October 5, 2009

Baseball and Bicycling

My favorite fellow rider, Granny Gear (bicycle joke)

Watching the Vikings/Packer game. Unusual game. We’re almost through the first quarter and Brett Favre hasn’t retired yet.

Wonderful day to ride. Pedaled through farm country the sixty miles from Ste. Genevieve to Cape Girardeau. 70 and sunny, no wind and a day off tomorrow. How sweet is was.

The corn can wait to be picked, the bass are biting. (Famer is his pond outside Perryville, Mo)

Today’s musings were on the Chicago Cubs. The day the Rockies joined the National League a giant albatross was removed from around my neck. I no longer suffered, anguished, tossed and turned all night, because of the Cubs and their losing ways.

Other teams had the “Sultan of Swat” and “Home Run” Baker. The Cubs had “Peanuts” Lowery and “Swish” Nicholson and they didn’t call him “Swish” because he was gay; that’s the sound his bat made when missing a pitch. And missing the pitch was a skill he perfected beyond compare.

The Yankees had “Mr. October”. The Cubs were known for their “June swoon”. For years the Cubs were mathematically eliminated by the 4^th of July.

The North Siders were the team of Tinkers to Evers to Chance although when I started rooting for them the double play combination was Smalley to Miksis to the grandstand.

Why Chicago puts up with the Cubs continual failure is beyond reason. The Cubs futility would last about 2 months in any other major league city. C’mon Cub fans, your team is not the “Loveable Losers”, they’re just “LOSERS”, a joke. You haven’t won a pennant! Forget about the World Series-- haven’t won a pennant since 1945. That’s fifty-four friggin years!

Once again this year the Cub players got an early jump on hunting season as they missed the post season. The Rockies are in. Hey Cubbies, I hardly knew ye.

Back in the eighties, Steve Goodman, a Chicago song writer (best known for penning City of New Orleans for Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson and others. Also the author of David Alan Coe’s “Perfect Country-Western Song (You Don’t Have To Call Me Darlin’, Darlin’; You Never Even Called Me By My Name”), penned “A Dying Cub Fans Last Request”.

Truth being stranger than fiction, a year after recording this paen to incompetence between the lines, Mr. Goodman was dead at 35, a victim of leukemia. Here, for Cub fans everywhere, is Steve Goodman’s “Ode to a Dying Cub Fan”.

P.S. Keith Moreland’s name should live forever as the Butcher of fly balls, if only Mr. Goodman had also thought to mention all time Cub choke artist Dave “Kong” Kingman.

P.P.S. No post tomorrow. Like I said it’s a day off.