Ron Coomer was ready. From the get-go last night, he was mentioning the movement on Charlie Morton’s pitches, happening to include in the same sentence that some guys in the league put foreign substances on baseballs to get a better grip right around the time either he or Pat Hughes mentioned that Morton had become a strikeout guy when he went to play for the notably faithful-to-the-rules Houston Astros. By the fourth inning, he’d seen all he needed to see. Why was Morton putting rosin on his neck? What might be on that neck to mix with that rosin? Why was Morton doing it immediately after a pitch slipped?
And so it was that Ron Coomer, from a booth at an empty Wrigley Field, watching the game on a monitor, spent the moments before, during, and after a Kris Bryant grand slam laying into the umpires in Atlanta for not examining Morton, who Coomer seemed to believe rather obviously breaking the no-foreign-substance-on-the-baseball rule.
It was a great moment. One of those moments that demonstrates why Coom is so fun. One of those moments that gives you hope that baseball might fix the pine tar issue, in which pitchers like Morton, who sure seem to be breaking the rule, are making a lot more money while guys who don’t break the rule are presumably falling out of the league here and there because of it.
But we aren’t here to talk about the moment.
We’re here to talk about what Coom did with the moment.
With one calm, composed, furious, didn’t-raise-his-voice-and-let-Pat-Hughes-talk-so-it-wasn’t-technically-a-tirade tirade, Ron Coomer changed the vibe.
We talk about the vibe a lot with the Cubs. It’s important. The vibe needs to be right for this team to have success. And it takes a lot to change the vibe. But Ron Coomer changed it.
No, the Cubs didn’t win. But Morton? That (alleged) cheating sack of butts got lit up, allowing five earned and getting chased just two innings after Coomer exacted his metaphysical revenge.
I didn’t listen to the whole game (was driving Stuber Eats and then frolicking with a puppy who went from giving her reflection a kiss in the mirror to having a fight with her reflection in the mirror in minutes, so had to pop in and out), which means I don’t know the full extent of Coomer’s comments. But their effect was there for all of us to see.
And I, for one, took notice.
