Bill Roper's Journal

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...

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 went down to Wrigley Field where I met Elliot (who has recently moved to Chicago with his wife, Emily) so he could see his first baseball game there. It was fun chatting with him as the wind blew out on a miserably hot day.

When I got back to my car after the game, I was reminded that the remote parking lot has you park facing west. I got into the car and dropped my sweaty back onto the superheated black leather seat and turned on the car and the air conditioning. Thankfully, the air conditioning worked. The car thermometer showed that the temperature was 104 degrees which was *very* believable. It was also consistent with the reading at a bank that I passed by while driving home, which showed 101 degrees, matching the car thermometer at that point.

As I said, miserably hot.

Today, I am thankful for central air conditioning that works. :)

I headed down to Wrigley Field where I met a friend of mine and we watched the Cubs beat the Marlins by a final of 5-2, with all of the Cubs' runs coming in one inning, as did all of the Marlins' runs. Other than those two innings, it was a really well-pitched game by both clubs.

While that was going on, the Cardinals beat the Phillies 3-2 to extend their winning streak to nine games, which is rather remarkable. They remain one game back of the Cubs in the NL Central.

This is being interesting.

I had hoped to see a good game between the Cubs and Dodgers tonight and I did. It turned out that the Dodgers were having a bullpen game, so we saw a *lot* of Dodger pitchers, some of whom were more effective than others. When the score got to a 7-6 Cubs lead, I commented that it would be good if the Cubs scored some more runs, as I didn't expect that to be the final score.

That was when the bullpens settled down and no more runs were scored.

But the weather was lovely, the conversation was good, and the Cubs won. :)

It was Opening Day for the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Given that K is deep in rehearsals for the last show of her high school tenure (and the state of our passports, which remain stubbornly expired) going to FKO really wasn't an option, but going down to Wrigley was.

Gretchen dropped me at the Swift terminus, which meant that I didn't have to worry about finding parking. My Ventra card, however, refused to work at all. The nice fellow at the station passed me through on that end, but warned me that I should buy a return ticket at Addison (because the machines at Skokie weren't working correctly, it seems) when I got there so that I would not be waiting behind the drunks after the game. I thanked him and headed on my way.

It was annoyingly cold today, although I'm told it was less cold than last year. My upgraded seats seem to be an actual upgrade and the Cubs won, mostly through the kindness of the opposing pitcher who kept issuing walks, including one with the bases loaded. So the Cubs won 3-1 over the Padres.

And I am warm again now, after some excellent chili for dinner and a lot of time in a house with central heating. :)