Last night, I went to the Lou Malnati's Cancer Benefit, as I discovered, at least one other BCB reader was there too. Ryan Dempster was supposed to appear with the Second City cast, but asked to be replaced because of his start today. Instead, Jeff Samardzija took the stage and was actually pretty funny, despite the last-minute nature of his appearance, and having no real training. Versatile! He plays football! He plays baseball! He does improv! A fun night, and I wound up sitting at a table with two other bleacher season ticket holders who I know -- had NO idea they would be there.
Ron Santo is among 10 finalists who played in the post-1943 era to be considered by the Veterans Committee for HoF induction next year. The voting results will be announced on December 8. It's long past time to put Ron in.
Bruce Miles writes today about the Fukudome dilemma.
Say, did you know that we have people rooting for us other than Cubs fans? The SBN Phillies site The Good Phight says Phillies fans are rooting hard for us the next two weeks. If you go over there, please be nice!
I received quite a number of Geovany Soto pics from BCB readers by email in the last day... plenty to have to post one with each pregame thread. Here's today's, courtesy of BCB reader kaseyi:
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The stats above are CC Sabathia's with the Brewers only; see the pitcher box above for his full-season stats, which are not that much different than Dempster's (except for the strikeouts).
Sabathia's only truly "bad" outing (and it wasn't that bad), and the only game the Brewers have lost among his 13 starts for them, was the one against the Cubs in Milwaukee on July 28. They touched him up for nine hits, including a HR by Alfonso Soriano, and three earned runs. I think they can hit him again. His overall season numbers, as you can see above, aren't that much different than Ryan Dempster's. Soriano, in fact, loves to hit CC -- four career homers in 29 AB.
Dempster, for his part, is 3-0 with a 2.39 ERA vs. the Brewers this year. He has kept their lineup without a homer in the three starts and of the 12 hits he allowed in 19 total innings, seven were singles. The only Brewers who hit him at all are Jason Kendall (.438, 14-for-32) and Ray Durham (6-for-11).
Today's game is on CSN Chicago and FSN Wisconsin. Also see the MLB.com Mediacenter.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
As always, you can find the overflow comment threads, including the first pitch thread, on the right sidebar of both the front page and any interior page in the box headed "RECENT STORIES IN GAME THREADS". Today's first pitch thread posts at 7 pm CT, and the overflow comment threads will post at 8 pm, 9 pm and 9:45 pm CT.
Discuss amongst yourselves.