Cubs Lose A Game. Baseball Loses A Giant, Ernie Harwell

Soto needs to be moved up. Soriano can stay where he is in the lineup. He’d be able to drive more runs in if someone hitting in front of him could actually get on base. That’s not Soriano’s fault.

Rami is pressing and two days off sure didn’t seem to help him. Hopefully the whole team will come off of the funk they had last night; while it seemed predictable given the amount of runs scored over the weekend, the club could use a boost and putting Rami later in the order seems a good idea. I agree putting Soto up is worth a try, no reason to mess with Sori on a hot streak.

But it’s not a bad idea.

English fail.

But an idea might be to promote him one place as soon as he seems to cool off – as a vote of confidence in his abilities – and see if he warms up again. Might backfire, but might also be worth a shot.

does that hurt his morale then,,,at the point its not worth messing with now ??

what would ron say….therre would be no arguments…

Putting Rami in the 8 hole will not help him see better pitches to get out of the slump. Even as bad as he is stuggling right now, I would prefer to pitch to the pitcher. Putting Sori behind him in the lineup right now probably would give him better pitches to hit.

Let’s just keep it to Harwell. He deserves his own moment

But he certainly sounded like baseball to me. I listened to Skip call games along with Pete Van Wieren on TV and radio for well over 20 years. I still miss listening to those guys.

…. because Hamilton had been promised the TV job after Jack Brickhouse was also forced to retire in 1981. Then Harry Caray became available, and Hamilton was “demoted” to radio, splitting the time with Lloyd. When Staats was hired, Lloyd was forced off the air into a management role.

It was a real mess. In retrospect, WGN should have just let Hamilton go.

Vince was, and will probably always be, my all-time favorite Cubs announcer.

His voice coming out of the radio was the background music of summer for me when I was a kid. I really think it’s a shame that he’s never gotten much recognition outside of Chicago.

say that he knows, “for a fact” that Aramis is not accepting help from Jaramillo. Apparently Theriot loves him and Soriano has gotten some help from him, but Aramis wants to work his own way out of it. Says that he’s “a professional hitter,” and “knows what he is doing.”

Those are direct quotes from the show. Don’t know how much to believe this guy, but he was adamant that he knew this for a fact.

Then you have two automatic outs back to back.

years now, there’s no way you bat him 8th. When have you ever seen a top RBI man like him moved down to 8th in any batting order because he is struggling? Managers aren’t that short-sighted in their thinking.

Lou knows that he is going to need Ramirez producing in this lineup and putting a hitter like him in the 8th hole might cause him to go into a tailspin for the whole year. We are always so quick to say “Move him down!” or “Bench him!” or “DFA him!” when a player is not producing, but you have to look at the whole season, not just today’s game. How would you like it if you have been the top producer in your your organization for several years and your boss gives you the heave-ho after one bad month? It’s called loyalty and respect for what a person has contributed.

You always go a little bit longer with the guys that have produced for you. You give them a chance to come out of it before you banish him to the 8 hole. Move him down a spot or two and give him more days off to clear his head, but you don’t put a guy like Ramirez in the 8th spot in the batting order.

Jack Brickhouse did come back at the end of 1984 to announce some games with Harry Caray and Steve Stone. Brickhouse was in Pittsburgh the night the Cubs clinched. I can only paraphrase, but Harry commented on the nice suit that Jack was wearing. Harry said something to the effect of “Jack, I can tell you haven’t been around many winning teams. You don’t wear expensive suits to clinching parties.”

Harry Caray would say they are the most frustrating teams to watch. You don’t know if they are good. You don’t know if they are bad. You don’t know if they need to gut the team and start all over or if they just need a couple of additional pieces to be good.

… by early May 2006 Ramirez’s OPS was over .700. It’s below .500 now. That’s a huge difference. He needs help.

Hit 38 HR and had 119 RBI.

Anybody who knows baseball knows that hitting tends to be inconsistent with hitters going through hot and cold streaks. This season, the Cubs hitting seems to be more inconsistent than normal. We saw how they hit over the weekend against Arizona. The Cubs struggled to score runs during the first part of the homestand last week. Last night, the Cubs could only get two runs.

I love Len and Bob unlike any other announcing team for any sport in any language. That said, I wouldn’t dare say anything about legends like Brickhouse or Caray.

… the tapes you probably have heard are from his later years. In his early years, he was much better.

Thats pretty harsh and not in agreement with many posters on this blog.

No performer wants to be upstaged, so it’s not surprising that the sleep-inducing Bob Elson was Jack’s original boss and mentor at WGN – each a Peoria boy from WMBD.

Over at WIND, Bert Wilson was likely the guy who hired not only hired Milo Hamilton, Jack Quinlan, and, possibly, staff announcers like Bernie Allen and Jay Trompeter. Each of their styles reflected (and, in Milo’s case, still reflect) Bert’s upper register “Hi, Neighbor” enthusiasm, which can be grating.

Brickhouse, of course, was a tremendous salesman who, at least in the 50’s and 60’s, took time each broadcast to extol the virtues of “Beautiful Wrigley Field.” He laid in on thick enough to eventually own some stock in the franchise, courtesy of Phil Wrigley. It was the least Wrigley could do for a man whose persuasive approach on Channel 9 played an important role in making Phil the Teflon owner of his time.

Contrived is the right word. I hated hearing him cheering the Cubs one day and the Sox the next. He was even worse doing Bulls games and I can’t possibly describe how awful him and Irv Kupcinent were doing Bears games.

Before Veeck’s exploding scoreboard in 1960, Jack did the “Hey Hey” bit for both Cubs and Sox only when it counted. However, once the Monster was in place, Jack either was inspired, or felt compelled to add to the merriment surrounding each Sox homer. I’m sure you remember hearing something like this the instant the fireworks went off: “Hey Hey, Bombs Away!!! Attaboy Looie! Wheeeeeeeeeee!!”

Once that became his Comiskey routine, Jack couldn’t exactly keep using his more appropriate low-key approach when Ernie and Ron sent a solo shot out to Waveland in the sixth inning of a game where the Cubs might be down 7-1. In fact, I believe the modern, contrived Wrigley Hey Hey was established in early July of that same year, when George Altman hit two 3-run homers in consecutive at-bats off Cards rookie pitcher Ed Bauta, who was appearing in his first big league game.

Clearly kvelling after the second shot, Jack was moved to exclaim “Hey Hey, George! Welcome to Wrigley Field Mr. BAH-OO-TAH!”

Brickhouse on WGN and the ’69 team are the reason I became a Cubs fan in the first place. And remained a fan through the ensuing bad seasons and playoff disasters.

And I ain’t the only one. A “Journeyman” as you describe him, don’t create legions of Cubs fans across the Midwest – Brickhouse was the right man for the job at the time, as was Harry later and Len & Bob now.

Save your critque for your media 101 class, maybe your teacher might be impressed.

that is what depresses me about this team a bit. They seem to have a lot of things going pretty well right now and they are only at .500.

But Cubs pinch hitters have been used in the highest leverage situations by far of any NL team. There is a “pinch-hitting penalty” in that players tend to hit significantly worse off the bench (there’s also a “DH-penalty”), so I’m not sure if it’s that the Cubs have been forced to use pinch-hitters in particularly important situations, but I would imagine that’s a big part of it. The bottom of the order is producing in front of the pitcher’s spot. Normally line-up construction doesn’t have a huge impact on overall team runs scored, but in the relatively small sample size of a month I think it’s having a disproportionate effect on this team. That shows up a little bit in the Cubs pythW-L (15-12, as opposed to the real 13-14).

Basically, I wasn’t sure where I was going with this when I saw this stat trying to find the cubs BA w/ RISP, but I think it’s an argument to move Ramirez down.

Brief primer: Leverage index is an attempt to measure the pressure/importance of every situation. An average situation would be 1.00.
link

At .252. The league average is .263, and the D’Backs lead the way at .314.

But your objection now is duly noted. You now can tell us you told us so at the end of the season if he doesn’t improved. Yay.

Jerry Mumphrey

Guess Lee might help given he’s not been in as bad a funk.

TJ where are you?

We’re tied for second.

YOU ARE ASKING QUESTIONS YOU DON’T WANT THE ANSWER TO.

Today’s lineup via Carrie Muskat on Twitter:

ss riot,
rf fuke,
1b lee,
cf byrd,
lf sori,
3b ramy,
2b font,
c hill,
p lilly