Please tell me Alfonso Soriano didn’t strike out on that pitch. I guess it was appropriate as it was indicative of the Cubs’ whole series against the Dodgers and especially Soriano’s 1 for 14 performance.
The headline on the sports page of our local paper on Sunday read "ALL IS WELL" in big letters. I know it wasn’t a Cubs fan who came up with that headline. "All is Well" was not in reference to baseball, of course but to University of Illinois football team’s 45-20 drubbing of Michigan on Saturday (btw, nice going guys). Yet, for any Cub fan to wake up to that headline, it was insult on top of injury. I’ll bet it was a Cardinal fan that fashioned that line.
Aside from the costly errors, it was timely hitting that hurt the Cubs. In some ways, the overall stats between the Dodgers and Cubs were comparable. Hitting (LA’s .250 to Chicago’s .240) and ERA (LA’s 3.68 to Chicago’s 3.87) were not out of line. The Dodgers did have 3 more extra base hits (12 to 9) and three more homers but the key stat as it usually is was runs scored. LA scored 20 to Chicago’s 6.
Derrick Lee who hit .545 for the series (6 for 11). Out of all that, Lee could only produce two runs which is more indicative of the batters around him than anything. Credit is due to Mark DeRosa, error notwithstanding, for his 2 runs and 4 rbis.
Unless you are a Cub fan (been one since I can remember) you can’t understand what it’s like. But this year was supposed to be different. We actually had a good great team.
Goat Riders of the Apocalypse are already looking towards 2009, something I can’t quite do yet. They’ve got a list of 9 Reasons the Cubs will Shine in 09.
The Cup is still half-empty for me.