Wow… what a barn burner on Tuesday night at Wrigley. So much excitement in the air for Cubs Sox; packed crowd, beautiful weather, both teams at the top of the standings. Yeah… ok. The Crosstown Classic usually brings a rush of feelings… not the same this year, for whatever reason. I think I know why…
I still took notice; I still tuned in, and yelled at the TV a bit. I still put on a Cubs hoodie, and sent my son to school with his Cubs jersey on. I still feel these games are more than just your average 1 of 162, especially for fans of both teams, living, working in the same city shoulder to shoulder. I think the issues start with the delayed start of the season this year for baseball; taking me a while to ramp up to baseball, period. The issues continue with the developments over the past year with the Cubs, completely trashing the team, filling the roster with average guys, keeping plenty of money in their pockets, making it feel like 2016 was more than just 6 years ago. I’ll always love the Cubs, but man… morale is low right now. The team isn’t going anywhere, except in the general direction towards the bottom of the standings.
I imagine from a Sox fan perspective, you may be a little more fired up about your season; you should be. This team is built to make the playoffs and, unlike the past 2 years, hopefully progress through the postseason. Yet, at the start of this game, both teams had the same record; talk about embarrassing…. for Sox fans that is. Certainly underperforming thus far… certainly very early in the season; have to believe this team will start to turn this around, rather quickly. Playing the Cubs present a golden opportunity to start doing so. Playing the Cubs this early in the season is pretty stupid though.
Why on earth would MLB schedule these games in early May? Talk about adding to the buzzkill… I mean, the weather is not cooperating either thus far in Chicago; still waiting for Spring… any day now… These games should be played on a weekend, in the summer, no exceptions. I don’t care how bad the Cubs suck, or how good the Sox are, these games have a bit more juice regardless, and frankly, it’s usually the worst team that fares better, a good sign for sure for the Cubs this year. Didn’t necessarily pan out that way in the first matchup, a 3-1 loss to the Sox in front of a spattering of people at Wrigley, braving the elements, making sure the money they spent on these tickets didn’t go to waste.
I did get one chuckle out of the game. It was an innocent foul pop by Rivas that went back about 20 rows on the 3rd base side, or so I thought. Here’s this chunky 3B, appropriately named Burger… I’m getting hungry now… chasing down the ball like he’s going to have a play. He runs into the wall, and flips over the stands; luckily he was OK. But holy shit… talk about zero awareness; I heard the Sox play defense like that in general though, so, makes sense I guess. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I laughed, while yelling at Jake Burger through the TV about how stupid he is… haha.
Yeah, I’m still going to get some kind of kick out of this series, come hell or high water. It would be nice to get a win though; it would be nice if the Cubs didn’t blow up the team, and more importantly, not replace anyone too… that ain’t changing any time soon. So, we hope for a victory or two over the mighty White Sox, while laughing at their current record… how could we both have almost the same record?!?! Hahaha… OK, on to game 2… Giolito vs Hendricks should lead to a better game; weather is a whole lot nicer too… so far. Go Cubs!!!
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