You don’t usually expect a game started by Jake Arrieta and Madison Bumgarner to end with you staring slack jawed into the abyss like Krusty the Clown witnessing the antics of Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team Worker & Parasite for the first time. Generally, if one of those pitchers beats you, you can […]
Author: Ken Schultz
Greatness in August: The Banality of Brilliance
Before this season began, I wrote a piece about what a weird sensation it was to go into a new year with optimism that was based upon legitimate evidence. The Cubs have since supported that positivity in an unfamiliar way by repeatedly demonstrating that this preseason optimism may have actually undersold how good they were. […]
Tommy La Stella: The Other Way Around The Whole Time
On the surface, the recent Tommy La Stella drama sounds like a deal with the Devil, if the Devil was a terrible negotiator. BEELZEBUB: Hey Tommy, want to be a big league ballplayer? Your salary will be 525 thousand dollars! And you’ll be on TV every day! LA STELLA: Sweet! Where do I sign up? […]
Game 116 Recap: Cardinals 6 Cubs 4
Out, vile jelly. According to Carrie Muskat, before tonight’s contest, Hector Rondon “gave [Carl Edwards Jr.] a pep talk after Saturday’s game. ‘I told him, “Hey, it happens to everybody…Learn from that.”’ Unfortunately, Twitter’s 140 character limit prevented Muskat from posting the full Rondon quote which apparently ended with “Here, I’ll show you…” Sigh. This […]
Cubs, Perhaps, Give In To Chapman Temptation
Ordinarily, I’d guess that Tom Ricketts makes it a policy, across all of his businesses, to avoid actively alienating large swaths of his customer bases. Without having done the research, though, I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty. For all I know, the internet could be crawling with records of interactions like: RICKETTS: Are you […]
Game 106 Recap: Cubs 3 Marlins 2
As the calendar turned to August last year, Joe Maddon would repeatedly lift Jason Hammel in the fifth and sixth inning of games at the first sign of trouble. And invariably, the lanky pitcher would get upset with the decision. Tonight, Maddon did it again after six innings but there was one crucial difference: I […]
Game 96 Recap: Brewer 6 Cubs 1
Let’s face it. This is the B Story in Windy City sports right now. Because both Chicago baseball teams were scheduled to start pitchers from Texas tonight. And John Lackey turned out to be the rational one. Chris Sale is what happens when Edna Mode from The Incredibles crosses over to the Dark Side. But […]
More Dollars Than Sense In Atlanta Makeup Game
For most of the first half, the Cubs gave us a season relatively free of neurosis and paranoia. Then the last two weeks of the first half happened. And all of a sudden, it was like the soundtrack to Wrigley Field’s pregame hype video changed from Imagine Dragons’ “Warriors” to the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm. […]
Kris Bryant: National League All-Star, Baseball Stoic
On Monday, June 27, Kris Bryant had a day for the ages against the Cincinnati Reds, going 5-for-5 with three home runs and two doubles. As this had never happened before in baseball history, tributes to his achievement poured in from all over the baseball landscape. (Except for one Boston hack who sniffed that Bryant […]
Game 82 Recap: Cubs 10 Reds 4
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the […]