Spring Training is underway, but it's barely a week old. I've already learned to pace myself. Make no mistake, though, I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to help my team. To that end, here are some fragments of my noggin's contents:
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Talking to my dad yesterday, I said something like, "Well, you know baseball has started because the Cubs are fighting in their dugout." That got a good laugh out of him. But I wasn't really trying to be funny. Well, probably I was, but still.
In a game against the Brewers this week, Cubs pitcher Carlos Silva got scorched for six runs, many of them unearned due to three errors—just three of the fourteen errors the Cubs had committed through their first four games. Apparently he said something in the dugout, mostly to himself, about the lack of quality defense, but it was overheard by third baseman Aramis Ramirez, who himself committed one of the three miscues. A rhubarb ensued and the two had to be separated by coaches, and Silva was escorted to the locker room.
Aramis Ramirez, on the scuffle, in The Chicago Tribune, said that it's a long season and you're going to have ups and downs. That it happens everywhere. Hey, 'Rami. It happened during the fourth game of Spring Training. Fourth! Of Spring Training! When these things happen, they're typically in the heat of the dog days of summer. Oh, and one more thing. They don't happen everywhere. Mostly just with the Cubs.
And then Cubs manager Mike Quade said "Everything has gone kind of good, except for the obvious mistakes in the games." Aside from the fact that he goes on to use the word "donnybrook"—for which he gets high praise from me—what in the hell is this guy talking about? "Kind of good?" What is kind of good? Doesn't that mean bad? Certainly not good. Good is good, kind of good is, well, bad, in my opinion. Bet the Cubs faithful are really feeling good that Quade got hired as manager during the offseason, squarely pissing off fan favorite, Hall of Famer, and erstwhile Cub Ryne Sandberg when the Cubs decided not to bequeeth him the keys to the clubhouse.
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Freak injuries and baseball have been good friends for decades, so this is nothing new, but it is funny. Baltimore Oriole left-hander Brian Matusz is missing a start because of a wart that had to be removed from his throwing hand. It had to be removed because his attempt to treat it himself during the offseason did not work.
Now look, there's nothing funny about warts, and the above paragraph is decidedly not funny in and of itself. But when I go to ESPN's baseball home page and one of the headlines reads "Orioles' Matusz (wart) could miss spring start," I can't help but laugh.
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Tough break for ex-Rockies manager and new Pirates skipper Clint Hurdle. His best left handed reliever Joe Beimel (also a former Rockie) is out til who-knows-when with a shoulder or arm issue that is proving tough to diagnose, or at least to MRI.
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Rockies manager Jim Tracy the other day, while talking about closer Huston Street, who is trying to get his sinker dialed back in after he struggled with it—his "out" pitch—last year, said to The Denver Post "...he's an artist. You have to give an artist a little bit of time and make sure all the bristles on his brush are right where they need to be."
Not too many managers get quite so creatively descriptive.
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That's it for now. Keep an eye out for my division-by-division predictions. For last place. Yup. Just decided today that I'm gonna do a season-preview post unlike any other.
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