Cub Tracks remembers a day to forget

Monday was a perfectly crap day, and then the Cubs happened. It’s all my fault. I locked myself out of the house and my neighbor had to go in through the window. Moments later I stuck the nib from a diabetes testing kit in the heel of my hand, while avoiding a cat who was investigating, then nearly managed to break my foot keeping the lid from the crock pot from hitting the floor as said cat launched off into the aether.

I went to go lie down and forget about all of that and landed on yet another cat, who knocked my glasses off the nightstand and under the bed. Scrabbling around under there trying to find them resulted in the location of a hitherto-unknown puddle of cat pee, which I had to clean up.

Of course I knocked over the mop bucket, but I turned that into a plus by squirting a bunch of Spic N Span on the floor and mopping, which attracted cats and resulted in a lot of little paw prints.

Then the baseball started. Sometimes you just can’t win for losing. 6 errors!

“Just don’t hit the ball to me.” — Jim Deshaies

The hot takes and cold shots just keep on coming. Hoo boy!

Face front, true believers! It smells, but not THAT bad.

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 way the Cubs were defending, it often felt like an April Fools’ Day joke gone wrong.” — Ben Weinrib.

• Mark Gonzales (Chicago Tribune* {$}): Cubs pitchers Yu Darvish and Carl Edwards Jr. keep the faith after struggles in loss to Rangers. “The ball felt fine and the mound was fine,” Darvish said after the shortest outing of his career. “It was all about me.” Sahadev Sharma {$} elaborates.
• Tony Andracki (NBC Sports Chicago*): Cole Hamels refuses to take the easy way out after tough loss. “I got to the bottom of the order and I let it get away from me,” he said.
• Ryan Fagan (The Sporting News*): Cubs’ Steve Cishek on family golf-cart rides, neighborhood fishing contests and more. “I wish I could sing,” he said.
• Jordan Bastian (MLB.com*): Hottovy cites lack of focus for Yu’s outing. “I saw just an amped-up version of him,” Hottovy said.
• Sahadev Sharma (The Athletic {$}): Cubs’ worst bullpen fears realized on opening weekend. “Obviously the last two nights didn’t go our way,” Mike Montgomery said.
• Evan Altman (Cubs Insider): Joe Maddon not worried about bullpen, “Just one guy had a tough time.” “We gotta straighten that out, obviously,” Maddon told reporters. Brett Taylor adds on. Tony Andracki has words also.
• Rick Morrissey (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}): The panic will go away if Cubs ownership spends money on a top reliever or two. “I knew it, you knew it, your dog knew it and the Cubs knew it.”
• Mark Gonzales (Chicago Tribune* {$}): Anthony Rizzo is in position to pick and choose at the plate. “You have to control your at-bat, but it is nice to have Kris (Bryant) hitting in front of me and Javy behind me,” Rizzo said. “There’s a lot of damage to be caused.”
• Jesse Rogers (ESPN*): ‘I delete Twitter during the season’: Can Kris Bryant silence his newfound doubters? “Kris has expectations for himself that no one can put a limit on,” Rizzo said.
• Phil Rosenthal (Chicago Tribune* {$}): A lackluster start after the Cubs stood pat in the offseason sends a message: Just OK apparently is OK. “...the time to panic probably was back when the Brewers, Cardinals and others were beefing up their rosters while the Cubs were standing more or less pat.”
• Savannah Eadens (Chicago Sun-Times* {$}): A baseball game without peanuts? Cubs join Sox, add allergy-friendly game. “... the stadium will host a peanut allergy-friendly game April 14.”
• Cubs birthdays: Jack Harper, Art Ceccarelli, Dick Radatz, Hector Cruz, Al Nipper, Jon Lieber, Hisanori Takahashi. Also notable: Hughie Jennings, Luke Appling, Don Sutton, (HoF).

Food for thought:

“We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde

Thanks for reading.