Wednesday, May 25, 2011

What Has Twelve Balls and Sucks?


Justin Berg, that's what.

Box score

Watson and I braved yet another cold, foggy, and windy night at Wrigley with worse results than ever before—we left in the middle of the second, for the love of pete, in part because I couldn't see through all the mist settling on my glasses. Plus, there was a major rainstorm coming in (the game was eventually called in the seventh), and the Cubs were doing their best to make Tuesday's 11–1 thrashing of these same Mets a distant memory, perhaps even a hallucination.

Cubs perpetual emergency starter Casey Coleman didn't make it out of the second–despite the four runs his teammates provided him in the bottom of the first–but he was Warren Freakin' Spahn next to his successor Berg, who apparently didn't think he might have to pitch tonight. Berg came in with two runners on and proceeded to throw 12 pitches, all of them wide, short, above, or below the strike zone, thus efficiently loading the bases and walking in two runs. Mike Quade, thankfully, has no hair left to pull out.

I don't expect the Cubs to be winners. Heck, I'm still more of a Twins fan. But it would be just great if the Boys of Summer could start playing in conditions less reminiscent of Nova Scotia in November. It'd make mediocrity—or worse—a whole lot easier to endure.

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