Image
On an Off-day in April with the Cubs in 1st Place
The 2016 Chicago Cubs media guide is 384 pages long.
Very little of it has to do with the World Series. Surprise, surprise. In fact, in the T of C, there’s no listing for that topic, though there is one for “World Baseball Classic and Cubs.” There’s even one for “Clark the Cub” on page 218. Who knew that he’s a direct-line descendant of Joa, his “great grandbear,” the team’s original live bear mascot back in the halcyon days of the early 20th century? Joa was retired to the Lincoln Park Zoo where he…never mind.
Fanning through the trivial almanac I did come across a few pages that detailed the Cub history in the Fall Classic. I paused to daydream for a moment on the sight of DiMaggio swatting a homer at Wrigley Field in October of 1938 off of the remains of the once-great Dizzy Dean.
This off-day in April while we pause to catch breath taken away by the team’s 14-5 bolt out of the blocks, let us not forget the great names of the past. Names like Orval Overall. Remember the next time a Cub pokes a grand slam inside-the-parker that there have been 10 precedents. Don’t suppose if “The Bearded Right Hander” should go the route in a 21-inning win that he will have been the first of our kind to do so; give props to Lefty Tyler. And the next time you’re bending elbows at your favorite sanctuary and the topic turns to wind trends at The Friendly Confines where the team has been playing into headwinds since seemingly forever (233 times in the last five years, to be exact, versus 97 blow outs), see if you can finagle this tidbit into a wager that buys you a round at someone else’s expense: Believe it or not, at game time on both June 15, 2011 and September 28, 2015, there was no wind at all!
As Casey Stengel was said to have said (though it was really James Thurber said it first), “You could look it up.”
Tags
Comments