We packed up the wife and child and dutifully marched off to the Cubs game last Sunday in observance of Father’s Day, but there was something very pro forma about the whole affair. The five-year-old didn’t clamor to see batting practice, not even with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Mike Piazza in town–unlike us as a kid when the San Francisco Giants were visiting and we’d make sure to get there early to watch Mays and McCovey. So we got the grocery shopping out of the way beforehand. The Boomer was tied up in his own Father’s Day formalities and had conceded us the tickets; after putting away the frozen goods and picking up the family, we parked outside his house, briefly saw him and his new son, Max, and walked over to the game.
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The crowds are returning to Wrigley in suitable summer numbers. The outside corners of the upper deck were vacant on Sunday and there were bald patches in the lower deck, but attendance was in the respectable 30,000 range and the previous day the Cubs had drawn a near-capacity 36,310. Both days the bleachers were filled with the usual laughing flesh. Yet it would be a lie to say things have returned to normal–aside from on the field, that is, where the Cubs were doing what they usually do this time of year, that thing that rhymes with “June.”
Is it mere coincidence that the Cubs, after a promising start, are once again wilting as the weather warms? We’d argue no, that it’s endemic to the Cubs’ lack of power, and point to last year’s awful start, when the weather was relatively warm from the get-go and balls were flying out of the nation’s ballparks from opening day. The Cubs play half their games at homer-happy Wrigley Field, and they need power at the corners of their fielding alignment–first and third, left and right–to compete. Even traditional weak-sister hitting franchises, like the Dodgers and the Houston Astros, come to Chicago packing more punch than the Cubs. On Saturday the Cubs slugged three home runs, but so did the Dodgers; and with the Dodgers drawing seven walks to the Cubs’ three–each of the Cubs’ five pitchers walked at least one batter–the result was a 12-5 Los Angeles rout.
Navarro was another reclamation project, signed as a free agent from the Milwaukee Brewers after the strike ended this spring. He is a big right-hander with a big, slow, deliberate motion, but he is nowhere near as big as he had been with the Brewers, when weight problems contributed to arm problems after a promising first couple of seasons in the majors. This season he seemed rededicated, and he won his first five decisions with the Cubs. Last week, however, he pitched poorly against the Giants, and on Sunday he committed the pitcher’s worst sin with the wind blowing out in Wrigley.
“Sadie!” said our wife. “You’re supposed to lie about things like that. Now, did you have a good time?”
