By Donald G. Evans

There’s no precise number of pulled whatnot, broken whatever, and tweaked et cetera that constitutes an “injury bug,” but generally you know when the epidemic is upon you. It’s upon us. You know the injury bug has hit not just because of volume, but grouping and quality. The Cubs were victims of significant, disabled-list-type injuries on June 11, June 17, June 18, and June 26; additional minor injuries were incurred on June 20, June 26 and June 28. We lost our ace pitcher, our best hitter, a relief pitcher coming off a team record scoreless streak, and our best defensive outfielder. Banged up were our most consistent hitter, our best on-base guy, and our hottest hitter.

Bandaged Man by Webweaver's Free ClipartHere’s how else you know the injury bug has arrived: your best run producer takes a leave of absence for “family matters.” Leaves of absence are generally associated with professors, lawyers, perhaps business executives, unless, as now, the injury bug is making its rounds; then ball players like Aramis Ramirez need one. Technically not an “injury,” I know, but it amounts to the same thing: a player out of action.

Our Cubbies have lost a lot of guys--a lot of good guys--in some cases, for a long time.

This is bad luck. All teams have injured players, of course, but not like this. This is, well, it’s some sort of karma or curse only possible if the universe is against your team winning the World Series, possibly ever again.

• Soriano: “minimally displaced fracture of the left fourth metacarpal,” six weeks.

• Reed Johnson: “back spasms,” 15-day DL.

• Carlos Zambrano: “strained shoulder,” 15-day DL.

• Jim Edmonds: “plantar fascitis in his left foot,” hobbled.

• Kosuke Fukudome: “tightness in left calf,” day-to-day.

• Scott Eyre: “left groin strain,” 15-day DL.

• Ryan Theriot: “bruised hand,” day-to-day.

• Aramis Ramirez: “family situation,” three games.

Causes for the injuries are mostly part of the daily life of a baseball player—warming up, running out a bunt, playing on artificial turf. In Reed Johnson’s case, according to the Cubs trainer, riding the bus from Albany to Cooperstown and back for the Hall of Fame game might have had something to do with it. Scott Eyre was pitching, which understandably could lead to an arm problem—but this is his groin, for God’s Sake. Aramis Ramirez—who knows? A dark, disguised voice beckoning him to the Dominican Republic, toward Standing Room Only cock fights and away from the hot corner at AT&T Park?

It’s a bug, I tell you. Picture Ryan Theriot waking up in his hotel room, sweaty, yelling, “My hand! My fucking hand!” Or Carlos Zambrano looking into the crowd for sniper types after the double play. Jim Edmonds suspiciously eyeing a divot in the plastic grass as his ankle swells like a balloon. Scott Eyre staring down his pinstriped pants for the culprit.

We’re wounded; “getting pretty thin,” according to Skipper Lou Piniella. But this MASH unit of limping, yelping, wincing manhood will all be back, like the cavalry, to save Our Cubbies--in a very short time, to hear them tell it. Soriano vows to play in the All-Star Game. Zambrano didn’t even want to leave the game after his injury was discovered. Theriot insists his hand, “It’s fine!” With Fukudome, we’re playing it safe. Ramirez will presumably take care of whatever needs to be taken care of, and return, refreshed.

But Cubs fans have a right to be skeptical about optimistic prognoses. For some reason, players do not like to admit being hurt—perhaps it’s the machoistic nature of the business, or reluctance to let down teammates or just a general warrior mentality. You more often hear, “I’ll be back soon” than, “This hurts so much I can’t even imagine making myself an omelet, much less swinging a bat.”

Cubs’ management, too, has a reputation for being coy about injuries. General Manager Jim Hendry and then-manager Dusty Baker told us repeatedly, for several years, that Mark Prior’s arm problems were essentially nothing and they were “being cautious,” but the last Prior citing was at a Starbuck’s somewhere on the West Coast, where he gingerly negotiated a one-armed sip of latte. The same song played for Wade Miller, Kerry Wood, Derrek Lee and a bunch of other more-or-less crippled guys we were assured were just fine.

Johnson played in only 79 games last year because of a herniated disc, making this injury greater cause for concern. Edmonds had banged-up legs before he got here, and is old. Soriano’s been on and off the DL all season.

You think of “our guys” as Soriano, Ramirez, Zambrano, Fukudome and the like, but when they disappear to the black hole of trainer’s tables, extended spring training sessions in Arizona, towel drills, and minor league rehab assignments, “our guys” are really Mike Fontenot, Ronny Cedeno, Jose Ascanio, Mike Wuertz, Sean Gallagher, Sean Marshall, and maybe a few other Seans we don’t know about.

I like this. I’ve always had a soft spot for the ragamuffin players without the requisite speed, strength, or height, born into circumstances more like my own than that of, say, Barry Bonds. My favorite players, at one time or another, have been Paul Popovich, Augie Ojeda, Bob Dernier, and Jose Cardenal. Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot are way up on my list now. I haven’t given up on Matt Murton.

If I had practiced harder, had the right guidance, and had the scouts done their jobs better, it could be me in the place of any one of those small stature players.

Plus, there’s something exciting about a guy getting his shot. These are not necessarily the Kerry Woods and Joe Carters and Rafael Palmeiros who’ve been groomed to be big league stars and will be given, over and over, if necessary, the chance to play their ways into their predestined starring roles.

No, these are guys good enough to hang around long enough to get their big chance, and it might be just this once. Or veterans wasting away in the dugout, looking for that spotlight that’s never managed to quite locate them, or who are past their prime hoping to steal another moment or two of glory.

Before the injury bug hit, the Cubs had, essentially, four starting outfielders, with left-handed hitting Johnson and right-handed hitting Edmonds platooning in center field. At the height of the bug, we were down to none. If you had some combination of an outfielder’s mitt and a Cubs uniform, you were in.

We found out quickly that Eric Patterson, a converted second baseman, could not really play left field. The Orioles treated him like a Little Leaguer—tagging up from first to second, aggressively taking extra bases, and generally daring the substitute player to throw the ball quickly and accurately toward the next base, a challenge to which he was decidedly not equal. A ball went under his mitt and he almost fell chasing after it.

Patterson might just as well start checking into an apartment share situation with his brother as oiling his glove; he’s had his big chance. But that’s okay. We’ve got Felix Pie, Sam Fuld and Micah Hoffpauir, waiting for the call.

Don’t forget Henry Blanco. Jon Lieber and Neal Cotts. Kevin Hart might just be ready to get over that hump; Rocky Cherry and Jose Ceda, too. Jeff Samardzija, Tyler Colvin and Scott Moore want a chance.

Sound the alarm at the end of the bench, in the hollows of the bullpen, in Iowa, Tennessee, and Peoria. Our guys are our guys, even if they’re not our guys. And as long as we’ve waited almost 100 years anyway, won’t it be sweeter to let the whole extended family in on this thing?

Let’s just hope Josh Vitters doesn’t stub a toe.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.

By Randy Richardson

I am a goat, a hollow-horned ruminant of the genus Capra, a proud member of the family Bovidae.

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854.I am also a victim. Humankind has not been kind to me and my kind. Your language is filled with unflattering references, verbal potshots if you will, aimed at goatdom. To be cast as a goat is to be a lecher, or a victim of ridicule or pranks. In literature, we are the billy goats gruff.

It is hurtful that you paint us in such a negative light. Sure we may look a little funny, and the females of our species could use a shave, but we're mostly good-natured, peace-loving creatures and undeserving of the cruel aspersions on our character. We give freely our milk and our wool. You drape yourselves in cashmere and angora, the wools of my kind, but won't associate with us because we smell a little differently than you do and are maybe a little less picky about what we eat.

We have stood by, on all fours, and chewed on weeds and gnawed on woody shrubs without so much as a complaint while you have hurled your offensive verbal assaults at our kind.

But now we are ready to butt heads. Because not only do you continue to slander us as a species, you are blaming us for the failures and misfortunes of a baseball team and, in turn, the pain and suffering its fans have endured. You have made us into, well, scapegoats.

Excuse me while I cough up some cud, but how am I supposed to swallow a story that one of my own species is responsible for the futility of a baseball team?

I am told that the Curse of the Billy Goat is a curse on the Chicago Cubs that was started in 1945, and here is where I begin to see a gaping hole in this whole wretched story, because the team in question has not won a World Series since 1908. Now I might not be the most intelligent animal on the planet, but even I know that the math doesn't add up. Your team had already inured 37 years of futility before the Curse of the Billy Goat came into play. Thirty-seven years. A period in history that began with the end of one Roosevelt in the White House and ended with the end of another Roosevelt in the White House. And in between there was Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.

Cubs Curse by Gina/Peace LvrI'll try as best I can to hold back my contempt as I spit this out. As the story goes, Billy Sianis, a Greek immigrant who owned a nearby tavern (the now-famous Billy Goat Tavern), had two $7.20 box seat tickets to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, and decided to bring along his pet goat, Murphy (or Sinovia according to some references), which Sianis had restored to health when the goat had fallen off a truck and subsequently limped into his tavern. The goat wore a blanket with a sign pinned to it that read "We got Detroit's goat."

Okay, I must interject here, and state, unequivocally, on behalf of all goatdom, goats are not fans of baseball and, in fact, are morally opposed to the taking of a fellow ruminant's hide purely for sport.

So we're supposed to believe that the Greek and his goat are sitting in their box seats, eating popcorn and Cracker Jack, like any other fan. That's a picture I'd pay to see. Then it starts to rain. To me, nothing smells better than a wet goat. But apparently your kind doesn't share my sense of smell. Fans sitting in the vicinity of the Sianis goat raised a stink about the objectionable odor and the two of them got booted from the game. Sianis was outraged at the ejection and allegedly placed a curse upon the Cubs that they would never win another pennant or play in a World Series at Wrigley Field again because the Cubs organization had insulted his goat.

The Cubs lost Game 4 and eventually the 1945 World Series, prompting Sianis to write to Cubs' owner Philip K. Wrigley the immortal words, "Who stinks now?"

The rest, of course, is history. The Cubs haven't even been back to the World Series since that infamous day.

Here I plead my case against the Curse of the Billy Goat. In my defense I cite only three exhibits:

Exhibit 1: Brock for Broglio. This is sometimes referred to as the most lopsided trade ever in baseball. The year: 1964. The Cubs trade away struggling, disappointing outfielder Lou Brock for established starting pitcher Ernie Broglio, who'd won 20 games for the Cards in his second year and 18 in 1963. Brock makes an immediate impact, batting .348 for the Cardinals and leading them to winning the 1964 World Series. He goes on to lead the Cards to another championship in 1967 and is inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1985. Ernie Broglio wins all of seven games for the Cubs and retires from baseball in 1967.

Exhibit 2: Eckersley for Leonette, Guinn and Wilder. The year: 1987. The Cubs trade veteran starter Dennis Eckersley to the Oakland A's for three minor leaguers, none of whom would ever make the major league roster. Eckersley, a verifiable drunk as a member of the Cubs starting rotation, finds new life in Oakland. When A's closer Jay Howell comes down with a sore arm, Eck converts to a reliever. He closes out each of the A's four wins in the 1988 American league Championship Series, and the final game of the A's sweep of the San Francisco Giants in the 1989 World Series. He is elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004, his first year of eligibility.

Exhibit 3: Maddux to free agency. The year: 1993. The year after winning his first Cy Young Award with the Cubs, Greg Maddux signs as a free agent with the Atlanta Braves. He goes on to win the Cy Young Award the next three years, becoming the first pitcher in Major League history to win the Cy Young Award four consecutive years. He helps lead the Braves to their first World Series championship in 1995.

For 63 years, a goat has stood accused of causing all of the hardships that have fallen upon the Chicago Cubs. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I cite these three exhibits as proof that gross mismanagement and pure organizational stupidity are to blame for the failures of the Cubs since 1945, not a goat.

Goats, like Cubs' fans, have endured enough pain and suffering. It is time to put an end to this undue billy goat's grief, and clear Murphy's good name, and, in turn, that of all goats. We are goats, not scapegoats.

Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. He is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine and his work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart. He serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association.

By Donald G. Evans

I’m sitting here in the very last row of the upper deck at Wrigley Field, on a night I’d swear was February if I hadn’t confirmed May 27 with my calendar. The wind is howling. I’m wearing long underwear and leather gloves, not to mention a flannel shirt, sweatshirt and sweater, and still: freezing. Soriano hits one ball like a shot out to left, and when it leaves the bat I’m thinking, “Waveland Avenue,” but it blows across the diamond and back toward home until, finally, Fukudome catches the ball just behind second base.

Kosuke Fukudome bobblehead giveawayFukudome. The reason I’m here (other than the fact that it was 80 degrees yesterday and I assumed today would be at least in that vicinity) is Fukudome. More precisely, the Fukudome bobblehead given away to the first 10,000 fans. Only: no Fukudome bobblehead. My ticket said, “7:05 p.m.,” which I assumed meant, “7:05 p.m.,” but when I arrived at around 5:30—plenty early to claim my prize—they were ALL GONE. Turns out the game, without my consent, had been moved up an hour to accommodate an ESPN broadcast.

I’m bitter. I’m a middle-aged man, and I can’t help but look with envy, lust and desire at all the Fukudome bobbleheads propped on empty seats and sticking out of tote bags and lying between legs. This has ruined my night, and this wind isn’t helping. I want a Fukudome bobblehead; I need a Fukudome bobblehead; I have to have a Fukudome bobblehead.

I can tell you precisely how it started, but not why. It was two years ago. I remember, because Dusty was two, and I know the season hadn’t yet started because parking was insanely easy. Right in front of the fire station; spitting distance to the entrance. I took Dusty over to look at the big red fire engine parked out front, and then a fireman let Dusty play behind the wheel for a bit. His day was made, but I had bigger fish to fry.

It had been billed as Wrigley Field Garage Sale, and while there was no actual garage it worked, as far as I could tell, on the garage sale principle. The Cubs had some junk they wanted to unload; I had a few bucks earmarked for their junk.

At this point, I didn’t collect memorabilia. No signed baseballs, no old scorecards, no vintage newspaper clippings. My baseball cards were long gone. I didn’t even own a Sandberg or Buckner or Lee jersey. But I love the Cubs and I love garage sales, and I figured the intersection between the two could only be good. Unfortunately, my two-year-old son, as two-year-old sons are wont to do, set a languishing pace. He apparently didn’t understand the concept of Early Birds. Between that, and the dalliance in the fire station, the good stuff at the good prices, if there ever was such a thing, was long gone. Still, it was worth poking around a bit.

I’ve always been a collector. In addition to the usual—baseball cards, beer cans, superhero dolls—I even, as a kid, collected soap wrappers. There was something that appealed to me about the wide variance, yet finite number, of some category. You knock out Dove and Dial and Crest right away, but as you drill deeper you find there’s Camay and Irish Spring and Lifebuoy. There’s something, I don’t know, satisfying about tracking down a hard-to-get example, or just stumbling across something unusual, and it’s sort of exciting to display them all together in anticipation of somebody acknowledging, “Wow! There are a lot of different kinds of soap that I didn’t even know about,” or “Man, that’s a lot of soap!”

So while Dusty busted up an aisle filled with stuffed animals and giveaway baseball cards, I browsed. I didn’t know what I was looking for. My garage sale philosophy is that you don’t go after need, but best available. You take the good deal and decide what to do with it later. When I first spotted the bobblehead set, it didn’t strike me as that exact something you know when you see. It was really only the price. Ten bucks for three: Sandberg, Farnsworth and Sosa. Two would-be Hall-of-Fames and an asshole with a blazing fastball that had been run out of town. Not a bad start. I thought to myself, I truly thought this, “Those would look good in Uncle Rick’s hot dog stand.” My Uncle Rick has a Chicago-style hot dog stand in Mesa, Arizona, and the place is loaded with Chicago stuff, especially Chicago sports stuff. A couple Cubbie bobbleheads around the relish tray would be a nice addition. I got them.

In my adult life, I’d mostly channeled my collecting energy into books, reserving some relish for Margaret’s tea cozy collection. When I was a boy collecting baseball cards, I went hard after complete sets. I liked getting stars, but I had more enthusiasm for tracking down the missing pieces: the Joe Lovittos, the Fritz Petersons, the Fred Schermans. It became an obsession, going after those last bits: buying packs, stealing packs, trading doubles.

I looked at my bobbleheads in the light of my living room. I had been trying to decide—really—whether to ship them off to Arizona now, or deliver them myself when I visited there later in the month. I took Sosa out of the box, just to see. I set him on the mantle above my fireplace. I excavated Sandberg and then Farnsworth from the packaging and put them on either side of Sosa. Looked kind of cool.

At this point, there was a subtle shift in my thinking. Dusty would, one figured, soon be a Cubs fan, and wouldn’t he appreciate a head start on a little collection like this? I’d keep these three bobbleheads—it’s crazy, anyway, to put these things in a hot dog stand, where anybody could bump into them, CRACK!—and maybe add a few key pieces to the set. When he got old enough, I’d turn them over.

I hopped on Ebay, just to peak. Man! Santo, Jenkins, Grace, Banks—those were all out there. Greg Maddux in a Cubs uniform, yes. Dusty Baker. Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. I obviously needed to get busy. Now, part of collecting, to me, is to shrewdly secure the desired pieces—meaning, either get them as a giveaway, trade for them, or buy them at good prices. Any collection (well, the soap wrapper collection was probably never going to appreciate), you want to it to be more valuable over time, and so you can’t pay top dollar. A bobblehead’s just not going to go through the roof, even if you sit on it ten or twenty years. Besides, there’s no challenge in just plunking down the cash, BAM!—if you were willing to do that, you just get them all and be done with it. Good deals: that was definitely part of it.

My niece Brianne had Santo sitting on a bookcase at home, and when I made a subtle inquiry she said, “Take it.” Good deal? I think so. The memorabilia shop on Addison and Clark was having a fire sale on Dusty Baker. Check. There were dozens of Kerry Woods and Mark Priors on Ebay, and the combination of availability and depressed value (both pitchers were at this time doing towel drills somewhere in Arizona) made them a steal. Check, check. Somebody on Craigslist was unloading a Jenkins at a fairly reasonable price, especially when you considered: it was signed.

Wait: signed bobbleheads. Signed…bobbleheads. Ron Santo was doing a fifteen-buck-a-throw signing at a card shop on the North Shore, and I was going out that way anyway. I dropped the bobblehead off, picked it up a few days later with Ronnie’s scrawl on the pinstriped leg. How great was this! Now, not only were there all these great bobbleheads to run down—many of them limited edition numbers passed out at games—but now the collection had a new level of difficulty. You couldn’t buy these even if you wanted to. You couldn’t get these on Ebay; nobody on Craigslist was trying to extort you for them; you could go to ten thousand garage sales and flea markets without so much as a sniff of one. I mean, who gets their bobbleheads signed? Meaning, if I lived long enough, I would have the only truly complete collection of signed Chicago Cubs bobbleheads known to man. Santo, Jenkins, Ramirez, Lee, Sandberg, and so on. (There is no Billy Williams bobblehead, which begs the question, “What’s the benchmark for getting your own bobblehead?)

Last season, the collection kicked into high gear. I was at Wrigley Field to get my Ramirez, Lee, Zambrano and Barrett; I traded a guy my extra Barrett for Soriano, a different guy my extra Lee for Pinella. (Tip: When you go to a Bobblehead Day, only go with somebody NOT INTERESTED in his or her bobblehead, like your wife). Meanwhile, the Peoria Chiefs were giving away Jody Davis. How far is Peoria from Oak Park, anyway? Couldn’t be too far.

I have no space for these bobbleheads. I’ve got some displayed on makeshift shelves around my makeshift office; a lot are stored in a trunk. The dream is, someday soon we’re going to build a two-story garage, with the second floor being my writing loft, and in that writing loft will be bobbleheads (Cubs bobbleheads) (signed Cubs bobbleheads) as far as the eye can see. I told myself they were going to go to Dusty when he got old enough, but who’s to say when that will be? Besides, I’ve got to have something to leave in my will.

Only here I am, no Fukudome. Between shivers, maybe even mid-shiver, I’m imagining that writing loft with all those signed Cubs bobbleheads, and I can see, I can just see, the big gaping hole that should be, but isn’t, filled by that Fukudome bobblehead. I walk down the ramp to go to the bathroom and get my circulation going, and as I do I spot two boxed bobbleheads lying, relatively unguarded, under a seat. The perfect crime reveals itself to me. Remember the bowler hat scene in the Thomas Crown affair? Dozens and dozens of guys in bowler hats and trench coats, carrying briefcases and scattering in every direction. The perfect crime, because the actual thief and all his look-alikes are indistinguishable. I’m thinking of that same scene, only with Fukodume bobbleheads—identical Fukdume bobbleheads—spraying every which way. This isn’t a serious thought—I hope not, at least—but it is a thought. Who would question me? I went to Fukudome Bobblehead Day, and I came home with a Fukudome bobblehead. Right? Besides, this is a dubious moral position: the difference between this person, and not me, coming to own this bobblehead—and not one but two bobbleheads, probably only to be sold on Ebay anyway—is razor thin.

I choose, instead, to offer to buy the extra Fukudome bobblehead, and when I get turned down I’m a marked man. Now I’m the guy without the Fukudome bobblehead looking for a Fukudome bobblehead, and the whole Thomas Crown Affair scenario is blown.

I return to my seat, a freezing, Fukudome bobbleheadless father whose moral compass, in deed if not thought, is intact. Worthless trinkets, but ones I prize, and there’s no telling where, when or how this will all end.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others, and he will soon have a story appearing in the Xavier Review.

By Donald G. Evans

1. Give the starting assignment to fly ball pitcher Ted Lilly.
2. Brush off Willie Taveras’ bunt single and Jon Herrera’s line drive hit to start the game.
3. Shrug as Todd Helton blasts the ball over the center field wall for a 3-0 Rockies lead.
4. Begin to worry, just a little, when Chris Iannetta, who you’ve never heard of, doubles to deep right center, and then somebody named Jeff Baker, who you’ve also never heard of, doubles to deep left center to make it 4-0 in the first inning.
5. Give your top RBI man Aramis Ramirez the day off.
6. While you’re at it, give the regular position player with the highest batting average, Ryan Theriot, the day off.
7. Watch patiently as your scrub lineup does nothing in the first two innings.
8. Be philosophical (“He’s just rusty, not old”) when Jim Edmonds drops a fly ball off the bat of Garrett Atkins.
9. Try to be happy for Iannetta when he clubs one over the left field wall to make it 6-0. Make mental note: google C. Iannetta, Colorado Rockies.
10. Allow yourself just a little concern when Baker doubles again, and then is brought home on a base hit by Omar Quintanilla, whom you’ve also never heard of. Make mental note: google J. Baker, Colorado Rockies.
11. Tell yourself, “What’s seven runs on a day like today?”
12. Raise your eyebrows a little when pitcher Carlos Zambrano pinch-hits for Ted Lilly to lead off the bottom of the third inning.
13. Console yourself that the bases were empty when long relief pitcher Jon Lieber surrenders a home run to Ryan Spilsborghs and rejoice in the fact that at least you’ve heard of him—sort of.
14. Clap your hands twice when Mark DeRosa breaks the shutout with a sacrifice fly to score Derek Lee.
15. Connect to the Internet when Baker hits his third double and scores on another hit by Quintanilla, if that’s how you pronounce it.
16. Look around for white flags when, in the top of the sixth, Henry Blanco, he with no home runs, replaces slugger Geovany Sotto, and rookie Micah Hoffpauir, he of 12 career at-bats, replaces All-Star Derek Lee.
17. Wink at manager Lou Pinella when Hoffpauir, if that’s how you pronounce his name, hits a ground-rule double to left center field to lead off the bottom of the next inning.
18. Allow yourself a glimmer of hope when Kosuke Fukudome rips a home run to cut the lead to 9-3.
19. Control your urge to register a smug, “See, I told you so!” smirk when Edmonds goes back-to-back with a windblown job over the center field wall.
20. Swap Lieber for Scott Eyre after Baker hits his FOURTH DOUBLE of the game, and watch the world return to a semblance of normalcy when the lefty strikes out Quintanilla to end the seventh inning.
21. Give Pinella a “YOU THE MAN!” thumbs up when Little Fontenot singles and Henry Blanco hits a monster home run to pull the Cubs to within three at 9-6.
22. Search on Ebay for a Hoffpauir rookie card after he singles to deep right.
23. Join the Fukudome fan club as he rips a base hit.
24. Forgive Edmonds for all those years in St. Louis, the dropped fly ball, and the average below the Mendoza line when he doubles home both runners with a double to deep center.
25. Look up at the scoreboard, now reading Colorado 9 Cubs 8, and try to remember the last time you enjoyed a seventh inning THIS MUCH.
26. Cheer wildly as DeRosa knocks one over the center field wall to give the Cubs A 10-9 LEAD.
27. Realize, as Carlos Marmol strikes out all three Rockie hitters in the top of the eighth—ON 10 PITCHES, no less--, that we have the best relief pitcher in all of baseball.
28. Realize, also, as Kerry Wood walks Spilborghs to start the ninth, that we don’t have the best closer in baseball.
29. Have momentarily flashback to Opening Day, when the Cubs lost to the Brewers in 10 after Fukudome hit a dramatic, three-run, ninth-inning home run to erase a 3-0 deficit, as a line drive whistles toward second off the bat of Atkins.
30. Raise a clenched fist as Fontenot snags the ball, flips it to Ronny Cedeno, who relays it to—there’s that name again—Hoffpauir to double Spilborghs off first.
31. Put a single index finger in the air as Fukudome corrals a fly ball to end the game.
32. Tune into the WGN post-game press conference to see how Lou will manage to play this one down.

Donald G. Evans, author of Wrigleyville sports gambling novel Good Money After Bad, is the Lovable Losers emcee. His stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Pinyon Review, The Journal and Narrative Magazine, among others.

By Randy Richardson

I sift through my collection of baseball memorabilia with the intensity of Indiana Jones digging for an ancient artifact. Trading cards. Game giveaways. News clippings. They've all been stowed away in a plastic bin that rests under my underwear drawer. They represent the memories of a past that I cling to for reasons that I can’t adequately explain. All I know is that I can’t let them go. Some I’ve had in my possession since I played Little League. To professional sports hobbyists, they probably would have little value: They haven't been hermetically sealed in protective casings and, thus, show the stains of time.

Marla Collins, Cubs ballgirl 1982-1986One day this collection will be my son’s, and I hope that he will find in it something that will make him feel the same way I felt about baseball. Maybe he will find in it the kid that I used to be.

But there’s one treasure in it he can’t have, at least not until he’s mature enough to understand it, and it is what I search for today.

I am alone in the house, except for the Siamese cat that sits on the floor next to me, curiously watching over my every move with a tilted head that seems to ask, “What the hell are you doing?” Damn cat.

An army of baseball cards surrounds me. Tony Oliva flanks my right side. Jose Cardenal is at my rear. Boog Powell holds guard at my left knee.

I've undertaken this excavation not to find a baseball card but another piece of my baseball past, a gift from a law school roommate that I've never let anyone else see. I know it’s in here: somewhere.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching, my patience runs thin. I dump the entire bin's contents on the floor. A foot-high mountain of baseball memorabilia encircles me. The cat looks at me as if I've lost my marbles. Using both arms as plows, I separate the pile in two. That’s when I catch glimpse of it, plain white poster paper, unblemished except for an old piece of cellophane tape on it, evenly divided into fours.

Even though I know I'm alone, except for the scrutinizing eyes of my cat, I self-consciously look around before unfolding it with the care one would give to opening a long lost treasure map. I sense myself blushing when I finally do see what, or perhaps more appropriately, who, I've been looking for.

It's her, alright. Make no mistake about it. She's supine on pink satin sheets and wearing a gold bracelet, a turquoise scarf – or is it wrapping paper, I can't tell – and matching turquoise loop earrings. And nothing else.

She is Marla Collins, who for five years in the 1980s kept me watching Cubs home games on WGN-TV even in the worst of times. From 1982 to 1986, my college years, she was the Cubs ballgirl and she would dress up for home games in a shrunken Cubs uniform that left little to the imagination. Her job was to shag foul balls and to keep the home plate umpire's pockets stuffed with baseballs. My eyes usually weren't on the game. They were on her. She had become what Farrah Fawcett and Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter had been for me during high school – a fantasy.

I can't adequately explain why I wanted to shag this ball-shagger. She was of course beautiful, with fiery red hair and a curvaceous body, but there was more to it than that and I think it had less to do with her and more to do with the uniform, a confession that I am a little uncomfortable about.

The late, great Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray was one of Collins' biggest fans and would often be distracted from the game by her. Some viewers found this habit of his annoying if not disturbing. But it was what made Harry different from most every other sports broadcaster out there. He was genuine and never pretended to be anything other than what he was. He saw in Marla Collins what I saw in Marla Collins.

On one unseasonably cold spring day, Harry notices Marla is dressed for the weather and not in her usual "hot pants". Without thinking, he utters, "Hey, we see Marla Collins without shorts for the first time." (Listen to the audio clip from the WGN Radio archives.)

Marla Collins, Playboy magazine September 1986The Cubs fired Marla Collins in the middle of a dismal 1986 season after she posed nude for Playboy magazine. According to Chicago Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell, she was fired for breaking the "family-oriented spirit" of the Cubs. Playing lousy baseball apparently didn't wreck that family-oriented spirit, as all of the players kept their jobs despite a 5^th place finish in the NL East that year with a dismal 70-90 record.

Mike Royko, the late Tribune columnist, wrote of Collins' dismissal: "Of course it's hypocritical. But hypocrisy is the very backbone of our sexual moral standards. Many of our most outstanding bluenoses are secret lechers."

It is ironic that the Cubs hired Collins and put her in the shortest of shorts, and then fired her for taking them off.

I look at that nude picture of Collins and another picture of her dressed in that shrunken Cubs uniform, and they don't seem all that different to me. The reality was that I'd seen that nude picture of her long before she posed for it. That was the fantasy.

Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. His work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart.