But putting analysis aside, one thing I noticed is that the fans seemed to feel much less urgency about this season. Last year, among the fans I talked with, there was the sense that the Cubs had to win in 2008. But the 101st season apparently brings less pressure than the one before. To me, this is a good thing. If there's one thing the collective mindset can use, it's less pressure.

Anyway, I've never been one for predictions. I enjoyed reading The Sporting News's take (Yankees over Cubs in the World Series), but it's too easy to jump on a million contingencies. So I'll stick with what I saw.

• Soriano and Bradley were both squaring up on the ball just fine. For that matter, so were Ramirez, Lee, and Soto. And Theriot. In fact, I didn't see a single leak in the starting lineup, plus there's depth. I haven't felt as confident about the lineup in years.
  
  

  

  
  
• In descending order, best to worst, the best spring training parks we saw were: (1)Camelback (White Sox & Dodgers); (2) HoHoKam (Cubs); Scottsdale (Giants); (4) Hi Corbett (Rockies). Hi Corbett gets points for having the best beers—reasonable people could disagree, since HoHoKam vendors sold Old Style cans—but on pure stadiums, it's no contest that Camelback was the best. Photos:
  

  

  (Camelback)
  

  

  (HoHoKam)
  

  

  (Scottsdale)
  

  

  (Hi Corbett)
  
  
• Micah Hoffpauir can really, really hit the ball. With nothing left to prove at AAA, he better be in the big leagues all season. As KEJ pointed out, he's not young—he just turned 29—so there's no point "developing" him.
  
  
• Reed Johnson is playing with passion. Besides hitting well all weekend, he delivered a frozen rope from mid-deep right field to third base to beat a runner by three steps, easily one of the two best plays of the weekend in Arizona. The other was Milton Bradley's diving catch in right field. If our outfielders make plays like this, it's going to be a very fun season.
  
  
• Zambrano is just awesome. He looked the sharpest out of the starting pitchers, by far. I'm expecting a positive start on opening day.
  
  

  

  
  
• Jeff Samardzija looked great. I don't know whether it's best to use him in relief, or send him down to AAA to try developing as a starter. But I'm thinking about Wainwright on the Cardinals, and how it worked out fine for him to transition back to starting after helping in the bullpen, and thinking I trust Samardzija a lot more than Gaudin right now.
  
  

  

  
  
• Fukudome looked lost. But I'm not giving up on him just yet. He looked lost last spring, too, I recall, and then opened April on a tear. But did I mention how Reed Johnson was playing? If Johnson continues, contracts mean nothing: play the hot hand.
  
  
• We're going to miss Mark DeRosa. Ted Lilly might have thrown him a couple of batting practice fastballs—which he clocked for a HR and a double adding up to nearly 900 feet—but more than that, he's a ballplayer in the best sense of the word. This was easily what had everyone most upset about the offseason. (Although to be fair, Aaron Miles showed surprising pop in his bat.)
  
  

  

  
  
• We're going to miss Wood, too. He looked as healthy as ever. (OK, maybe that's not the best description for him, but he looked strong.)
  
  

  

  
  
• It was strange, watching Wood & DeRosa meet with the Cubs players before the game. Those were easily two of the most prominent faces of the team—Wood for a decade.
  
  

  

  
  
• Oddly, in four games we never saw the Cubs late relief corps pitch. So I've got nothing on Marmol or Gregg. Although I'm personally glad they're not pushing Marmol. It's tough to put my finger on, but I don't trust him in the biggest pressure spots yet
  
  
• I'm not hearing much about him, but Joey Gathright looked like what we hoped Felix Pie could be. He's very fast, he hits, and he plays with enthusiasm (which is a lot more than I can say for Pie at a game in Round Rock last summer, where Pie carried himself like he was too good to be there and couldn't be bothered to give 100%). It looks like Gathright's gonna make the opening day roster, and I think he earned it. As a situational player who can enter in a pinch (hit or run) and stay in the outfield for defense, you couldn't think of someone better.
  
  
• I thought I was going to be in the minority who's taking a wait-and-see approach with Dempster's success, but I heard a lot of similar chatter. We want another year like last year before we think of him as one of our aces.
  
  So that leaves us with the following: a very solid lineup, enough youth & speed, enough depth, and plenty of starting pitching. The only question, then, is the bullpen. I guess we can only hope that it sorts itself out correctly, soon. I will say that if it's between Patton and Gaudin, Patton's stuff looked much better. And if it's between Samardzija and Guzman, Samardzija's stuff looked much better.
  
  I can't wait for Monday. This season feels good. Really good. Cautious-but-optimistic good.
  
  Cubs-Baseball-good. ]]> default 2009-04-02T20:49:00-07:00 admin http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=287 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=287#comm Agony & Ivy has been dormant, but is not dead. Major disappointment last fall, followed by my third year of law school, had sapped my energy to post. But spring returns for baseball-watchers, too. I'll be making some minor updates to the site soon, updating links and so on. I'll also be writing about Spring Training, which I'll attend in two weekends. And I have a few other things planned for this summer and fall. In the meantime, if people are unaware, The Baseball Chronicle, an online magazine, now exists. I think this is a brilliant, timely, and valuable project. It has the potential to fill a major gap in the on-line baseball commentary world, focusing on the narratives that stay with us through time, which make sense of the game and ourselves as we grow older—the stories of the games, the players, the teams, and of course, the fans. This is necessary to balance the curt criticisms or opinions that seem to dominate the websites. Opinions are fine, especially when they are supported by arguments. But stories last. I hope to contribute a piece if I can make time later this season. Most of all, though, I hope it thrives, and I wish them the best. Cheers, JCB 287@http://www.agonyandivy.com/ spring returns for baseball-watchers, too.
  
  I'll be making some minor updates to the site soon, updating links and so on. I'll also be writing about Spring Training, which I'll attend in two weekends. And I have a few other things planned for this summer and fall.
  
  In the meantime, if people are unaware, The Baseball Chronicle, an online magazine, now exists. I think this is a brilliant, timely, and valuable project. It has the potential to fill a major gap in the on-line baseball commentary world, focusing on the narratives that stay with us through time, which make sense of the game and ourselves as we grow older—the stories of the games, the players, the teams, and of course, the fans. This is necessary to balance the curt criticisms or opinions that seem to dominate the websites. Opinions are fine, especially when they are supported by arguments. But stories last. I hope to contribute a piece if I can make time later this season. Most of all, though, I hope it thrives, and I wish them the best.
  
  Cheers,
  
  JCB ]]> default 2009-03-15T19:37:00-07:00 jcb http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=286 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=286#comm It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone. --A. Barlett Giamatti, former President of both Yale and the National League. This is the first paragraph of his 1977 essay 286@http://www.agonyandivy.com/ It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.
  --A. Barlett Giamatti, former President of both Yale and the National League. This is the first paragraph of his 1977 essay The Green Fields of the Mind, recalling the Red Sox collapse of 1975.
  
  * * *It happened again after the Cubs took a slim lead: as I watched Rich Harden pitch, I was not thinking about whether the Cubs would win the game; I was thinking about whether they will win the World Series. I can’t be the only one, right? We’ve reached that point now, haven’t we, where every game feels bigger than one game, at least at some point during the contest, as our mind drifts, searching for signals and signs, omens foreshadowing the future of our team, the 2008 Chicago Cubs?
  
  Maybe it’s just me, anyway, but I can’t help myself. I can’t stay in the present.

  The problem with feeling this way is not that we’ve been burned before. (Although we have. At lunch a couple of weeks ago, trading dozens of baseball stories with another Cubs fan, the one that he later reported telling his kids about was that I was at the NLCS Game 6 in 2003. As I recalled that night, a memory materialized, of sitting there just a little towards third base from home, a few dozen rows up, hands and feet tingling with a mixture of cold and adrenaline, watching Mark Prior return to the mound for warm-up pitches in one of the middle innings, under the lights, the crowd quiet, as we reached the point where we were nearly all talked out, as our anticipation heightened and there was little left to say.)
  
  The problem is that the story unfolding in front of us this season seems almost too perfect to trust, too much like a Cubs story. I mean, to finally win again in the one-hundredth season — this on its own is so perfectly symmetrical that it’s almost aesthetic, as literary in the mind’s eye as Wrigley Field.
  
  But there’s so much more. There are so many stories this season that feel like perfect Cubs stories in the making. Redemption stories, like Kerry Wood, and to some extent Ryan Dempster. There’s the way that the fans have embraced Kosuke Fukudome, and Jim Edmonds. There’s the presumptive rookie of the year, Geovany Soto. There’s the players coming into their own, like Theriot, whose on-base percentage hovers around .400. And you can go on, because this year, nearly every single guy has a story that adds something to the tapestry. The team is playing the game the right way.
  
  At some point you have to wonder if it’s all too good to be true.
  
  Then I remember: the other way the story goes is also a perfect Cubs story, just in the other sense. To come short would invoke ’69, and ’84, and ’89, and ’98, and ’03. No team has known such despair for so long without respite.
  
  And so it is: Janus has presented us this door — it only remains to be seen what’s on the other side, a victory so perfect and intense that only the steadfast Cubs could deserve it, or a disappointment so perfect that only the Cubs could endure it. It remains to be seen which ending the god of endings (and beginnings) has prepared.
  
  Most Cubs fans have remained hopeful and faithful and optimistic all these years, and now the team has put itself in position where it will either bring us the greatest reward in a century, made even sweeter by the drought, or the greatest letdown. This latter is not hyperbole, either: factoring in the Cubs stature on paper and their first-place standing, the media coverage, all the subtexts, the media personalization by fans, and especially the century thing, never before has it felt like it has to be this year. Still, it is also baseball, and in baseball as in life, nothing is certain. Plus, the Angels are really good, too.
  
  Giamatti is right. Baseball will break our heart in 2008. Either it will break our heart by ending when we wish it could last forever, or it will just break our heart.
  
  

  * * *So here we are. There are six weeks left in the season. No one is on the disabled list except for a few non-essential pitchers (Lieber, Fox, and Guzman). The Cubs are ahead by 5 and a half games, 8 and a half in the Wild Card should it come to that. As far as hopes go, we’re about to pass the point of no return. It’s nearly time to go emotionally all in. 2008 can no longer be just another season. Maybe it never could, being the century mark, but now the point is stronger.
  
  Of course, I hope the team does not get caught up in this. They need to play one game at a time, one play at a time, and focus on execution. For them, the narrative must take shape in retrospect, or at least in moments off the field.
  
  But for the fans, with the luxury of idle moments and imagination during each game, and who can contribute nothing except for support, and will, and faith — for us, the narrative must unfold as though the end is certain but just out of reach. However it goes, it will feel predestined. It will feel as though we are dying to speed things up, to flip ahead to the last chapter. It will also feel as though we wish we could slow it down, and savor our ignorance of the future.
  
  It will feel like life at its most intensified.
  
  When you look at it this way, you realize the predicament is not a problem at all. It’s a gift. It’s rare in life to feel adrenalized by participation in something bigger, where something so significant is at stake. This is the catharsis sports offers at its best. And this year, there’s no avoiding it. No matter what happens, the story will be too perfect, but it will also be real. It’s true that life imitates art, but every once in a while, life is more than art could ever be. Not just stranger than fiction, but better.
  
  Here’s how it ended for Giamatti:

  Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on. That is why it breaks my heart, that game — not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.
  
  Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. There are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

  
  Or, it might as well be a white flag with a blue W rippling in a crisp, cold Chicago wind, lit from below by lights atop an old green scoreboard against a cloudless ink-blue sky. Giamatti died in 1989, in September, shortly after being promoted to Commissioner of Baseball, which is a shame because he never witnessed how the story could have ended instead. All it takes is enough seasons, and it will happen eventually: the illusion becoming reality.
  
  Here goes. I can't wait to see whether it looks like it does in my mind's eye. ]]> default 2008-08-20T17:35:00-07:00 jcb http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=279 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=279#comm I haven't been able to watch the games this week. Today, though, I'm taking a break to watch the game and let my mind wander through everything Cubs. Here, then, is a collection of mid-April meanderings jotted as I watch. Editor's Note: If you watch the games on DVR or something, and you subscribe to Agony & Ivy's RSS or Atom feed, don't read any more until later! There's spoilers. On the offensive t-shirts So, has everyone heard about the t-shirts being sold outside Wrigley Field by now? 279@http://www.agonyandivy.com/
  Editor's Note: If you watch the games on DVR or something, and you subscribe to Agony & Ivy's RSS or Atom feed, don't read any more until later! There's spoilers.
  
  On the offensive t-shirts
  So, has everyone heard about the t-shirts being sold outside Wrigley Field by now?It's arrogant and insensitive to comically characterize another race for a cheap laugh. It's one thing to impersonate an individual who happens to be of another race--also potentially offensive, but not necessarily, if you tread the line carefully, in very limited contexts. (In this case, I think it would be equally offensive if there was a picture of Fukudome's face with the "Horry Kow" lettering. There's no way to avoid crossing the line, especially since Fukudome has done nothing to deserve derision.) But, to demean an entire culture?
  
  I'm not going to go so far as to say that Japanese players breaking into the major leagues is as monumental as when Jackie Robinson broke in 61 years ago. I will go so far as to say that it goes to show that for all the progress we've made in 61 years, a lot of our culture still has a long way to go. It's not that far for the arrogance of humor to devolve into the arrogance of cruelty; to go from thinking it's alright to portray someone like this to thinking they deserve it. Heaven help us.
  
  Cubs fans especially should respect Fukudome, appreciate the way he plays the game, and do our best to help him navigate our foreign culture. He's giving us his best. Does he not deserve the same?
  
  On Respect
  Even as I just wrote this, Fukudome triples to center. (Man, he's good.) As McLouth chased the ball down, a bleacher member poured a beer over the fence, and almost drenched McLouth. It touches on a similar vein: how can people not respect the game of baseball enough not to do this? Men play this game not only to entertain fans but to make a great living, and to participate in the tradition, a cultural institution. Fans have no right to do something like pour a beer at an opponent.
  
  On Alfonso Soriano
  All season, I thought something was off with Soriano. Either he wasn't hustling, or he was not 100% healthy. There were several plays in several games--like the one where the ball got past him after bouncing off the left field foul wall, and a gapper that he should have been able to cut it off, and a flare that was past Theriot that I thought he should have gotten to and caught--where he did not look like himself. Now, I wonder whether it's been health all season. I realize it's been the hamstring that's been reportedly bugging him in the past, and it's the calf that's strained, but still. Maybe favoring the hamstring led to tweaking the calf, or maybe the calf's been bothering him and we just didn't know about it. I guess it doesn't really matter, except to say that I hope whatever it is, I hope he's able to fully recuperate, and that we won't see little plays like we did early on that looked like half-efforts.
  
  On Bob Brenly
  Is there anyone better than Bob at over-explaining an obvious point? Like his exposition on outfielders breaking in their gloves compared to infielders last weekend? I was watching the game Saturday with AWL, and as Bob started in on how to bend the fingers of a glove, I said to him, "Here we go, a classic Brenly..." and Bob proceeded to go on, and on, and on...and on... Gotta love it. It's a long season, but there's no one like Bob at filling in the dead spots. As for Len? When Bob finished, he just deadpanned: "Good stuff." Nicely done.
  
  On Daryl Ward
  Someone needs to remind Ward not to pull everything. He's been trying to pull outside pitches and rolling them over to the right--the surest sign of a slump that there is. Today he lofted a low ball to the opposite field, so maybe that's an improvement, but still--he doesn't look like himself up there right now. And the Cubs are going to need him even more as they get into games against teams like the Mets, where I expect they'll be in close games and need to pinch hit for pitchers.
  
  On Rich Hill
  I was kind of hoping they would let Blanco catch Rich Hill today instead of Soto. The first few times out, it's been obvious that Rich Hill doesn't trust his fastball. What was worse is that a week ago, Soto didn't seem to realize this, and was calling for fastballs in counts where there was no room for error. I'm not saying it's Soto's fault that Hill has pitched poorly. I just thought that maybe Blanco could help Hill regain his confidence more quickly by guiding him through the early part of the counts.
  
  Today, though, Soto did fine, and so did Hill.
  
  On Kerry Wood
  There are certain instincts you just can't teach, like when Kerry Wood took a bunt and threw to second to get the lead runner. It's one of those plays you hate a player to make...unless he makes it. I don't know how long it will take for Kerry Wood to become comfortable as a closer. So far, every scenario is still new. Sooner or later, they'll start to become familiar, and that's when we'll really know just how good he can be. But with instincts like that, and a blazing fastball and plenty of breaking stuff, I'm feeling awful excited about the second half of the season for number 34.
  
  On Ronny Cedeño
  From BMK: "why did they take the tilde off of ronny cedeño's jersey?"
  
  Whatever's on his jersey, I don't trust him in a clutch moment yet.
  
  On Eric Patterson (Or Rather, On Not Matt Murton or Sam Fuld)
  A week and a half ago BMK also said: "bring back Sam Fuld." As Soriano got hurt, I thought they might. Then I remembered Matt Murton, and thought, "Nevermind." Instead of either, though, it's Eric Patterson.
  
  Why? It's curious. Well, maybe not with respect to Fuld--he's 2 for 20 down at AAA. But why not Murton?
  
  Murton & Fuld are both on the 40 man roster. It's not an options thing for either one of them. As long as they're both on the 40 man roster, they can come and go between AAA and the Cubs all season this season.
  
  Back to basics: it seems like if an outfielder goes down, you might want to bring up an outfielder. Patterson and DeRosa can play the outfield and second in conjunction, but they're less natural. Is it all to make room for Fontenot to get some at bats? Doesn't seem like it. Is it because they need more options to hit leadoff? Is it because they're trying to work with Pie, and because Reed Johnson is also producing? All of these? I suppose any or all of them can explain it, but I can't see any of this outweighing the offensive production the Cubs can get from Murton in left field. What it comes down to is that I do not expect Patterson to produce as much as Murton would.
  
  Murton, by the way, is hitting .317 in 41 at bats for Iowa, but curiously all his hits have been singles (and he's drawn 10 walks).
  
  On Fan Cam Being Especially Weak This Season
  What's up with that?
  
  Cubs win!
  1-2-3- for Kerry Wood, and that's that. ]]> default 2008-04-18T16:09:00-07:00 jcb http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=278 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=278#comm My jaw literally dropped when I picked up my weekend mail this evening, and saw the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker. The title is "Lost and Found" by Mark Ulriksen. Here's the image (with its source pulling the image directly from the "About Us" page of the New Yorker website for this issue): 278@http://www.agonyandivy.com/ New Yorker. The title is "Lost and Found" by Mark Ulriksen. Here's the image (with its source pulling the image directly from the "About Us" page of the New Yorker website for this issue):
  

  So, what do we think the title means? Beyond the obvious, an arm wearing Cubbie blue holding up the baseball found within the familiar lush Boston Ivy, I wonder if there has to be some larger significance here. I'm going to let it roll around for a few days and see what comes up. If it can take on a larger meaning--perhaps a prophesy?--about the Cubs finally coming out of the wilderness with the prize, I'm all for Ulriksen getting it right.
  
  Roger Angell also posted a brief column for the Talk of the Town, entitled "Green"--as in money. It's rather pessimistic and fatalistic in tone, concluding: "Baseball, we’ve discovered once again, is always better as a sample of American business life than as a place for moral lessons. It’s still the national pastime." I think it echoes many of the concerns voiced in this space along the way. Still, whatever he writes, it's nice to see Angell penning commentary about baseball because his cadence smacks of an older era of sportswriter.
  
  His point, at its simplest, is that baseball is in some significant ways different than before, and from his tone, I think it's safe to say "worse" than before. I think he's both right and wrong. He's right that "[b]aseball pressure is much, much higher today—because of the fans’ and the owners’ insistent demand for success, because of the greater competition brought about by the wild card and the inflated postseason and the luxury tax on larger teams, and because of the money." But he never goes on to observe that between the lines, certain truths of the game remain true; and certain hopes will always ring out. Whereas he sees his AAA call-up yelling "Help!" in the face of the veteran's advantages, I see the infielder thinking to himself, "This is my chance. Bring it on."
  
  But I suppose that might just be the Cubs fan in me coming out again. ]]> default 2008-04-06T22:26:00-07:00 admin http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=275 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=275#comm PMc - Are you out there? I've tried to maintain contact with professional sports journalist PMc this off-season, who has written in this space before. However, he's moved, and his e-mail addresses are no longer working. Here's hoping he swings by the site, gets in touch, and resurrects the column. If there's anyone else who is interested in writing a bi-weekly literary-journalistic column about the Chicago Cubs this season, let me know. -JCB 275@http://www.agonyandivy.com/
  I've tried to maintain contact with professional sports journalist PMc this off-season, who has written in this space before. However, he's moved, and his e-mail addresses are no longer working. Here's hoping he swings by the site, gets in touch, and resurrects the column.
  
  If there's anyone else who is interested in writing a bi-weekly literary-journalistic column about the Chicago Cubs this season, let me know.
  
  -JCB ]]> wrigleyville 2008-03-31T22:10:00-07:00 jmi http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=81 http://www.agonyandivy.com/pivot/entry.php?id=81#comm Moving from Wrigleyville to Wicker Park this past month reminds me in many ways of moving to a different part of the country. Everything is different, fresh, not quite familiar, and there’s something adventurous about discovering it all for the first time. People look different, act different, care about different things. 81@http://www.agonyandivy.com/
  (OK, so they don’t have frozen ostrich heads, but they do have some crazy shit.)
  
  My apartment is WAY different. I went from a cramped one bedroom for around $800 a month to a warehouse with three other guys for about $600 a month. My lifestyle is different now too. I’m going out a lot more, but drinking less. Meeting people is easier, but I find myself pickier than ever. I’m not bothered by any of these changes, but am just amazed how a hop across town can create so many of them. Chicago is without question a city comprised of unique neighborhoods.
  
  When it comes to following the Cubs, at first it seems that there probably couldn’t be anything more different between these two locations. Wrigleyville wouldn’t even exist without Cubs baseball, whereas Wicker Park seems completely indifferent to the existence of it. There are no sports bars in Wicker Park, no stands on the street with “Sox Suck” t-shirts, no murals depicting Ryno in the El stops. Culture could exist without baseball in Wicker Park, believe it or not.
  
  Or… at least that’s what Wicker Park-ites might want you to think. People in Wicker Park are all about independence. The time and effort it takes to have a relationship (with anything) is lost on people here, sometimes. Everyone is shooting for an extreme sort of self-reliance, the kind that creative people all have.
  
  However, this is really an illusion. Everyone needs support and people here are no exception – even if they don’t want to admit it. People like to be a part of ‘something.’ That’s why if I walk into the Gold Star Lounge (my nearest dive bar) during a night game there’s a handful of people there watching it on the TV that sits crookedly on top of the 70’s refrigerator behind the bar. Their book or conversation might indicate indifference, but in reality they’re there to watch the game. They are there because the American relationship with baseball pulls on everyone in our country who brushes up against it, regardless of who they are, and asks them to take part. Even if you hate baseball, it is in some way a part of your life here because it is a part of where you live. Chicago goes back with baseball farther than anyone goes back with Chicago. In Wrigleyville the culture is far more transparent, but maybe that’s why I like places like Wicker Park: inspiration is not always so easy to figure out.
  
  I think I like watching baseball in Wicker Park more. I don’t have cable here (yet) so I am forced to go out if I want to watch, and this lands me in very different situations than if I was in Wrigleyville. Here, there is usually just a TV or two in the bar at most, and they’re not anything eye-catching like the plasma screens in most Wrigleyville bars. The relaxed nature with which people watch baseball here attracts me. People are usually sipping a beer, maybe reading something, and just generally taking it easy. The mood is not aggressive like I’ve seen in many Wrigleyville establishments. The pace people watch the game actually feels more like the pace of the game itself: slow and reserved until a tense situation develops.
  
  Watching baseball in Wrigleyville is like listening to Metallica – this music is about energy, it is about excitement. It is full on testosterone and adrenaline. The problem is that oftentimes baseball doesn’t deserve this level of excitement. A baseball game -- and more so, a baseball season -- has its own rhythm, and staying fully charged all the time like this can burn you out. In Wicker Park the reflection and mindfulness involved with watching baseball is more important than the constant release of energy, and my personality seems to agree with that, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it until recently.
  
  Don’t get me wrong though; being in Wrigleyville for Cubs baseball can be spectacular. Sometimes I yearn for that electricity that’s in the air as you wait in line for your bleacher seats or you taste your first beer at Sluggers. It’s really something. But my favorite part of baseball culture while I was living in Wrigleyville was the part that most reflects what enjoying baseball in Wicker Park is like.
  
  On a lot of evenings, I would get home from work at about 6:15 and pull something out of the fridge to eat as I prepared for the 7:05 start. I’d sit in my Grandfather’s old leather chair in the corner of my tiny apartment, right beside the west windows, and I’d switch on WGN radio just in time to hear Pat Hughes reading the lineups. I’d usually throw back a beer at this point and just listen, waiting for my favorite part.
  
  Then it would happen: Sosa, Ramirez, Lee, or any number of others would put one onto Waveland Ave. and as I listened to Pat make the call, I could hear the sound of Wrigley erupting through my window. That was the best part of a lot of days in Wrigleyville. That's the part Wicker Park can understand, but never have. That’s the part I will sincerely miss the most. ]]> westside 2005-07-30T02:28:00-07:00