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Cub Tracks’ TV or not TV

Meatloaf is everywhere, stop booing Yu, Javy comes up short, and other bullets

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Meat Loaf And K. Devito Perform On Stage, Circa 1978.
Good gravy! It’s Karla Devito! Can Ellen Foley be far behind?

A beautiful night at the old ballyard, and look at all of them runs! Seattle pitching did a great job of hitting the sweet spot. But Ryan Rowland-Smith’s commentary is offputting as hell. I had a hard time dealing with his accent announcing the sport and kept expecting him to holler “Goal!”

He’s actually decent at his job. But he sounds just like William Snow, the guy that does the Outback commercials, who was great on The Lost World. I love that series — it’s in regular rotation in my Sunday Sci-Fi lineup...but New South Wales is not well-known as a location from which to develop baseball color men. Just sayin’.

It makes as much sense on the face of it as the average Rick Morrissey column. But Rick has been trying hard this pre-season and has been in regular rotation here. He returns to plead the case for Javier Baez at shortstop.

Cub pitching looked pretty good — now that the late telecast hath murdered sleep, here’s today’s Cubs News and Notes. As always * means autoplay on, or annoying ads, or both (directions to remove for Firefox and Chrome).

The Cubs are hoping the YouTube channel will promote the team’s brand in coming years, as WGN-9 helped build the franchise back in the 1980s and ’90s when it was a superstation. There will be no live telecasts of Cubs games on the YouTube channel, though it will have highlights.

“We’re beneficiaries. This whole empire is a product of the WGN superstation and Harry Caray,” Kenney said. “Seventy million homes outside of Chicago watching our games, day baseball games, the ’84 Cubs … we all got the benefit of that.

“That’s lost. We don’t have that massive footprint. But social media allows us to do that.” — Paul Sullivan.

Food for thought: