Cubs vs. Cards game down at Wrigley, which was scheduled to start at 5:10 and was only delayed by an hour. But all of that meant that there really wasn't time to get down there, even to record a single vocal track.

Recording is back on the schedule for tomorrow, along with work, where I hope to make some good progress.