Four More Weeks

Labor Day arrives and nearly every season Cub fans mostly turn their attention away from baseball. This year is no exception. In fact, there has been nothing exceptional about this season at all, at least not in any positive sense. Michael Barrett’s recent injury personified what the season has felt like -- a deflected ball to the junk. There: I said it.

Around Austin, it’s Texas football first and foremost, and as the cannon fired signaling the easy defeat of North Texas last Saturday, all attention turned to Ohio State. Tension is already building, as people expect that around 30,000 Buckeye fans will arrive in town for one of the biggest games of the season. I mean, Buckeye fans have rented both Stubbs BBQ and the Erwin Center for parties. This is pretty much insanity. On the other hand, it’s #1 playing at the defending champs (#3) the second week of September. I’ll admit: I can’t wait to be at the game.

Past that, there’s the matter of school starting. One week in, I’m reminded how easily it is to fall into the cadence that pulses on a college campus in September. I walk east from the drag over to the law school, and fall into the rhythm. The vibe is night and day from the vibe you feel on a morning commute, no doubt about it.

All of this is to say that the Cubs season is simply slugging on. It’s still there, and I’m still watching, but there’s a void to the games. There’s not even many chances for the Cubs to spoil it for someone else. I suppose the Phillies and the Braves need wins to scrap for the Wild Card, and the Dodgers need to hold on, but it’s just not the same as playing a team in your own division, a closer rival, who’s trying to push into the playoffs. The only series left with any pizzazz, then, will probably be the two with the Reds.

It set in last week, this void. Last week was as awful a week of Cubs baseball as there’s been all year, which is saying something. There were not just baserunning mistakes but astonishing blunders. And errors. And walks. Blown leads. Horrible swings. Pretty much everything ugly a baseball team can achieve, they did it. Even Zambrano let it get to him.

Still, I’m watching. There’s something about a Cubs season, I just have to see it to the end. You commit yourself to the story, and you have to see it through to its acidic conclusion, even when the conclusion has been foregone for months.

I’ll admit, though, that I’m not watching the same way. I’m not keeping score for all the games. I fell asleep yesterday and by the time I woke up, Guzman’s lead was blown. My concentration lapses.

I was thinking yesterday about what I would do if I were commissioner of baseball. It started with Barry Bonds, although I wasn’t thinking about the big dilemmas -- decisions regarding asterisks and ramifications of criminal perjury charges. I was thinking about that elbow armor he wears.

I think that’s the most peeving item in baseball, the elbow armor. I hate it. I wish there were rules banishing it from the game. But I can see the other side. So, I think if I were commissioner, I would adopt my old roommate KEJ’s compromise: A player can wear the armor, but if he gets hit by a pitch in the armor, it’s simply a ball, and he is not awarded first base. That way you can wear it if you are recovering from an injury, but it stops guys like Bonds from crowding the plate and gaining an unnatural advantage over the pitcher. Makes sense, no?

Past that, I’d eliminate the Wild Card, but only as part of a larger plan wherein I would expand the league to 32 teams, with eight 4-team divisions comprised of teams in close geographic proximity. That way you still have an 8 team playoff, but you get real division races, close rivalries with the teams in your division whom you would play most often, and you eliminate decidedly mediocre teams hanging in a Wild Card race. I think that balances the legacy of pennant races with the need for a larger playoff system.

And of course I would abolish the DH as part of the restructuring, as a couple of teams would probably have to switch from the AL to the NL, but that’s just an aside.

Those are the things I think about as the Cubs trudge along. I truly hope there’s a few more thrilling moments left in the final 4 weeks, but if not, at least it’s still a pastime. I’ve heard it said that there’s a sort of nobility in seeing something through to the end when it would be easier or more convenient to drop off. Maybe. But I’m not sure that applies, so what I guess I’m feeling is simply that bad Cubs baseball is better than no baseball at all.