By Jeff Burd

I possess a dual baseball citizenship that triggers many sideways looks when I announce it. My fellow baseball junkies don’t understand how I can cheer for both the Cubs and the Brewers when they are division rivals. Some dismiss it as a result of living in Gurnee, which is almost the midpoint between Wrigley Field and Miller Park. The truth is that my burden can be traced back to a moment of transcendence I experienced in Milwaukee on July 5, 2004.

I was in my fourth season as a fan of baseball and of the Cubs as I settled into a seat behind home plate that day. I loved the Cubs, and had a pretty easy tenure with them up to that point. They had been a playoff hopeful my first season, a miserable mess the next, and then ran deep into the playoffs nine months previous.

Matt Clement was on the mound for the Cubs. He was one of the remaining starting pitchers saddled with keeping the team afloat until Kerry Wood and Mark Prior returned from their residencies on the DL. Ben Sheets was pitching for the Brewers. I was concerned about his status a Cub killer; he had compiled a 5-2 record against them in three seasons.

I blanched when “Jose Macias” flashed on the scoreboard as lineups were announced. He and his anemic .260 batting average would supplant Moises Alou in left field and bat second. Slugger Aramis Ramirez had been replaced by .262-hitting Ramon Martinez and the frustratingly inconsistent youngster Cory Patterson was batting fifth behind Derrek Lee. It wasn’t the first time that season I was questioning Dusty Baker’s judgment; in fact, it felt like it had become instinctual to do so since the Cubs’ failure in the NLCS.

The Brewers’ struck quickly when Craig Counsell unwound his corkscrew stance and popped a pitch over the fence in right center to grab a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first. The Cubs missed their first chance to strike back by stranding Macias on third the next inning. The same happened with Todd Walker the next inning, and they managed an early-game hat trick of wasted chances by leaving Michael Barrett on second base in the 4^th.

Nothing changed by the top of the 8th, courtesy of the twelve Ks Sheets hurled to help the Brewers hold on to their 1-0 advantage. Clement was lifted for a pinch hitter as the Cubs faced Sheets’ relief. Dusty put his faith in Tom Goodwin’s .214 BA instead of turning to Alou and his reputation as a feared clutch hitter who could deliver in critical situations.

As I watched Goodwin dig in, I thought about the game up to that point. The Brewers' solid play impressed me. They did all the little things you need to do to win games. Ned Yost had his team playing like a highly disciplined squad in the mold of Arizona, Anaheim, and Florida-- teams that had won World Series championships since I started following baseball. It was like they had planned this game as their coming out party to announce their legitimacy to the dismissive Cubs fans.

Goodwin struck out swinging. Walker did likewise. But then the Cubs rallied and had a runner on second base. Had Alou batted, it was likely that he too would have been on base or would have scored during the rally. When Lee struck out, wasting the Cubs’ fourth chance to score, Brewer Nation roared. I sank into my seat, shook my head, and sighed. Like all the other fans Cubs fans. Dusty leaned against the dugout rails throughout the inning, shifting his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.

Dusty didn’t try to manufacture any more opportunities for the Cubs. He could have called on Alou with two outs in the ninth, but instead allowed Macias to hack futilely at the first three pitches he saw to become the seventeenth Cub to strike out.

I muttered a stream of profanities as I walked among jubilant Brewer fans in the parking lot. They were singing the praises of Ned Yost. His team played tough defense behind their pitchers. They made a single run stand up, despite striking out eleven times and managing only three hits. They were easily the best team on the field. It was all true; I realized that the Brewers were playing the type of ball I loved to watch. They had won my respect by doing so.

As for Dusty, he did nothing more than confirm what Chicago sports writers had been saying. He couldn’t manage tight games. He didn’t preach fundamentals. His players had no plate discipline. He wore out his pitchers. He couldn’t develop young talent. I had no respect for him, but could no more abandon the Cubbies than I could a close friend who had made some poor decisions. I decided that if I wanted to be happy watching baseball, I would have to do what most sports fans would consider unthinkable-- especially Chicago fans in regard to Wisconsin teams-- and adopt a division rival. Respect trumped my regional obligations, and that was enough for me to make my decision.

*

I’ve cheered for both teams with equal enthusiasm the past four years. The tension that would seem to naturally evolve because of my dual citizenship has been non-existent, probably because the teams have never slugged it out with something at stake late in the season. That is all going to end over the next two months. When the Brewers inked CC Sabathia as a summer rental, they elevated what had been a tepid regional conflict into an arms race in which the Cubs immediately fell behind, despite the addition of Rich Harden. If he is able to impact the Cubs the same way Sabathia already has the Brewers, then my teams will be engaged in a full-blown divisional war late this season that could rival the intensity of Bears-Packers.

My friends have grilled me about what I’m going to do since the Cubs and Brewers will play ten more games before all is said and done, including four this week and three the last weekend of September at Miller Park. They dream up scenarios involving bean balls and take-out slides and extra-inning grinds and the possibility of the rivals meeting in the playoffs. They press me for answers in emails and text messages and during phone conversations and at parties and over beers as we watch games. They don’t understand that there is room enough for me to love both teams, that I don’t consider my baseball allegiances to be a monogamous marriage from which I can never stray or even be divorced, that I never stopped loving the Cubs and that I’ve been as happy as every other Northsider to see them return to playing winning baseball. I know they won’t cease their assault until I tell them the truth: if it comes down to game seven of the NLCS, I’ll be cheering wholeheartedly for the Cubs. Of course. You never forget your first love.

Jeff Burd works as a high school Reading Specialist when he is not writing and watching baseball. He is in the Master of Creative Writing program at Northwestern University.

By Donald G. Evans

The word Rookie is often used as a derogatory, as in “Rookie Mistake.” Rufus, my old assistant in Kennicott Park’s after school program, after swatting away an attempted shot, would chide the five-year-olds, “GET That OUT of HERE, ROOKIE!” Rookies are often subject to hazing rituals, ridicule and general lack of respect. Veterans sometimes insist the rookies carry their bags. Rookies are in the same lot as newbies, green horns, pledges and fresh meat. (Hey, prisons have Rookies, too, you know).

Yet here we are, pinning much of our hopes on not one but two Rookies. Geovany Soto, having played in only 18 games last season and 30 in all over parts of three seasons, qualifies, under the Major League Baseball definition, as a Rookie. He started two of three playoff losses to Arizona in last year’s post season, nudging veteran Henry Blanco off the roster and late-season acquisition Jason Kendall to the bench. He hit a home run. Soto, then, has some experience, but not enough to graduate.

Kosuke Fukodome, under MLB guidelines, is also a Rookie. Fukodome's nine years in Japan, his 192 home runs, his four home runs to help Japan win the first World Baseball Classic in 2006, the MVP award he won there that same year—none of it counts, Very tricky, these Rookie Guidelines. No college, minor league, international or overseas experiences entitles you to skip the year of indoctrination into The Bigs.

It is an indoctrination, but it’s also a test. In a full season of playing with the best, much can and will be learned about a player. The trajectory of a player’s career is determined largely on this first full season. Is he a starter? A scrub? Still developing? Good but not good enough that the team won’t go out and find somebody better?

Rookies generate perhaps more excitement than any other player because the road ahead is long and sparkling. If a Rookie, a kid, can arrive fully developed, then our team, Our Cubbies, might benefit from his illustrious talents for, literally, decades, to come. We hope that these Rookies will turn into All-Stars and, in turn, Hall of Famers.

Get out the checklist: Soto and Fukudome are All-Stars. Rookies and All-Stars. This happens rarely; in fact it has happened to the Cubs just three times before, most recently in 1955, when pitcher Sam “Toothpick” Jones made the squad. Other than that: catcher Toby Atwell in 1952 and Don Johnson in 1944.

Sam Jones no-hit the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 on May 12 in his “Rookie” season, becoming the first African American to accomplish the feat, but despite leading the league in strikeouts wound up losing 20 games for the 1955 Cubs (against 14 wins). Stan Musial once said Jones had the best curveball he’d ever seen, and indeed Jones led the league in strikeouts again in his second full season; he was 9-14. After just two years in Chicago, the Cubs traded Jones to the St. Louis Browns. He had a couple of real good years in the late 50s for the San Francisco Giants, including another All-Star season in 1959, but finished his career an average pitcher, winning 102 and losing 101 games.

Don Johnson hit .278 with two home runs and 71 RBI as a 31-year-old Rookie, and statistically that first full season was probably his peak. He did hit .302 the next season and scored 94 runs (10^th in the league) for the National League pennant winners (and would have been an All-Star again had the game not been cancelled due to the war), but his RBI total dropped to 58. After that he was a part-time player.

Toby Atwell’s best season was also as a Rookie, when he had career highs in batting average (.290), RBI (31), runs (36), hits (105), doubles (16) and games played (107). His Cubs career lasted just two seasons and his major league career only five.

Which brings up the point: great Rookies don’t always turn out great. The history of Cubs Rookies sadly mirrors the history of the franchise in general. Sparks that don’t turn to flames.

In 1989, the Cubs had the two most promising Rookies in the National League. Jerome Walton won the Rookie of the Year Award, and his fellow outfielder Dwight Smith was second in the voting. Walton hit .293 his Rookie season, including a 30-game hitting streak, and stole 24 bases; he was the best center fielder the Cubs had seen since, I don’t know, Rick Monday. His average fell to .263 the following year, fell again to .219 in 1991, and had plummeted to .127 by the time the Cubs got rid of him in 1992. He stole just 22 bases after that initial season, and he never again got a sniff of 30 straight games with a hit. Smith hit .324 in 1989, a year in which the Cubs won the National League East, but in four more seasons on the North Side he never approached that level of success again. He hit a low in 1991 with a .228 batting average, just three home runs and 24 RBI.

Kerry Wood struck out 20 Houston Astros on May 6, 1998 in what many baseball experts consider one of the all-time great pitching performances. The Astros managed just one scratch hit that day, in Wood’s third career win. He won the Rookie of the Year award in 1998 with a 13-6 record, despite spending the final month of the season on the disabled list. Wood’s sore elbow that season was just the beginning of arm problems that included Tommy John surgery in 1999, and partly because of that Wood never won more than 14 games. Though Wood has been resurrected as a closer this season, he has yet to graduate to the upper echelon of baseball’s great pitchers.

Mark Prior, often aligned with Wood because the two flame throwers came onto the scene at around the same time, struck out 147 batters in just more than 116 innings his Rookie year of 2002. Prior had his best season in 2003, going 18-6 with a 2.43 ERA and finishing third in the Cy Young voting in that almost season. But Prior missed the All-Star game that year with elbow problems, and was just 18-17 in three more injury-marred seasons and is now a part of the Cubs disappointing history.

Then there was Ken Hubbs. In 1962, he became the first second baseman to win the Gold Glove Award, and was voted Rookie of the Year. He was the best second baseman to come to the Cubs since Johnny Evers. But Hubbs was killed in a plane crash before the 1964 season.

That was around the same year Lou Brock was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Brock made his debut with the Cubs in 1961, and in his official Rookie Year of 1962 hit just .263 with 16 stolen bases in 23 attempts. The Cubs gave up on that raw talent, with different results than discarded raw talents like Corey Patterson, Hee-Seop, or Geremi Gonzalez.

Which brings up another point: poor or so-so rookie starts don’t always preclude future greatness. Sandberg was never a highly touted prospect; in fact, he was a throw-in as part of the Ivan DeJesus-for-Larry Bowa trade. In 1982, Ryne Sandberg’s rookie year, he started out 1-for-32, but recovered to put together a Hall-of-Fame career. Greg Maddux was the youngest player in baseball in1986, and debuted as a pinch runner in the 17^th inning against Houston before surrendering a game-winning home run in the 18^th. In his official Rookie Year of 1987, Maddux was a disappointing 6-14 with a 5.61 ERA; the next year began his streak of 17 straight seasons with at least 15 wins, a streak that encompassed four straight Cy Young awards. He, too, will be in the Hall of Fame.

The Cubs veterans mandate the team’s Rookies to dress ridiculously as part of their hazing. Last fall, after the Cubs clinched the National League Central title, rookies were required to walk from the ballpark in Cincinnati back to their hotel in female superhero attire. Carmen Pignatiello was Supergirl, Sam Fuld Batgirl, and Kevin Hart Wonder Woman. Mike Fontenot was in pigtails.

What will it be for Geovany Soto and Kosuke Fukudome? Little Bo Peep and Little Red Riding Hood? Blossom and Bubbles of the Powerpuff Girls?

And who will be Buttercup, the third Powerpuff Girl? Juan Mateo? Micah Hoffpauir? Is there another Sandberg or Maddux that will far surpass their early expectations?

The assumption is that these Great Rookies will be the future of the team, but too often those first hints of greatness are all you get. Jerome Walton, Dwight Smith, Ken Hubbs, Geremi Gonzalez…it’s a long list of players who never improved upon what they did that first year. There are so many obstacles in the way of greatness: injuries, plane crashes, lightning. Other players around the league figure things out about the Rookies, and sometimes the Rookies don’t reradjust. Confidence can be shaken. Circumstances might not be ideal.

Fukudome is 31, the same age as Don Johnson when he wowed the Wrigley crowds in his first season. Thirty-one is generally the prime of a baseball player’s life, maybe a little beyond. Soto never hit more than nine home runs or better than .273 in his first six minor league seasons, but emerged in 2007 as a would-be star. He’s still only 25.

It’s a Rookie Mistake to think a great first half of a first full season means much, but then again…sometimes it does. Billy Williams won the Rookie of the Year in 1961, and for the next 13 years was everything the Cubs hoped and thought he would be.

Here’s hoping our Rookies turn out more Williams than Walton.

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.

*The Cubs square off in St. Louis against the rival Cards this weekend with first place on the line. On the eve of the revival of the I-55 series, a lifelong Cards fan finds reason to root for the boys in blue. Just don't look for him to be parading around with a Cubs banner if Chicago's North Siders manage to pull off what they haven't been able to do in the last 99 years. 

By Matt Wood

I’ve lived in Chicago for nine years, but I’m a lifelong Cardinals fan. I grew up in southwestern Indiana, just a two-hour drive on I-64 across the flat, oil rig-dotted wastelands of southern Illinois to St. Louis. On summer nights, Jack Buck and Mike Shannon lulled me to sleep with their baritone calls of Cardinals games on the local radio affiliate. My town was split about 70-30, Cardinals to Cubs fans, and my best friend across the street was a Cubbie diehard. We spent muggy July afternoons playing out the rivalry in his backyard: Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee versus Ryne Sandberg and Jody Davis. Grown ups told us that Cardinals and Cubs fans weren’t supposed to like each other, but that was hard to believe. For us, it was more like a matter of taste: Coke versus Pepsi or grape versus orange, just a convenient way to divvy up the teams for pickup games.

Stand by "The Man": Three generations of Cards fans - Matt, his son, Carter, and his father, John, in friendlier territory, in front of the statue of Stan Musial outside Busch Stadium.When I went to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, I was in the minority for the first time. I met kids from the Chicago suburbs, northwest Indiana, Indianapolis, South Bend, Fort Wayne, and they all liked the Cubs. Cardinal fans popped up here and there, but for the most part, I spent my time with the Cubs diaspora, created by the universal reach of WGN.

After graduation, I moved to Chicago to follow a girl and a job, knowing full well my baseball fandom would go underground. Sure, there are plenty of Cardinal fans here, downstate transplants and itinerant Midwesterners like me, but it’s like being part of a secret society. We see a red cap and acknowledge it with a quick nod and a “Go Cards.” Our heads pop up like prairie dogs when we hear familiar names across the room: Ankiel, Molina, or Pujols. And while I can set my watch by how quickly someone will make a snide comment whenever I wear my Cardinals hat, it’s usually of the hardy-har-har, bad joke variety, as in, “Ooh, I don’t think I can take your order, sir, you’re a Cardinals fan,” or, “Ha, I wasn’t going to hold the door open for you because of that hat.” It’s annoying, and I admit that I may harbor the occasional fantasy about punching someone in the throat after I’ve heard it for the tenth time in a day, but it’s never threatening. Of all the times I’ve seen the Cardinals play at Wrigley Field, I’ve never once felt like I needed to leave to avoid a beer shower or a Ligue-style takedown.

When Adam Wainwright broke off a slider to strike out Detroit’s Brandon Inge and win the 2006 World Series for St. Louis, I couldn’t share the moment with anyone. My wife, indifferent to baseball anyway, had already gone to bed, and my toddler son wouldn’t have known what was going on even if he had been awake. I danced around my living room, wondering if my neighbors could see me through the windows. My dad called to talk about it, then one friend from home. That was it. Eventually, I sat down on the couch and watched the celebration on TV in silence.

The next day, I started getting emails from my friends who were Cubs fans, but they weren’t what I expected. Instead of saying things like, “The Tigers let them win,” or “I hate you,” they congratulated me, like I had been on the field playing. I have a hard time picturing a Yankees fan doing that for a Red Sox fan, and I know for a fact not many of you did that when the White Sox won in 2005. But it didn’t surprise me either, because this rivalry has never been about payroll pissing matches or intra-city class warfare. Yes, it’s about identity. The Cardinals and my experiences watching them are part of who I am, just as the Cubs color your soul their own tragic shade of blue. But we grew up in the Midwest of mixed allegiances, red and blue marbled on a map that would make a political strategist stroke out. It’s the heredity of your neighbors and your friends, passed down like physical traits. I have freckles on my nose and like the Cardinals. My friend has curly hair and likes the Cubs. I can’t hate him for that.

You know this already, but this year is the Cubs’ best chance at winning a World Series in a long time. They’re a good bunch of guys, this team: D-Lee, Big Z, that Japanese guy with the vaguely dirty-sounding last name, even old Jim Edmonds, his blond highlights finally turning grey. When you get past the calculated tantrums, Lou Piniella is like somebody’s grandpa, pulling quarters from behind your ear to buy you cotton candy and tell your stories about the good ol’ days. Any baseball fan could like them. Hell, Kerry Wood and Ryan Dempster send their kids to my son’s preschool--I like the T-ball team’s chances this year too.

I’ll give you something to look forward to about your team winning the World Series: the honeymoon lasts for a while. I don’t pretend that the Cardinals’ futility was anywhere near as maddening as the Cubs, but by 2006 it had been 24 years since they won a ring. I was too young in 1982 to remember the last championship team, and my Cardinals memories until that point had been of failure too: losses to the Royals and Twins in ‘85 and ‘87, a string of playoff near-misses in the first part of this century, and playing the patsy for the 2004 Red Sox. So when they finally got over the hump, in a year in which they backed into the playoffs on the last day of the season no less, I gave them a grace period of a few years.

I know Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan have been working their dark magic again on a pitching staff of animated corpses and Quadruple-A rookies to keep the Cardinals in contention this year, but I won’t be upset if they don’t make the playoffs, let alone win the Series. I’m still living off 2006. But I would be a little sad for my friends if the Cubs miss this latest best chance. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t actively cheer for them, and I may have to leave the city for a few weeks if they do pull it off, but I really do want to see the Cubs win it all in my lifetime. I want my friends to have that same feeling I did when the Cardinals won. And I’ll send them an email the next day.

Matt Wood is a writer living in the West Loop. His essay, "First Base of Last Resort" was recently published in Anatomy of Baseball, a collection about the game edited by Lee Gutkind and Andrew Blauner. He is a former columnist for Chicago Sports Weekly, and his work has appeared in Time Out Chicago and online at Babble and Chicagoist, among others.

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

Ticket demand for Cubs' games is measured before opening day, even before the crack of the bats in Arizona's Cactus League, on a February morning when the team's most loyal and faithful fans come out of hibernation for one day and test their will and hardiness against the harshness of Chicago's winter. It is the day that individual game tickets go on sale and wristband-wearing devotees converge outside Clark and Addison clinging to hope as only Cubs' fans can do. The hope that next year is finally here. And the hope for a favorable lottery number.

On each and every wristband is a number and it is that number that determines who will strike the Cubs' version of a ticket gold mine. A bad number means you'll literally be left out in the cold and dreading the thought of spending the season clicking on StubHub looking for the best deal on tickets, which usually means paying double or triple the face value. Or, worse yet, the thought that you'll show up ticketless on gameday and find yourself bartering with the scalping vultures that hover around Wrigley Field just waiting to pounce on the likes of you.

Next to the home opener, no tickets are more sought-after than the three games against the Cubs' South Side counterparts, the White Sox. On a day when ticket sales begin at 9 a.m., you can pretty much be assured that the series with the White Sox, known as the Crosstown Classic, will be sold out by the time the noon bell rings.

A collective moan predictably follows when the word gets out that there are no more tickets left for the Cubs-Sox series. For most, it was the first series they circled on their Cubs schedule and the first to get crossed out. But not me. When a new Cubs schedule comes out, the first thing I do is cross out the Crosstown Classic.

I've got a self-imposed boycott on ticket purchases for any of the games between the Cubs and the Sox and it doesn't matter if the two teams are playing on the North Side or on the South Side. You won't see me clamoring for a ticket. You can offer me tickets for any of these games, but I won't take them. Not even for free.

It wasn’t always this way for me. Since interleague play began in 1997, the White Sox and Cubs have routinely played each other six times each year (one three-game series at each stadium). I attended a number of those early games between the two Chicago baseball teams and, at first, I thought them to be fun. But with each passing game that I saw, whether it be in Wrigley Field or U.S. Cellular Field, the fun level seemed to drop a little bit. Until, for me, there was no fun left in the games.

My suspicions are that I'm in the minority in taking this rather extreme position on boycotting the Crosstown Classic, but that I'm probably not alone. One of the joys of watching a ballgame, particularly one in your home ballpark, is to be surrounded by your own kind. It's a collegial atmosphere of fans who groan and boo with you when your team is down and cheer and high-five with you when it is up.

The problem with the Crosstown Classic, for me, is that the rivalry has become too heated. Not between the teams. But between the fans. At these games, it has become routine for Cubs fans to taunt, jeer and insult their counterpart Sox fans, and vice versa. I'm not indicting one side's fans over the other. Each is equally guilty. Some fans seem to revel in this atmosphere. I am not one of them.

Civility is not being championed by the Crosstown Classic, which seems to be drawing a more divisive line between the fans of Chicago's two baseball teams rather than bringing them closer together. In other words, the Crosstown Classic is becoming increasingly more cross.

The owners of the two teams of course see nothing but dollar signs and seem perfectly content with the series as it stands now. As long as the ballparks continue to sell out for the series, it's going to go on. But for me it won't be the Crosstown Classic. It will be the Cross-Out Classic.

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.