Baseball is Life (and Happy Birthday Dina)

The Coronavirus has taken the game of baseball from us in 2020, perhaps for as long as the entire season. And, truth be told, the game had been dwindling in interest to me, at least since November 3, 2016. When you spend practically your whole life waiting for something, and then it happens, well, where

Farewell to 2016

It’s been quite a ride, and I’ll always consider 2016 as a good year, because it was the “Next Year” that I had waited a very long time to see. I went to Wrigley Field a few days after the Cubs’ World Series victory over the Cleveland Indians, and I wrote my recently departed friend’s

One Last Time

Not that I’m trying to be cute, but Life is like the World Series: Sometimes you have finality, but more often you don’t. When this year’s Series went to seven games, we knew that whoever won that game would be crowned champions, and whoever lost would have a long offseason to think about how things

An amazing 48 hours

It’s been just about 48 hours–give or take a few minutes–since Kris Bryant threw over to first base to end the Cubs’ long championship drought. In an instant, a lifetime of losing was washed away. The “loveable losers” never existed in the first place, but that concept went away forever on the night of November

The Cubs Win, at last

It was the darkest moment of the Cubs’ 2016 championship run. The Cubs had lost to Korey Kluber for the second time in Game 4, and found themselves in a three games to one hole. Elimination seemed to be staring them in the face in Sunday’s early hours, and I wanted to do my part

A November2Remember is one win away

This is what we’ve waited for, Cubs fans! One game to determine a World Series title.  One more win takes us all to where we want to be. So let’s get it, already! GO CUBS!

The Cubs’ 2016 Graveyard

Some people, in my neighborhood and in other places, turn their front lawns into faux graveyards at this time of year. So with Halloween upon us and the Cubs still playing meaningful baseball, here’s a look at some of the fake styrofoam tombstones that the Cubs could plant at Wrigley Field this year: The Cardinals’

Looking forward to some Mighty Cubs Blasts

I recently happened upon Evangeline, a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I’m not very much of a poetry guy, but I found an old book at an estate sale with some poems inside, and decided to start paging through them. I even spent a quarter on the book, so I may as well see

It’s gonna be a World Series weekend in Chicago

One of my favorite old school Sammy Hagar songs–and I have quite a few of them–is Rock and Roll Weekend. Not only does Sammy name-check Chicago (and Cleveland) toward the end of the song, but he paints an image of the best part of the week, being filled up with the best music there is.

My letter of thanks to Jack Brickhouse

Dear Jack, Today was the kind of day that makes cemeteries interesting. As I drove through Rosehill on the far north side of Chicago, I watched the dried leaves blowing across my path on the way to the mausoleum where you are interred. This is generally not baseball weather here in Chicago, but you never

The Cubs’ World Series trail led through California

One year ago, I wrote a piece for WrigleyvilleNation pointing out that the Cubs were beating teams from the old National League East in the postseason, and I liked that idea. Teams from the NL West had been nothing but trouble for the Cubs, and I thought maybe the Eastern route would pay off in

Arrivederci, San Francisco

The Cubs don’t come from behind to win games in the postseason, and they sure don’t do it in the 9th inning. They either lose the game altogether, or they get out to an early lead and somehow hang on to win. But late game heroics has never been their calling card, at least not

For the Cubs, nothing’s been accomplished yet

On this day off between the end of the regular season–where the Cardinals played all 162 games–and the postseason–where the Cardinals will watch it on TV like the rest of us–a few thoughts are in order. That dig at the Cardinals sounds a bit petty, but the truth is I’m glad the teams will not

Josh Wilker says it all for me

  I remember watching Yaz’s last regular-season at-bat. The Red Sox were bad that year, most of the superstars from my childhood gone. There weren’t going to be any postseason at-bats. I watched the game alone in a TV room at a boarding school that I’d be expelled from the following year. I’d started attending

Inside the Ricketts Square

My daughter, who’s in 8th grade in a Chicago public school, took biology a year ago. She was exposed to genetics and the Punnett Square, which brought back lots of old memories, and not necessarily fond ones, as I tried once again to understand alleles and dominant and recessive traits. However, I apparently remember enough of genetics

Something never seen before

As the Cubs’ season to remember keeps rolling along–and the team continues racking up victories like only a few living Cubs fans have ever seen–I’ve become more focused on the W flag. I have also written a piece about its history and significance for the Gamehedge blog. But I essentially see the flag as a

Telling a story about the Cubs

The Chicago Cubs have been a major recurring theme of this blog, going all the way back to the first thing I posted in this space. It’s shaped who I am, in some way, and I won’t ever back away from that. After taking a hiatus of almost a year from writing for WrigleyvilleNation.com, today

August and the stretch run

As the calendar turns to August, thoughts of summer start to wane. It still is summer, of course, but as the days start getting shorter the inevitability of returning to those other, non-summery seasons starts creeping in. Summer is my favorite time of the year, and I’d have a hard time relating very well to

Cubs look to buck the trend

The Crosstown classic begins tonight, and continues through until Thursday. The teams appear to be on different arcs, with the Cubs playoff-bound and the White Sox thinking about who they can trade away at the deadline coming up. But none of that matters when the two teams take the field tonight at U.S. Cellular Field.

Trying to understand

The picture above dates to 1998, and it shows a much younger, much thinner version of me during my teaching days on the south side of Chicago. This was taken in the days before cameraphones, or even before digital photography, with an old school camera. They were fun because you wound up with a print

The year that still haunts me

2003 should have positive associations for me. It was the year that my younger daughter was born, and if there’s one thing in life I enjoy more than anything else, it’s being a dad. She’s going to become a teenager this summer, and looking at her now is a daily reminder that 2003–in human terms–was

Jose can you see it?

Jose Cardenal played in many cities over the course of his big league career, and I’d be surprised if he had a special affinity for any one of them. But he was a Cub when I started following the team in the mid-1970s, and for that reason he’ll always be a Cub to me. He

Going for the sweep

The Cubs don’t really need to win today against the Pirates at Wrigley Field. They’ve already won the series, and have a commanding 11 and a half game lead in the division on Father’s Day. But a lifetime of waiting for this has also made this Cubs fan greedy. Today we’ll find out if the

Let’s hear it for the Bae

  The Cubs are off to an amazing start this year (24-6 through the first 30 games) and I haven’t yet written a single word about it. I voluntarily disengaged from my long-time writing gigs with FiveWideSports and ThroughTheFenceBaseball, just in time to have the Cubs catching fire like this. It’s all in the timing,

Play ball!

It’s no accident that “Baseball” is the biggest topic in the wordcloud associated with this blog. Nor is it an accident that the first thing I wrote on this site related to baseball in some. Without baseball, I might not even have a blog in the first place. Today it’s Opening Day, and what I’ve