Tuesday, April 1, 2008

I managed to see all of the Sox game on Monday and most of the Cubs game too, and I think it’s safe to say that both sides of town suffered brutal loses on Opening Day 2008. The Sox kept coming back only to have the game stolen from them by the umpires. The Cubs came back in dramatic fashion thanks to Fukudome, after a shaky outing by Kerry Wood (or as Chef Hans calls him, Voody). I know that there are 161 games left, and winning the season opener isn’t everything, but it sure is fun when they do. The nice thing is that neither team seemed to give up. The Cubs played that way last year. The White Sox did not. That’s an encouraging sign for both Sox and Cubs fans.

I thought it was nice that the Cubs gave Ernie Banks his own statue outside the ballpark today, and even a mini-statue as a souvenir during the pregame ceremony. Why the heck was Jesse Jackson down on the field during the presentation? Reverend Jackson just looks silly standing out there for no reason. The crazy part is that he looks so darned oblivious out there. Maybe I missed something and Jesse and Ernie are tight as ticks, but it kind of looked like they just brought Jesse Jackson out on the field so that the Tribune Company could say that the event had a more “significant” meaning. For my money, Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, and Ernie Banks are pretty “significant.”

We all have a day to recover from the Monday afternoon debacles, and then we’ll need to gird ourselves for what turns out to be a very long season. It’s always funny to me that we bust our asses to go catch baseball in the dead of our April winter, but then there are summer days where we don’t even bother to show up. At least that’s the way it goes at U.S. Cellular. Wrigley Field seems to benefit from the consistency of Cubs fans, or at least their die-hard nature. It’s such a long season, but we're excited that it’s almost spring, so we throw all logic out the window. I was thinking that I’d really like the Cubs to sell the naming rights to Wrigley Field to Viagra. Voody can be the spokesmodel.