There has already been one Chicago-located allegedly-professional baseball game today. I’m aware of this, and I’m not mentioning it, because it too was an affront to God.
Now.
Yesterday’s baseball game in Chicago.
There’s a current of thought which states that humans are the end result of evolution, rather than a step in an ongoing chain. It’s not often stated outright, but it’s the thought. We talk about evolution in the past tense a lot, but that’s not really how evolution works. Evolution is supposed to be a more or less continuous process, with the implication that humanity is evolving or will evolve into something better (think: Joe Kelly), or that humanity is dying out or will die out (think: Vladimir Putin has a lot of nukes).
Rarely do we get a better illustration of this than yesterday’s baseball game in Chicago. Rarely is the ineptitude of our species on such full display. Rarely do we walk away from a television or (God forbid) a stadium (actually, watching that on TV might’ve been worse) thinking it’s a good thing we’re all mortal. Such, though, was the case yesterday. Such was loudly the case yesterday.
If you missed it, consider yourself blessed. You basically just survived the rapture, or didn’t survive the rapture, or whichever thing is the good thing to have happen to you when the rapture happens. You were the sheep, we were the goats. We watched.
It accelerated after this, but the first hint things were going to get terrible came when Jake Burger misplayed a short-hop in the top of the seventh inning. There were two outs, the play should’ve been the third out, instead Rafael Ortega came around to score the Cubs’ first run. Innocently, Cubs fans among us thought this was a good thing. It was not a good thing. It was what some might term “enabling” behavior.
The next inning, Nico Hoerner was charged with an error when Frank Schwindel tried to catch a ball with his cup instead of his glove, but hey—a run didn’t score, so we were fine, right? Wrong. Marcus Stroman’s heroics aside, this thing was coming unglued. The devil was running around pulling strings on gloves. The devil was running around putting rocks in the infield. The devil was running around convincing multiple relief pitchers to try testing that netting built to protect fans along the first-base line from certain demise (the nets held, so give God a point for that). It was a hellish, hellish day—worse than even a standard Tony La Russa-inclusive sporting event.
Over the five innings that followed (oh yeah, this thing went deep into extras), we got:
- David Robertson trying to do the Derek Jeter throw and somehow not letting the game be tied in the process.
- P.J. Higgins letting a curveball through the five-hole, finishing Robertson’s attempt to let the game be tied.
- Reynaldo Lopez taking issue with the moon and trying to throw the ball off of it on a Higgins sacrifice bunt.
- A batty runners interference play involving Leury Garcia, Andrelton Simmons, and the impending, merciful heat death of the universe.
There were moments of divine comedy amidst it all—both catchers juggled balls meaninglessly, Gavin Sheets played cricket and poked one directly down the third-base line to exploit the shift, the Cubs briefly tried repeat bunts at Lopez to give him another chance to knock down Planet Earth’s largest satellite—but overall…I mean, God had to be offended, right? He gives us all these gifts and we use them for this?
This is kind of the deal with Chicago baseball as a whole right now. The Cubs can’t hit. The White Sox can’t field. The Cubs haven’t been bad this early in the season since current twelve-year-olds were four, so we’re still figuring out how to process it. The White Sox are supposed to be good right now, and we don’t really know how to handle the reality that they stink. Both teams are playing in the worst division in their league, which is masking some of it, but watch either play for long enough and you walk away with a degree of Kierkegaardian angst usually only provoked by good theater, bad filmmaking, or the uttering of the word “bromance.”
Chicago baseball is an unmitigated disaster, and given that the Brewers are good and their fans still don’t care (tickets are going for the minimum on Stubhub for their Memorial Day evening game at the most historic ballpark in the world), and given that the Cardinals are as insufferable as ever, and given that the Twins are decent but I’m still annoyed with their fans for doing the wave during Jake Odorizzi’s near-no hitter in 2018, it’s fair to ask whether baseball’s first step towards a system of promotion and relegation is to just make the Central Divisions the second tier. And then to skip the part where the second tier is involved in promotion and relegation and create a third tier from and to which teams leapfrog one another into and out of the Majors. Just get rid of the Centrals, Rob Manfred. Sink them into the sea. If it’s bad in Chicago, it’s gotta be horrific in Pittsburgh.
The Amazing Races
Each of the races on the Greatest Day of Racing surpassed even the highest expectations anyone could have held for it. Man’s future is not on a baseball field in the Central Time Zone. Man’s future is in a car. Or in the case of F1, under an umbrella.
The day began in Monaco, where F1 had a beautifully stupid race which didn’t start, then started, then stopped, then started again, then was decided by Ferrari bungling the simple act of telling Charles Leclerc when to pit. It was shortened by that silly little clock they use, there wasn’t a single on-track pass to speak of (if there was and I missed it, I really don’t care), the decisive muffed pit call was easy to understand so everyone got to tweet about it, there were a bunch of beautiful shots of Monaco…the perfect Formula 1 race. I thought the Belgian race where they lined up behind the safety car for a two-lap drive in the rain was the perfect Formula 1 race, and I was wrong. This was the grandest of prixs. Grandests of prix? I don’t know. I’m a racing fan and occasional Midwestern baseball theologian, not a linguist.
The day continued in Indianapolis, where the Indy 500 was spectacular. In a good Indy 500, like last year’s, there’s an exciting winner and somebody else exciting leads some laps (the Conor Daly crowd roar, Danica Patrick back in the day). In a great Indy 500, you don’t care who wins, because the race itself was the star. There was one complaint of F1-esque arbitrary decision-making, but while the rule that they’ll red flag the Indy 500 for a quick cleanup if it’ll set up a green-white-checkered restart isn’t written down, it’s fairly obvious, and everyone loves it, and I think that’s covered under common law or something of the sort. Marcus Ericsson ended up drinking the milk, having cycled into contention via pit luck and a Scott Dixon penalty and then blowing past Felix Rosenqvist before holding off Pato O’Ward after the red flag was lifted. Awesome, awesome day. He did a fine job drinking the milk, too.
The day finished in Charlotte, which was bizarrely the most exciting race of the day.
Now, I do have a problem with the Coca-Cola 600 being exciting. This is the one NASCAR race that isn’t supposed to be exciting. It’s just supposed to be long. The only thing that you’re supposed to say when discussing the Coke 600 is, “Dang, that’s a lot of miles.” Praise for the quality of the racing? Elation at the excitement of the finish? Appreciation for the grand strides the sport’s sanctioning body has made in the realm of safety? Save those for everywhere else. The Coke 600 is supposed to be long, and ideally decided by fuel mileage like that Casey Mears one once upon a time.
Instead, we got the best NASCAR race of the season, with constant drama, plenty of main characters being main characters (and being compelling about it while they did it), and two spectacular overtimes which ended with, poetically, polesitter Denny Hamlin getting the first Coke 600 title of his career.
There’s some disagreement about the “crown jewel” races in NASCAR (just call them majors, you idiots), with some referring to the Daytona 500, Southern 500, Coke 600, and Brickyard 400 as the four (so now just three, because they got rid of the Brickyard 400 for being too boring, something the new cars may have fixed after fixing every 1.5-mile track but Texas?) and others of us preferring the old Winston Million, which included the Winston 500 rather than the Brickyard 400 (the Winston 500 is now the GEICO 500—the Talladega spring race). Regardless, the Coke 600 is agreed to be one of them, because it’s really long, and it was Hamlin’s first time winning it, making him one of two active drivers to have won all three of it, the Daytona 500, and the Southern 500 (Kevin Harvick is the other, both have won the GEICO 500 as well). Hamlin still hasn’t won a championship, but he’s tied for third all-time in Daytona 500 wins, he’s got all the agreed-upon crown jewels, and—look, if you don’t like Hamlin, point to the lack of a championship; if you like Hamlin, point to the other stuff.
Hating on the Hurricanes
And the Avalanche.
I’m about 90% of the way into the NHL playoffs mentally, which is to say I’m not making watching them appointment television, but I’m aware at every moment of the games going on, and I’m emotionally invested in each of them. If the Hurricanes and Avalanche end up playing each other for the Stanley Cup? That might change. Because I hate both of them.
The roots, again, are simple and arbitrary: I was looking for teams to hate, each was a carpetbagger (the Avalanche were the Nordiques, the Hurricanes were the Whalers), it escalated from there. The Hurricanes’ whole pregame thing? A stupid gimmick. The Avalanche’s whole not-having-played-anyone-good-these-playoffs thing? They’re frauds. I’d go so far as to say that each franchise is bad for hockey, and if the Rangers don’t stop this Hurricane, I can’t wait for an honorable South American team like the Lightning to do it (in hockey, the South of America counts as South America).
Joc Pederson Is Busy
Careful with the memes in group texts. You may one day be showing them to an inquiring press:
Part of what makes this video so fun, of course, is that Joc Pederson is dressed like a little boy. But beyond that…man, what an episode. If you missed it (this is one it was bad to miss, missing this makes you a goat, not a sheep), news erupted on Friday evening that Tommy Pham had slapped Joc Pederson on the field before the Giants played the Reds. Initially, reports (from Pederson) were that it was over Pederson using the injured reserve in fantasy football and others taking exception, but after Pham got a little vocal, Pederson dug up the receipts and revealed the meme. Pham, meanwhile, was suspended and also got kicked out of The Academy.
The Heat Are Done—Thank Goodness
In a major victory for the NBA, the Heat lost last night, eliminating the legitimacy crisis that would have come from having a team in the Finals with no NIT experience on its roster, not to mention the legitimacy crisis that would have come from having a team in the Finals with a DePaul product often its third-best player.
Texas Is Hosting a Regional
We got the best of both worlds here in Austin over the weekend, with Texas losing the Big 12 Championship and getting a horns down from Oklahoma but then still being named a nationally seeded team in baseball’s NCAA Tournament, meaning they’ll definitely host a Regional and they might also get to host a Super Regional. Unclear if the Super Regional hosting will happen, and I’m most likely out of town both weekends either way, but good for the game, good for the school, etc. Happy Horning.
Burnley News?
Burnley put out its list of guys on international rosters for the upcoming UEFA Nations League, AFCON Qualifiers, and even a World Cup Qualifier (Wales plays either Scotland or Ukraine on Sunday), but it’s unclear who of these guys will still be Burnleys come fall, so I don’t really know how to feel about it or approach it. Here are the names and teams:
- Connor Roberts (Wales)
- Wayne Hennessey (Wales)
- Nick Pope (England)
- Nathan Collins (Ireland)
- Maxwel Cornet (Ivory Coast)
- Wout Weghorst (Netherlands)
- Bailey Peacock-Farrell (Northern Ireland)
For the UEFA Nations League, the first games are on Thursday. For the AFCON Qualifiers, the first games are on Friday. That Wales World Cup Qualifier is Sunday. My general impression re: who plays for Burnley is that Pope, Cornet, and Weghorst are gone, Peacock-Farrell is staying, and I could see either way on Hennessey and Collins and Roberts but I’m very good at missing things.
***
Viewing schedule for the evening:
7:40 PM EDT: Brewers @ Cubs, Ashby vs. Smyly (MLB TV, second screen)
Probably not going to mention this one either. Need to start establishing some standards. Definitely on the second screen, though. That’s a given.
8:00 PM EDT: Rangers @ Hurricanes, Game 7 (ESPN)
It all comes down to whether or not it all comes down to this.
