Cubs Lose on Octuple Play

Official score on that play: 4-6-6-3-6-6-2-5-2

In what has to be the crowning achievement in the franchise's legacy of fail, the Cubs dropped the final game in the four-game sweep at the hands of the Padres by grounding into a game-ending octuple play in the 7th inning. Cubs manager Lou Piniella was flummoxed.

"Look, I've been around a long time in baseball, and I've never seen anything like this. I don't know what to say to these guys, I really don't," said the weary manager who was ejected and called out two thirds of the way through the play.

With the bases loaded and one out, Cubs second baseman Blake DeWitt hit a soft line drive that skipped in the dirt just before his Padres counterpart Jerry Hairston Jr. caught it. He flipped to short to retire Jeff Baker at second, but Tyler Colvin, who thought the line drive would be caught, was tagged out returning to second as well. The return throw beat DeWitt to first for the seemingly unnecessary fourth out of the inning, the third of what turned out to be eight on the play.

In Our Own Image

Even I can run hard out of the box (which would be odd after a strikeout).

They make millions of dollars a year. They get paid those millions to play the game we love. They should consider themselves lucky to be professional baseball players and collect the hard earned money we shell out to watch them play the game we love. The least these players can do is to try their best.

Except, actually, that's not the least they can do—that's the most we could do. If we (and by we, I mean society . . . specifically the non-professional baseball playing segment of it) were to play baseball in the majors, we would absolutely suck. We wouldn't be able to hit. We wouldn't be able to pitch. We wouldn't be able to hit the cutoff man. But we could try really hard. We could run out our ground-outs and pop-ups. We could make smart decisions. We could hustle. We could not admire our non-homers. We could dirty our uniforms. We could be scrappy.

For fans who wish we could play, it's hard to forgive a multimillionaire for failing to do the things we know we could do or for making the mistakes we know we could avoid. So when Alfonso Soriano or Aramis Ramirez don't sprint out of the batter's box or when Ryan Theriot gets TOOTBLAN'd or when Lou decides John Grabow should pitch in a game we think the Cubs have a chance to win, we self-respecting Cub fans get a bit angry. I've been trying to figure out the reason behind the outrage, and the conclusion I've come to doesn't reflect on us all too well.

2010 Cubs Predictions: They're NOT Gonna Happen

More optimistic than psychic, all hope and no sense, these predictions are guaranteed never to come true. But if even one does, I will brag about it for the rest of my life. Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak (Also posted at LOHO)

This is the last worthless weekend that we'll have to spend. All introductory east-coast-biased Sunday Night Baseball aside (that's right, Yankees and Red Sox, we don't care what happens between the two of you, no matter how much Joe Morgan insists that we must), Monday marks the dawn of the 2010 baseball season. So we're running out of time to make bold  educated  sabermetrically generated half-baked predictions for what the Cubs will be able to accomplish this year.

If the LOHO NCAA Pick 'Em Challenge has taught us anything, it's that my annual tradition of picking Kansas to win it all is guaranteed to go dreadfully wrong every year (except in the occasional instance when I break from tradition and allow them to succeed . . . sorry, Jayhawks). And if it has taught us two things, it's that I suck at predicting things. So here is a list of things I'm utterly confident will not happen, which is precisely why I am prognosticating that they will:

Alfonso Soriano will hit 40 homers. Do you remember last April? Soriano started the season hotter than a Gatorade-machine-bashing tantrum. And then he decided to test his knee reflex on the left-field wall. I'm hoping it was the injury that caused the precipitous production decline and not a failure to renew some Faustian deal with the devil. If I'm wrong (and I usually am) we'll be seeing more of Tyler Colvin in left than anyone is really hoping to get. (Tyler Colvin's mom excluded, of course.) If I'm right, Wrigley could be hosting its fair share of October baseball.

Baseball Season's Under Way . . .

Pitchers and catchers have yet to report, but they're thinking about it.

There's a foot of snow outside my house, but some of it is melting.

I know a lot of people hate the song, but I still feel compelled to get ready for a brand new day.

Vegas is giving 14:1 odds that the Cubs will win the World Series, but they also gave Buster Douglas 42:1 to beat Tyson.

The ivy looks dead, but it'll grow back.

I haven't heard Pat nor Ron nor Len nor Bob in quite awhile, but I know the next "Aw, Geez!" is right around the corner.

Somewhere someone's arguing about how much money Ryan Theriot deserves, and somewhere someone in Wrigleyville is wondering if getting called out by an arbiter is considered a TOOTBLAN.

Yeah, we're in the middle of the Winter Olympics, but when I see Sean White's head crash into the snowboard halfpipe, I can't help but think of Sam Fuld.

The Cubs will not win the World Series, but I refuse to learn.

Hope springs eternal, and so does stupidity.

It's 30 degrees outside, and it feels like baseball.

Play ball.