Today's Cubs and baseball notes:
-
Interesting note from Carlos Zambrano regarding the grand slam Pablo Sandoval hit off him yesterday:
"It's spring training. You know how many home runs Barry Bonds hit off me? One -- in spring training."
The Cubs won't play the Giants in the regular season until August. Let's hope the number of HR Sandoval hits off Z remains at "one -- in spring training".
- Here's a column on Nomar Garciaparra's retirement that brings out the old SI cover photo as "evidence" that Nomar may have juiced, leading to all his injuries. But the article also reveals something I had not heard before that might have been the real cause:
Last season Garciaparra told the San Francisco Chronicle that his connective tissue isn’t flexible enough to accommodate repeated muscular contractions, a condition that can be genetic. Garciaparra said his father and sister have the same ailment.
Could that have helped to cause the horrific groin injury that ruined Nomar's 2005 season with the Cubs?
- The Giants' Barry Zito is sponsoring a spring training tour for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Nice gesture.
- And the Dodgers are off to Taiwan to play an exhibition series with an All-Star team from that country.
Finally, before you go past the jump for today's game info, write your own caption for the photo at the top of this post.
Carlos Silva will try it again today for the Cubs. Jon Garland, who started his career in the Cubs organization, will pitch for the Padres.
Today's game is on XEPE, a Padres radio station, so we may hear former WGN announcer Andy Masur. Here's the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
First pitch thread will post at 2 pm CST. An overflow thread will post at 3:15 CST.
Discuss amongst yourselves.