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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Okay--

I am a dyed in the wool Cubbies fan. But due to a typical Cubbie collapse at the end of the season, they're staying home for the playoffs this year.

I'd like to see the Red Sox and the Astros in the World Series.

It'll probably be the Yankees and the Cardinals, and then I really won't give a rat's ass.

Boston/St. Louis would be fun, 'cause it would bring back memories of the '67 series between those two clubs, and Tim McCarver, the Cards' catcher back then, is the Fox Sports commentator for the World Series, and I'm sure they can find Bob Gibson somewhere and try to get his reaction and he'll tell them all to fuck off and then he'll slug somebody.

Gibson was one of the greatest pitchers I've ever seen but he didn't have much tolerance for the sports media. Probably still doesn't.

But for now I'm a Sox fan. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Red Sox.

Gotta vote for the underdog.

They're a different kind of world series loser. They've been in the WS quite a bit (last time was in 1986) but they've not won in what, 86 years? The Cubbies haven't been in the world series since 1945. They lost. The last time they won was 1908. That's long enough for all the guys on the team and their CHILDREN to die.

No doubt about it, if the Sox win this year, the official title of "loveable losers" will go for all time to the Chicago Cubs.

Wait until next year...

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I haven't been to a sports event in a long time because my family HATES THEM.
Last game I went to was a Diamondbacks/Giants game two years ago when my pal Bill Schuch came down from SF. Curt Schilling pitched for the good guys. Somebody won.

Baseball's funny that way. If you go to enough games you eventually forget who did what, who won what, unless something really monumental occurs. Like a no-hitter or a Home Run milestone or something like that.

I can remember going to Wrigley Field five or six times when I was a kid and the thing that really stands out in my mind is NOT the score of the games but the fact that at one of the games, I'm thinking 1966, they were selling small pizzas that came in boxes with different Cubs' pictures on them. The box said, "Collect 'em all!" like you were really gonna take a pizza-greased box home and keep it.

As I recall, my friend Eddie Herndon, who I went to the game with, got a greasy picture of Ernie Banks. Lucky son of a bitch. I got stuck with Joey Amalfitano. Typical.

Not that it mattered much. When you're nine and a baseball fan you're in awe of anybody who has the ability to even catch batting practice in the major leagues. They're all heroes at that point, even though most of them would soon be forgotten, or the butt of jokes, and not in the Hall of Fame with Ernie Banks.
I probably thought having a greasy picture of Joey Amalfitano was pretty cool.

At Commiskey Park, where the White Sox played until a few years ago when they finally built them a new park under the threat of a physical collapse of the old stadium, there was this old vendor who you could hear all over the park yelling, "RED HOTS!! GETCHA RED HOTS!" I remember having to ask my dad what a "red hot" was. (It's a hot dog.)

The guys at Wrigley always called them "hot dogs," which may explain why I went to more Cubs games. At least I understood the language.

TT

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