Hooray! Opening Day is here! Posting this early to get discussion going, and there is important news today.
Sam Zell's offer to buy the Tribune Co. has been accepted. What does this mean to the Cubs? We don't know yet, and may not for quite some time, because a deal this large, involving many different forms of media, will have to clear regulatory hurdles -- and then, Zell will have to decide what he's going to do with all the pieces. The article says:
| Today's Starting Pitchers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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pitcher stats are 2006 season stats
| Today's Starting Lineups | |
| Cubs | Reds |
| Soriano, cf | Freel, cf |
| Murton, lf | Dunn, lf |
| Lee, 1b | Phillips, 2b |
| Ramirez, 3b | Griffey, rf |
| Jones, rf | Encarnacion, 3b |
| Barrett, c | Hatteberg, 1b |
| DeRosa, 2b | Gonzalez, ss |
| Izturis, ss | Ross, c |
| Zambrano, p | Harang, p |
A couple of notes: this is the 36th time the Cubs have played the Reds on Opening Day. They're 20-15 in the previous 35 meetings. And Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee will be the starting 3B and 1B for the fourth straight opener -- that's the first time the Cubs have had the same two players at those positions on Opening Day for as many years in a row, since Ron Santo and Ernie Banks did it nine straight years from 1962-1970. Finally, Carlos Zambrano will become the 12th Cub pitcher since 1900 to start at least three straight openers -- the last was Jon Lieber (2000-2002), and let's hope Z has a better day today than he did the last two years!
UPDATE [2007-4-2 9:52:29 by Al]: Here's the MLB.com Mediacenter for today. The game's also on XM 185, and if you are media-deprived but are near a computer, here's your MLB.com Gameday link.
Discuss amongst yourselves.