Yawn

This is what I get for my lack of sleep during the work week. I was determined to stay up and watch the end of last night's game on the West Coast.

Didn't happen. I see by the box score that it ended just about midnight Central time, another disheartening loss, 4-0 to the Dodgers.

Apparently, what I really missed was an at-bat for the ages, an 18-pitch at-bat by Alex Cora, who fouled off fourteen consecutive Matt Clement pitches before sealing the LA win with a two-run homer.

Think about this. Clement threw 104 pitches in his six innings of work, which is a little high but not outrageous. 18 pitches to one batter is seventeen percent of all the pitches he threw last night. That's unheard of.

There really isn't too much else to write about the game. Dusty decided to shake up the lineup, dropping Corey Patterson to seventh (that's pretty much where he should be hitting anyway) and moving Ramon Martinez into the two spot, against the lefthander Wilson Alvarez. Didn't matter -- the Cubs managed only five hits off Alvarez and Guillermo Mota and dropped to 2-9 in Dodger Stadium since the beginning of the 2001 season.

Meanwhile, the Cubs are stuck with Glendon Rusch to start on Sunday in San Diego, due to the slight elbow injury to Kerry Wood. If you read between the lines, you get the impression that they are just being absolutely overly cautious with Wood; at least one of the doctors said that any pitcher would show this kind of strain the day after he pitched, in an MRI similar to the one Wood had.

And, it appears Mark Prior is right on target to be activated for the Pittsburgh series on June 4.

Fortunately, former Cub farmhand Dontrelle Willis threw a complete-game win over the Astros last night, so the Cubs remain three games behind.

With only 33 games having been played, it is way too early to panic. What the Cubs have to do is begin to ignore the breathless bleatings of the mainstream media, who take any small setback and make it into several days' worth of columns in the newspaper. This sells a lot of papers, I suppose, and is primarily due to the expanded expectations for the ballclub this year.

But does it reflect reality? Hardly.

Which leads me to something completely unrelated. Or maybe not, you decide.

I recently stumbled across the website for a company called CafePress, where individuals can design and sell their own logo T-shirts, caps, etc.

Say! I thought -- there might be a cool way to make up a cap for this blog!

But, I am an artistic doofus.

So, if any of you are more creatively artistic than I am, and can design and send me (use the "contact/comment" link at the top of this page) a cool looking logo for this purpose, which would include the following:

* name of my blog
* URL of my blog (www.yellon.org/links.htm)
* something to do with the Cubs, without the Cub logo since that's copyrighted...

I'll use it, and give the winner a free clothing item of their choice.