It's becoming gust awful
Whipped into the NL Central basement by wind and Cardinals' bats, Cubs must find the components to win close games, or be blown away
While Ron Santo no doubt was grinding his teeth and fuming in his hospital bed, his beloved Cubs were blowing in the, uh, breeze.
Oh, what a beautiful day it was in Chicago on Sunday!
Oh, what a beautiful day it was in Chicago on Sunday!
If you were a jogger, an industrial-strength kite flyer or the St. Louis Cardinals.
If you were a jogger, an industrial-strength kite flyer or the St. Louis Cardinals.
The sun and 77-degree air were only a partial backdrop at Wrigley Field for the warm gale that blew out of the south like a desert hurricane.
The No. 14 (Ernie Banks) and No. 10 (Santo) flags on the left-field foul pole looked like weather vanes pointed at Milwaukee.
The No. 26 (Billy Williams) and No. 23 (Ryne Sandberg) flags on the right-field pole looked the same.
And with that wind directly behind him, the Cardinals' Albert Pujols hit a pitch from Ryan Dempster so hard in the 10th inning that it's amazing the National League ink stayed on the cover or the little white thing didn't explode.
As it was, Pujols' three-run homer screamed over the grass, the dormant ivy, the bleachers and out of the park in deep, deep left-center for a 12-9 St. Louis win.
If Santo, the WGN Radio analyst/Cubs nut who was admitted to Highland Park Hospital the night before with symptoms of an irregular heartbeat, had been on the air, he might have wept.
''I just tried to hit it up the middle,'' Pujols said. And Einstein just tried to do a math problem.
Did Pujols get all of it?
''Oh, definitely. It was probably the best ball I've hit all year. You can watch it again on tape.''
No, thanks.
But we lessers would like to know what it feels like to have arms extended, hips rotated, eyes focused, muscles bulging and the bat's sweet spot making perfect, vector-laden contact with a defenseless little pea.
''You don't feel it at all,'' Pujols answered.
But, my, did the Cubs.
In this battle for sole possession of last place in the NL Central, the 7-11 Cubs showed they have problems all over the place.
But there were so many ways to win this game that one can't envision new manager Lou Piniella lasting the season without a legendary explosion or total meltdown.
''We can't go anymore with 11 pitchers,'' he said in near-surrender. ''We've stretched the rubber band as far as we can stretch it. We need somebody.''
Is Sandy Koufax available?
Just looking at my scorecard from this 33-hit, eight-walk, six-homer rocket-launching makes me dizzy.
And it's mind-blowing to think there also were 19 strikeouts, though few of them came at the proper time for the Cubs.
Indeed, Dempster actually struck out the side in the 10th, sandwiching Pujols' monstrous blast with K's like bread around three pounds of dynamite.
''The game's never over,'' Piniella said of what he has learned and tried to impart to his players about Wrigley's occasional wind tunnel.
And he has the problem of finding the right lineup for his club, of trying to blend veterans and random youngsters in a mix that isn't embarrassing to all who know the 100th year of championship-free Cubs baseball is nearly upon us.
Rookie Felix Pie is one of the problems.
A 22-year-old with loads of potential, Pie is not ready to hit major-league pitching yet and no doubt will take his three career hits to the minors soon.
The outfielder got a bloop single in the third inning but backed away from a strikeout pitch in the fifth.
Though he bats left-handed, and righty Jason Isringhausen was on the mound for the Cards, Pie was lifted for the right-handed and sore-legged Alfonso Soriano in the ninth.
But the unsettled outfield will not matter much unless the Cubs improve their pitching and figure out how to win close games, especially at home.
''He is one of the most enthusiastic human beings I've ever met,'' said his WGN partner and pal Pat Hughes after the broadcast, in which Dave Otto sat in for Santo. ''Nobody loves his former team more than Ronnie does. And nothing keeps him down. Nothing. He's got diabetes. He's lost two legs. He's had cancer. He lost his bladder. He's had open-heart surgery, cataract surgery; he's got a pacemaker; he had surgery on his throat.
''But you're talking about a guy who played every inning of every game one year for the Cubs, never missed a single at-bat, with diabetes.''
Hughes smiled.
Come on back, Ron.
Maybe you can blow some of this crud away.