A Great Wind

Is anyone else dying to know who put that Ojibwe saying on Tony Soprano’s bulletin board? “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind carries me across the sky,” it reads. I just can’t shake the feeling that this is a clue to interpreting the series... which brings me to my first meandering point:



For the Cubs, the early clues are less obfuscating, and far less tantalizing. Walks, walks, walks. Too many walks by the starters, way too many walks by the bullpen, and way too few walks taken by the lineup. Decrying the walk problem was a refrain last season, and if that pattern repeats I am going to get very negative in a hurry. It’s such a little thing, except that it isn’t, like Chinese water torture. Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn into as huge a problem as it could.

But I’m not going to dwell, because like that Ojibwe saying suggests, there is a much bigger picture of which we are a very small part, such that if we have agency or free will, it’s much more limited than it seems. Maybe we get to control the micro-motions, like whether we pity ourselves or not, but it’s like trying to watch the second hand of a clock move when the clock is flying past you at 100 miles an hour. When you’re next to the clock it’s easy, but when you’re across the street, you realize that it’s all a matter of perspective. And to that I say go big or go home.

If anyone can wallow in self pity, it’s Nomar, who’s out again. You know, other than Mark Prior. With Nomar, at least everyone still remembers that the guy hit .372 one year, and I had a little hunch he was going to break out this year. Apparently my hunch was wrong.

But Prior? People forget how good Prior was down the stretch in 2003. August: 5 games, 5-0 with a 0.69 ERA, 35Ks and 4 walks. September: 6 games, 5-1 with a 2.27 ERA, 60Ks and 12 walks. Other than Clemens, I can't think of a more dominating two-month stretch by any pitcher the last few years. And now it’s all forgotten because the guy has not pitched a healthy season since.

I’m still not willing to give up on him. I am using all my puny mental might to will him NOT to follow the Scott Erickson trajectory -- 20-8 / 3.18 in 1991, although with more walks and fewer strikeouts, but the point being that he was never the same after that season. Although that raises an interesting question: do you think Erickson would trade that 1991 World Series ring for a better career with no World Series?

Plenty of players get to the end of their career and come to believe (realize?) that the ring is the most important goal, and some of them sacrifice plenty to go for one before it’s too late, but would a guy make the deal early? And would we, acting in his stead? Would I be willing to offer the gods Mark Prior’s successful career with the third-place Cubs in exchange to him getting us a 2006 World Series win?

But that’s a stupid question, isn’t it. See, this is what games like the first two do to me. They’ve been sloppy, and so my thoughts go meandering along to wacky far-off places in order to keep my mental world in harmony. Writing about clocks and wind and hypothetical deals with baseball gods is a defense mechanism against bad throws and bullpen walks.

Maybe I should put my wandering to good use. I should start imagining late inning scenarios in which Dusty’s lineup moves make sense. Or not... that would take an awful lot of effort to untangle those threads because Occam is screaming in my other ear, “Just pinch hit for Eyre next inning – he’s not going to pitch more than one inning anyway!”

I hope you didn’t come here looking for more analysis. There are plenty of places you can get that elsewhere on the web, and it’d be better than mine. Probably. Here, though, you can read about how it feels to be a Cub fan after a messy start.

How does it feel after two games? Odd. Or, more specifically, unsatisfying.

What we wanted was a clear early sign that the skeptics were wrong. At first, we thought we had it with those perfect first ups: a triple by Pierre, a double, a walk, and men on base with the inning alive for Murton’s homerun. But really what we got was static – lots of black and white dots amounting to fuzz moving around in an unclear grey picture. Except we can’t change the channel. It’s either turn it off or wait for the picture to materialize, and for most of us, our power button is broken.

We wanted desperately to believe that the improvements outweighed the same-olds. But it’s on the one hand, on the other. Leadoff hits? Bullpen walks. Bench production? Defensive blunders. Scott Eyre? Managerial... curiosities. Up and down. .500.

To top it off, they’re killing us with off days. The last thing we need is more time to think about it. Obviously.

I will say that Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee are primed, and for evidence I offer Ramirez’s great stop to his right today on a Kearns hot shot, and Lee’s 445’ HR to deep left center. The question was Ramirez’s health affecting his defense, and Lee’s health affecting his offense. It certainly seems that these guys are healthy and keyed in.

So there’s always that. There are worse things than a .500 season of watching those two. And if they can get that walks problem straightened out, maybe it will be much better than that.