I spent 10 gajillion dollars to stay at the Hotel Zachary, across the street from Wrigley. I’m not saying that having this window view made the price worth it … but close, right?
Caught the Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field Sunday with our pal Nick Offerman (and Nick’s mom and dad! Ric and Cathy!). Good time all around. There was cloud cover most of the game, so it was cool. Wind was blowing in, so fly balls DIED. The Cubs’ offense has inexplicably gone AWOL, so it was tense.
And the Cubs won on a sac fly in the eighth.
Buck O’Neil always said that unless you have a strong rooting interest, you should ALWAYS root for the home team.
In other words, it was just about perfect. All of it.
Like Roy Hobbs said: God, I love baseball.
Ian Happ is the longest tenured Chicago athlete. Not just Cub. He’s been in Chicago longer than any White Sock*, Bear, Bull, or Blackhawk. That seems crazy because, to an old guy like me, Ian Happ was called up like a year ago. I still think of him as “Young Ian Happ.” But he just turned 31 (Happ Birthday!), and he’s been a darned good player for years now. He has more than 20 career WAR. He’s won three Gold Gloves. He has seamlessly moved into that “veteran leader” role when no one was looking. Or at least I wasn’t looking.
*Yes, I do know that the singular of “White Sox” is not “White Sock.” It’s just something I’m trying out.
Anyway, we talked with Ian Happ before the game for a couple of minutes — Nick’s dad Ric even found the time to offer his suggestion that the Cubs take all their cold bats and throw them into a giant bonfire to break the hitting slump (Ian was kind of into it). And I was reminded how precious it is to have a good player on your hometown team for his whole career. We obviously talk a lot about the GREAT players who spend their whole careers with one team — the George Bretts and Derek Jeters and Cal Ripkens and Tony Gwynns and so on — they’re the game’s icons.
But there’s a special place in baseball heaven for the good players — the Robby Thompsons and Mike Greenwells, the Alex Gordons and Jim Gantners, the Frank Whites and Ryan Howards, the Andre Ethiers and Jason Variteks.*
There’s no telling the future. But I hope Ian Happ is a Cub forever.
*The Ian Happ model “good but not great player who stays on the same team his whole career” player I was actually thinking about was Brian Roberts. I totally forgot that Roberts spent a lamentable 91 games with the New York Yankees at the very end of his career. This is a whole different kind of bummer. Michael Young is another one — spent his last 147 games trying to stick around with the Phillies and Dodgers.
I kept thinking throughout Sunday’s game: Who do the Pirates remind me of? They were somewhat plucky — they hit the ball a lot harder than the Cubs did for the most part — and they always SEEMED in the game until they gave up the winning run on a Dansby Swanson sacrifice fly.
Then it hit me: The Pirates are the old professional wrestler Terry Taylor.
Aren’t We All Terry Taylor?
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