Hey there, garment bags. I’ll tell ya, yesterday woulda been a lot better as another snow day instead of Opening Day. It was about as exciting as watchin’ the yule log video on Christmas morning. About as warm, too. Pirates fans were definitely lovin’ it, though, and none that I saw showed any ill effects from eatin’ yellow snow the day before. I guess if you do it enough you build up a tolerance or somethin’.
Anyway, after a pretty good start, includin’ the first of Javi’s two moon shots, things went total Frankenstein-ugly in the third, and got worse from there. I don’t know about you, but in game situations like this, my mind tend to wander, always ending up in its predictable corners; 1) What’s for dinner and 2) Scarlett Johansson … er, uh … I mean the missus. I actually do mean that, too. The missus is hotter than a crate of barbequed Carolina Reaper peppers smothered in Blair’s Ultra Death Sauce. Besides, Johansson has answered exactly zero of the 4,617 letters I’ve written her.
Point is, I was lookin’ for somethin’ to do during the game, cuz the Cubs sure as hell weren’t doin’ much. So I played a little game I call Names-In-A-Blender to pass the time. I have what’s known as an elastic set of rules for this game so it can be adapted for actors, politicians, Olympic athletes, nightly news reporters … you name it. I’ve done it with ballplayers a lot, of course, but sometimes with different guidelines than yesterday. Anyway, it’s a good way to pass the time if you’re not doin’ much cheering and clapping, like at yesterday’s Cubs game.
Here are yesterdays Official Joe Schlombowski Names-In-A-Blender rules: You take the name of any major league ball player, say Trevor Hildenburger, and you combine it with another major league ball player, say Jake Lamb. You put those two together and you get TREVOR LAMB-BURGER. Turns out that’s what the red-hot missus cooked up for dinner last night, too. Great minds.
So let’s play a few rounds.
You put Jhoulys Chacin together with Matt Szczur and you get MATT JHOULYS SZCZUR. Probably as much chance of conquering the world as gettin’ into the Hall.
In honor of Harry Caray, mix Bud Norris with Tommy La Stella. That gives you BUD NO-STELLA. Definitely somethin’ Harry woulda said in some hipster bar.
Stayin’ with the hipster bar theme for a minute, combine Shin-Soo Choo and Yu Darvish. That gives you SHIN-SOO CHOO YU. Have a few Buds OR Stellas and try sayin’ that 3 times fast.
When you mix Sean Doolittle with Alex Wood you get ALEX LITTLE-WOOD. Not somethin’ you want on the back of your uni.
But mash up Evan Longoria and Blake Wood and you get EVAN LONGOR-WOOD. Much better, right ladies?
And for you guys from Boystown, there’s this one: Combine Albert Pujols and Doug Fister and you get DOUG PUJOLS-FISTER. Hey, to each his own, pallie.
Give it a shot sometime. Once you run out of ballplayers, start in on golfers, hockey player, football and soccer. Mix it up with the names of Donald Trump’s former cabinet members, and throw in the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders for good measure. If all else fails, go to your Facebook friends list.
Before you know it, you’ll be back on the El, lookin’ forward to tomorrow’s game.
In the past four years Chris Bryant has loaded up his trophy case with the Collegiate Player of the Year, Minor League Player of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and now Most Valuable Player of the National League. The guy could put a True Value sign on his house with all that hardware. One question comes to mind: How in the hell to you top all that?! Personally, I think it would involve Scarlett Johansson and a hot tub full of whipped cream, but that’s just me. If I’m Kris Bryant — who’s less than half my age, much taller, way thinner and with movie star looks and all — I think I’d be talkin’ swimming pool instead of hot tub, and probably addin’ Charlize Theron and Salma Hyak to the roster. Talk about a Hall of Fame line up…
I digress. But who could blame me?
Anyway, I totally think KB deserved this year’s award. He was, in a couple of words, friggin’ awesome! What’s most amazing to me is that he’s just a kid, and has only been in the league for 2 years. Think about that.
Nevertheless, I can already hear Sport Illustrated, ESPN, Fox Sports and various other baseball prognostication epicenters yammerin’ out loud about how Bryant is headed for Cooperstown. Has he had a great four years? Let’s put it this way: If Donald Trump somehow puts together a string like that, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed and Hillary Clinton will be petitioning to have The Donald’s face added to Mt Rushmore. My point is this: Bryant has killed it for four consecutive years. No question … that’s amazing. But let’s wait to see how his career plays out before retiring his number. My beer mug runneth over with talking sports heads and their so-called expertise proclaimin’ this or that player as the next incarnation of Mickey Mantle, if not Jesus Christ himself. And how many times have they been right? I can count ’em on zero hands, my friend. I say, let’s enjoy Bryant bein’ Bryant, and hope that he doesn’t slip on the whipped cream and tear somethin’. Or that Theo doesn’t get attacked by aliens, who steal his brain … so he trades Bryant or somethin’. Or that Bryant doesn’t decide to pull a “Grant Desme” and give up baseball to become a Catholic priest. (We definitely gotta get him in that hot tub with Johansson, ASAP.)
As a former long suffering Cubs fan who’s now basking in the joy of a World Series Championship, I’m just happy that Bryant plays for the team that I’ve loved since I was old enough to pee. As far as the future goes, my fingers and toes are crossed, so that when Bryant is starin’ free agency in the face, he chooses to value Chicago more than his slime ball agent, Scott Boras, tells him he should. In the mean time, we have a friggin’ ass-kickin’ team, FULL of most valuable players as far as I’m concerned. One of ’em happens to be Bryant. I’d like to think where he, and the rest of the team, goes from here is right back to the World Series next year. And I don’t think that’s Skip Bayless-like hyperbole ($10 fancy word bonus!) at all.
Was that the Chicago Cubs I saw in Dodger Stadium tonight, or a Sears tower-sized turd? I think the latter.
At first, when the whole pre-game thing filled the ball park with instant smog, just to remind everyone where the hell we were, I thought maybe that was makin’ our guy’s eyeballs water, which would explain why they were havin’ so much trouble seein’ the ball. But as the game wore on, it became apparent that what was really happening was the Cubs has succumbed to the whole “Hey, look, Larry King is sittin’ like … RIGHT THERE” thing. Whatever it was, stars or smog in the eyes, Chicago swung the bat tonight like Helen Keller. Blindfolded. I kept hopin’ LA would put a 10 year old girl in to pitch, cuz I know we couldn’t get a hit off a 12 year old one.
It pretty much went like that for most of the night. Then, in a move that makes about as much sense as Donald Trump, Maddon decides it’d be a good idea to pinch hit Heyward for Russell in the 7th. I grant you, right now Addi with a bat in his hand is about as dangerous as Mother Theresa. But I’m at a total loss to explain Heyward as the stick of the moment. You have Wilson Contreras on the bench, who can actually make contact with the friggin’ ball, by the way, but Joe goes with the most over-paid, underperforming player in Major League Baseball. You pull one no-hit bat (Russell) for another, and what happens? What the F do you think happens? He watches a strike 2 meatball go by that Louis Braille woulda tattooed, then wildly swings like a kid at a piñata party at a pitch that was in the next time zone. What’s the logic, Joe?
We can’t even get a friggin’ sacrifice when we need one. Of course if it were up to me, we’d tie Kershaw down on a makeshift altar, sprinkle him with a little Beverly Hills poodle blood or somethin’ and set his ass on fire. There’s your sacrifice, pallie. Maybe that would appease the baseball gods, which seem to be extraordinarily pissed off at the Cubs right now. Even if it didn’t, we’d have at least done something to help our chances against these Hollywood yayhoos.
Rizzo’s 9th inning stroke-of-luck, broken bat, squeeker of a hit was a symbol of what Chicago’s offense has been throughout the playoffs — a shattered remnant of it’s former self. That hit — and it was a helluva lot more like a 50 foot putt than a batted ball — brings Rizzo’s average up to a scorching .077. Watch out!
The Cubs have now gone 18 consecutive playoff innings without crossin’ the plate. Besides being a King Kong-sized, steaming pile of inept crap, that means our offense just broke their previous playoff record of 16 scoreless innings, set during the 1906 World Series … which we lost. I’m just sayin’. When your season is only 7 games long, maybe less, you can only go so far if you can’t hit the damn ball. There aren’t another 155 games to even out the slumps. If the Cubs wanna have a chance at puttin’ the curse to rest, it’s time they started swingin’ the bat like the Chicago friggin’ Cubs, not the Elmhurst Little League Cubs. No offense, Elmhurst.
Joe
Tonight’s fun facts: There are no fun facts tonight. There are facts, but none of ’em are fun. 1) The Cubs were 4 for 31 tonight. 2) We struck out 10 times. 3) We also left 11 guys on base. See what I mean? No fun.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Then it was the best of times again. After last night, Dickens is sorta, kinda, almost startin’ to make some friggin’ sense to me. (At least the part I read.) Especially after Montereo — perhaps the most unlikely of heros — whiffed at a Joe Blanton meatball slider that my grandmother coulda plastered. So what does Blanton do? He serves up the identical pitch, and suddenly Montero — like Dickens’ characters Al Manatte, Chuck Darnay and Syd Carton — is recalled to life, and resurrected in the middle of all the turmoil caused by Adrian Gonzalez. If that’s not, to quote Dickens again, “the epoch of belief,” I don’t know what the hell is.
But this is a tale far bigger than Montero’s bat against Blanton’s arm, or the chess game between Maddon and Roberts, or even the Cubs vs the Dodgers. This is a smack down between two cities — Chicago and LA; the Second City and Tinseltown; wholesome midwesterners and blinged-out dreamers. These two places are about as foreign to each other as a World Series title is to the Cubs.
Everything is different. The architecture, the culture, the weather, the hot dogs. Like night and day, pal. Most especially the people. And that’s what a city is; it’s the people. It’s the stuff, too, like smog, and traffic and no seasons, if you’re LA, but mostly it’s the people. So when you got a ball club representin’ your city, it’s really a proxy for the fans that live and die with them. Like me. (I may be livin’ large at the moment, but over the years I’ve needed resuscitation 20 or 30 times after somethin’ the Cubs or Steve Bartman did.) So what does that mean? It means that whatever the Cubs are in this series, all of Chicago is, too. Ditto LA. Well, that got my mind doin’ the Chicago River thing — meandering backwards — thinkin’ about what the Cubs stand for and how that reflects on us fans.
Ask most anybody born after 1908 what the Cubs stand for, and usually they’ll tell you that they’re the all-time, ever-lovin’ mascot of futility. And that’s not just on Earth, either. That would include all 9 rocks makin’ rings around the sun, and everyone of their moons. And yeah, it’s 9. Not 8, like National Geographic says. In the Schlombowski universe, it’s still the Sears tower not the Willis tower, and Pluto is still a planet, my friend.
That said, I gotta think that after averaging 100-wins over the last two seasons, and makin’ consecutive trips to the NLCS, some of that baked-on, decades-old crap we’ve been caked in has been chipped away. Most especially cuz we had the best record in baseball this year. But also cuz of how we taunted the Giants by danglin’ that shiney even-numbered year thing in front of ’em right before we snatched it outta their greedy little Donald Trump-sized hands. Ha! A purely orgasmic feeling I normally don’t associate with baseball. Then we bleached the Dodger blue a bit by doin’ virtually the same thing to them last night. Hmm. How far apart can orgasms be and still qualify as “multiple?” Just wonderin’.
No longer are the Cubs the lovable losers, my friend. Uh uh. Who they are now is beginning to unfold in 2 cities, 2000 miles apart. Might as well be 2000 light years apart, though, cuz what LA is known for … well, I don’t even know where to start. But how ’bout I take a shot, anyway?
Being famous.
There are 9 and a half million people in Los Angeles and I’d say only about six or seven of ’em don’t have a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. They hand those things out like hot cakes … or Joe Blanton sliders over the middle. David friggin’ Spade has a star. Hell, half the hawkers at Dodger Stadium probably have ’em! Seems like everybody in LA is famous, or is tryin’ to be famous, or moved there cuz they wanna be famous. And when these honyocks aren’t tryin’ to become more famous, they’re at the Forum Club rubbin’ elbows with somebody else who’s famous, or giving themselves little statues for things like pretending, and rhyming. Isn’t that the height of culture. They even got a particular sorta famous in LA for just being famous. The Kardashians, Paris Hilton, Katie Price? That’s what I’m talkin’ about. The Dodgers are playin’ for them.
Genuine imitation.
Is there some sorta ordinance in Los Angeles requirin’ women to have breast implants? I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither have the laws of physics or Mother Nature, cuz the ones she makes have some kinda built-in movement and all. Those things Dr. Hootermacallitz is bolting onto women are like granite. You could rest your beer on ’em.
And how ’bout the lips. No skinny little white girl from Tarzana is born with a Mick Jagger kisser. That’s not natural either. Add to that the butt implants, fake eye lashes, sprayed-on tan, over-whitened teeth, glued-on fingernails, tattooed eye-liner and you got yourself a real live tummy-tucked, face-lifted, hair-extended Barbie doll. The Dodgers are playin’ for them, too.
Traffic squared.
Sittin’ in traffic is a badge of honor in LA. You hear people dueling about their commutes: “It took me 90 minutes to get here this morning.” “Pfft. That’s nothin’. It took me 2 and a half hours to go from Mulholland to Westwood.” They love to whine about it, but take pride in havin’ the biggest nightmare. Of course everybody’s got traffic. We got our share in Chi-town. But in LA, it’s like herpes or somethin’ — it’s always there. No accident, no construction, no event. It’s just 3 in the afternoon. Traffic is the reason Dodgers fans are some of the lamest in baseball. Why? Cuz they’d rather beat the traffic than stay for the whole game. They show up late, cuz they’re sittin’ — that’s right — in traffic. Then they leave early — even if it’s a 1-run ballgame — cuz it’s more important to beat the rush outta Chavez Ravine than whoever they’re playin’. Pathetic. The Dodgers are playin’ for those guys.
Air-like substance.
In Chicago, we got air. Lots of it, usually movin’ along at a brisk pace. Hence the nickname. In LA, I don’t know what that stuff is that covers everything, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be breathin’ it. It’s not just regular smog either, it’s some kinda super smog that has the look of Joe Blanton’s shorts after the Cubs’ half of the 8th last night. You’d think Bashar al-Assad was in town or somethin’. They have days when they don’t want anybody goin’ outside cuz it’s so bad. So they don’t. The Dodgers are playin’ for those people, while Chicago fans somehow seem to get around when it’s 40 below zero or a scorching 100 degrees with 95% humidity. Which reminds me, when it’s 67º out, LA thinks it’s cold.
Lots and lots of cars.
Public transportation? What’s that? As much as Angelinos like to moan about traffic, they looooooovvvvvee to spend time in their cars. They drive everywhere. Walk? Are you friggin’ kidding me? Even if they’re goin’ to a neighbor’s to watch famous people get a statue for pretending, they’ll drive cuz who knows … they may need to suddenly go somewhere they haven’t thought of, and in the million-to-one chance that happens, it’s good to have the car close by. And these people — that the Dodgers also play for — they wonder why the smog is so friggin’ bad.
You call that a river?
So long as I mentioned the Chicago River earlier in this tirade, I don’t think I can finish this up without also bringin’ up the LA River. First, there’s no water in it. It’s got the occasional abandoned car, old mattress or whatever grows and multiplies in random puddles of inch deep runoff, but no water. And second, it’s made outta cement. CEMENT! The Chicago River, on the other hand, used to flow in one direction but was engineered to flow in the other. That’s friggin’ Einstein brain stuff, pal. Plus — and this is huge — it turns green on St Patrick’s Day.
Any way you slice it, it’s hard to imagine two cities any further apart than Chi-town and Tinseltown. In a few more days, one of the teams that represents ’em is gonna be doin’ another champagne shower and headin’ to the World Series, while the other will be watchin’ it on the flat screen just like their fans. I’m betting that Binny’s is gonna be makin’ a couple more deliveries to Wrigley this year. Hope so, anyway. Seven more wins. Seven. Damn, that’s close.
Joe
Fun facts: 1) Montero’s slam was the first ever pinch hit, go ahead, grand slam in postseason history. 2) The Cubs now have a 1-0 lead in a best-of-7 series for the first time since the 1945 World Series. Go Cubs!
Today it was announced that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for literature. If there was ever a sign that the Cubs are gonna win the World Series, this is it.
I don’t know what they smoke in Stockholm, but I’m pretty sure it’d be banned by Major League Baseball. I mean Bob Dylan and Nobel Prize in the same sentence? Really? This is a guy who wrote lyrics like:
They’ll stone ya when you’re at the breakfast table They’ll stone ya when you are young and able They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to make a buck They’ll stone ya and then they’ll say “good luck” Tell ya what, I would not feel so all alone Everybody must get stoned.
Now … maybe if he’d penned “Go, Cubs, go” I could get behind this. But as it is, and as much as I like Dylan, this one’s got me scratchin’ my head.
I’m guessin’ that the 18-member Swedish Academy had taken Mr. Dylan’s advice when they decided he should be a Nobelaureate. Who is on this committee, anyway? Cheech and Chong? Spicoli? I mean, these guys compared Dylan to Homer and Sappho. In baseball terms, that’s like comparin’ Mario Mendoza to Ted Williams. And awardin’ him the Grand Poobah of literary prizes is like puttin’ Pete La Cock in the Hall of Fame. By the way, unlike Robert Allen Zimmerman, who changed his name to Bob Dylan, La Cock has gone through his entire life with that handle. That takes balls. (Yes, that pun was intended.) Of course maybe that’s why La Cock was never a rock star.
Anyway, I’m takin’ the Dylan Nobel Prize thing as a positive sign for the Cubs. Why? Cuz it means that whatever floats around out there in the universe that you can’t see — dark matter, gravity, Jimmy Hoffa — is in some sorta weird flux that’s turnin’ the world as we know it on it’s keister. Can you really argue with that? Does Donald Trump runnin’ for President seem normal to you? This is why I’m absolutely certain the Cubs are a lock for World Series Champs. And maybe for more than just this year. Stuff in the universe is pretty big and powerful. Like the Force. A cosmic oil tanker that’s goin’ in one direction isn’t just gonna turn on a dime, my friend. In the Nobel Prize world that means it might not be that crazy to see Sir Mix A Lot pickin’ up a $100,000 check in Sweden. But it also means the Chicago Cubs could be a team to be reckoned with for some time to come.
We’re gonna find out if this Schlombowski Theory of Relativity looks like it can hold water startin’ Saturday. Dylan might say, “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” And given it’s Chicago – the Windy City — I think we’re gonna hear that answer loud and friggin’ clear, my friend.
