Opening Day is finally here and I couldn’t think of a better way to get the juices flowing than Sammy Sosa in the 2002 HR Derby.
Arguably the greatest all star performance in recorded history and certainly one of my favorite memories as a young Cubs fan.
Some observations as we head into Opening Day:
- 9pm start tonight so you can get some Sweet 16 in first and use a 2nd TV if your old lady lets that kinda stuff happen in the house
- Sammy Sosa is back around the Cubs and I think that means we get Sammy montages on the Wintrust Jumbotron this season. Ultimately I think that was the primary factor in the reunion. There’s only so much Andre Dawson and David Bote you can run in-between innings before you have to patch things up with Sammy. Which reminds me to Power Rank the Sammy Sosa montages we’ll get this summer in another blog.
- If the Cubs start the season 7-10, that’s a good thing. The opening month is murderer’s row with all April competition averaging 90 wins last season.
- Bright side, all May competition averaged 72 wins last season.
- You know this already if you read yesterday’s blog on the strength of schedule to start the season
- I’m tempted to turn this into a season preview blog but I’ll hold off until this afternoon with my predictions and projections
- While I hate the start times, I’m actually happy the Cubs are opening in nice weather on the West Coast and I like that they don’t have to change time zones to play the first 7 games of the season. Travel’s limited and that’s a big deal coming off the Tokyo series. Especially because everyone’s looked like shit since they got back to the tune of losing every single game since March 10th. So even with shitty start times, this is still best case scenario for recovery.
- My personal goal is to do 5 Cubs games this year and do every one of them extremely well. No lackadaisical efforts wandering in at the 2nd inning and grabbing a cold pretzel. No games of half filled out scorecards and leaving in the 8th to catch some rally malorts at Sluggers. No sitting in the 200’s because someone had a free ticket. None of that soft serve bullshit. I’m bringing the cheddar this season.
- I think this season I’m going to make a full turn on Tom Ricketts. I used to be a big fan. I tried understanding him as a businessman. And now I’m ready to admit that he’s gone full jabroni and I don’t think he’s ever coming back.
- We like Jed Hoyer a lot because he’s a solid dude who does the best with what he’s got and he doesn’t complain or mope.
- We’re undecided on Craig Counsell at the present moment. Win 90 games and I like you. Be mediocre again and I will take my default position that he’s a boner over his skiis
Go Cubs