Cubs Lose Battle Of Two-Run Homers; Tigers Win In Walkoff 5-4

and I don’t think Larry’s scouting report prior to the pinch hitter included “he can’t hit hanging sliders that are belt high over the middle of the plate” :)

That’s what last night reminded me of. That exact game.

And frankly, with the notable exception of Tony LaRussa, many if not all of the old-school managers do this. It’s very frustrating.

As for Soriano, he is who is. He’s a 30-something dude who will probably see a 200 million dollars over his playing career by being this type of player. He ain’t going to change, especially if you won’t ask him to.

After year one of Lou for comparing him to Dusty, to me they do a lot of the same things, it is just that Lou HAD more fire to him, but that has seemed to disappear and now people want to compare.

He seemed to be concentrating and DID hit two balls to death valley in center/right center that likely would have been out at Wrigley.

That being said, it wasn’t any better being there in person to see this conclusion. It WAS a fairly well played game and moved along until Seay got in there and slowed the pact to a crawl.

FWIW, my wife and I got to the game and were able to upgrade our seats from 1st base/RF box to club seats 5 rows behind the plate. Fans are able to do this if they know how.

And yes, I was the Cubs fan behind the plate that was punctuating strikeouts by Cubs pitchers (Marmol especially) with an arm pump and then buried his face in his hands at the crack of Rayburn’s walk-off.

Ugh.

Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

Have you, personally, examined Sori’s knee?

Have you, personally, spent time in meetings with Lou and Sori?

Have you, personally, spent even a second inside the Cubs locker room?

I appreciate your experience and knowledge. Legit. All of that allows you to bring a unique, and in some cases, well informed set of opinions to this forum. However, Drew’s insinuation that you have no idea what you are talking about in terms of what is going through Sori’s head is fair. You are basically second guessing guys who’ve made a life of playing, coaching and managing at a level that i can only assume you never reached. You are doing so as though your time in a locker room somewhere give you more insight about the Cubs situation than Drew or Lou himself has. And while you may be uniquely qualified to speak on the dynamics of a baseball team in general, you don’t know any better than anybody else here what Sori’s deal is right now.

I’ve already gone on record as saying that I have no respect for your ability to analyze the game any further than the color of the jersey. I stand by that.

You are going to have to realize that going on record with something like that is going to cause people to take your posts with an even greater grain of salt then they might already. Pretending all opinions from a certain poster are worthless in advance is ignorant. Chances are he has at least SOMETHING good to say. Blanket ruling out everything he says will probably earn you more than your fair share of "-1’s from somebody.

Please, you have no idea about anyone’s level of experience or knowledge with this game, but your own. The fact that you even say that you have superior knowledge, so as to dismiss a contrary opinion, shows your insecurity. Your opinions are harsh, simplistic and predictable. If you really believe that you have superior knowledge and ability to discern the problems, please feel free to tell Lou and Hendry that they are stupid, and blind. That would have to be the case if you were right with your ridiculously simplistic assessments.

And I don’t care what level of baseball you played at. It means absolutely nothing. Your resume is utterly irrelevant.

People who insist that professional athletes are lazy or prideful based on watching them on TV are, in my opinion, fooling themselves.

It has nothing to do with not liking you, either. It has everything to do with your apparent inability to post ANYTHING positive. You complain about how we don’t hit, then we get hits. You don’t say “wow, we got some hits, that’s a step”, you say “we’re not getting the right kind of hits.”

I find it very amusing that, for your apparent “resume” (for which you provide no proof) that you still think baseball games are over in the 3rd inning. Even Little League goes six innings. Maybe your “level” wasn’t as high as you thought?

I seek the positive as much as possible. You seek the negative. I don’t think that makes both of us Cubs fans.

You cannot judge if a player is prideful or selfish based on watching them on TV. Krummy isn’t a bum, I just think they’re wrong. We’ve all seen Soriano make strong plays in the past few weeks. Everyone knows his bat isn’t there. But judging the guy’s psyche is beyond whatever access any of us have, unless Krummy is a Cubs player or staff member and isn’t telling anyone.

I don’t believe it for a second. How about that? Lazy guys don’t play through injuries. Selfish guys don’t say to reporters “I’ll do whatever Lou wants me to do.” And fans can’t diagnose players through the TV.

Krummy provides absolutely no evidence for his “thoroughly pointed out” statements. That would be because there isn’t any.

I don’t think that word means what you think it does.

Objectively, Soriano is an extremely good baseball player (excepting the last 2 months). Cubs fans can’t seem to accept this because he doesn’t play the game the “right” way.

I thought you were pulling a BlueMike here and invoking your real-life playing experience as expertise here?

Because if you had played I’d expect you to have a better understanding of the fact that players play hurt all the time, that this is in fact the exact opposite of laziness – that it’s actually harder work to play hurt than it is to play healthy. I’d also think you’d have an appreciation for the fact that training staffs and management are privy to a lot of information that people like us could never know, regarding recovery time, personnel implications, and injury severity.

Is it hurting the team? Maybe. And if you were saying, “He’s clearly playing hurt and needs to sit down,” that would be one thing. But what you’re doing here is sad and questionable on a whole different level, and illustrative of the broken mindset a lot of Cubs fans have.

You’ll drive your point much further if you check this out.

Oh wait…

When Ramirez gets back, if Lee is still hitting the crap out of the ball, where do you bat Rami? My thought is that if Lou moves Lee back to the #3 spot, and Rami resumes his normal spot at cleanup, pitchers will just pitch around Lee to get to a rusty Aramis. Where will Lou put Ramirez in the lineup to protect him until he gets his stroke back?

Who really does just sit on fastballs facing Zumaya would have been fun.

He may have gotten the call last night.

yesterday. So maybe this is what we’ll get.

No, i don’t actually believe in that karma stuff. Or in cubbie luck.

Still isn’t nice.

prove you wrong. Sounds plausible to me based on what I’ve seen.