CUBS CONQUER SAN DIEGO

Last weekend, I spent three days in San Diego with my Small Ball co-blogger, Erik, and, for some of that time, his wonderful wife, Jenny. They had spent most of the previous week vacationing at the historical Hotel del Coronado, a massive 117-year-old resort that has appeared in terrific movies like Some Like It Hot and The Stunt Man. As beautiful as the hotel is, it's a magnet for tourists, which makes it just barely the sort of place one can expect to relax, given the hordes, their bad hair, endless cameras, and questionable manners. Despite all this, the hotel was a joy to be in, and I thank Erik for making this terrific trip possible.


I'm sure Erik will post with his own photos and game notes, so I'll just focus on my time there. The Cubs were in San Diego for a 4-game series, starting the evening of the Thursday before I arrived. They won that game, which put them at 7 wins in a row. The night I arrived, they lost 6-2. Highlights of that game included unflappable (but not remarkable) pitching by the Padres' Adam Eaton, who also managed a career-first triple. Alas, Sergio Mitre, the Cubs starter, simply wasn't on and left the game after a little over 4 innings and allowing 5 runs. Reliever Roberto Novoa followed him by allowing another run, and that was pretty much the end for the Cubs, even though they were only in the fifth.

Petco Park is a massive modern industrial marvel, comprised almost entirely of blonde concrete, tan stone, and metal beams painted off-white, creating an overall effect of bleached sandy beaches, perhaps a bit washed out for my tastes, lacking the personal, intimate charm of the Giants stadium or the classic Wrigley Field. It's a tall park, vertical forever, like a vast industrial vase spiralling down toward its clean green field.

Padres have bitched and moaned since they started playing in the park because their hitters find it so hard to manufacture dramatic at bats. I forgot about this as I watched the game on Friday, thinking that the rather lackluster performance of batters was attributable to the collective inability of each team to drive home lots of power runs. Although it was a mostly small ball game, I yearned for Derek Lee, Jeromy Burnitz, or Aramis Ramirez to blast the living hell out of Eaton's precision throws. I'd like to suggest that the Cubs broke their 7-game winning streak with a loss last night because of superior pitching, but Eaton wasn't doing anything any decent pitcher wouldn't, my double neagtive way of saying, he pitched aiiiight...the Cubs simply didn't challenge him. It wasn't one of those games that creates outrage or edge-of-seat excitement; instead, an inning-by-inning means of collecting a win or loss.

On Saturday, I felt so much better rested. Erik and I spent some of our afternoon hanging out on the del Coronado's decks, doing some writing, he in his notepad, me in the mini-word processor of my little phone. When we arrived at Petco, our expectations were neither giggly nor gloomy. The series was split, Maddux was pitching, and anything could happen. It turned out to be a very dramatic game, with the Cubs exploding: 17 hits, 10 of which they converted into runs in only two innings (3 in the 4th, a head-spinning 7 in the 5th). Momma! It was one of those moments that turns fans ugly...the losing fans, that is. One drunken Padres' fan grabbed a poster from an insupportably boastful Cubs fan and tore it in half, which drew the vocal ire of a couple dozen Cubs fans in the antagonizer's section. No blood was spilled...the Cubs ended up clobbering the home team 11-5.

By the time Sunday's day game rolled around, Erik and I were relatively philosophical about the whole series. The worst that could happen was that the Cubs would split the series with the #1 team in the NL West, a proud achievement in and of itself. What neither of us expected was an entirely different kind of victory for the Cubs that day. No offensive explosions. Just a lot of incremental baby steps toward victory, with the Cubs scoring single-run innings across 5 innings, relying on the Angry Baby Giant™ Carlos Zambrano to hold the Padres scoreless in 7 innings, a pattern his relievers Ohman and Dempster preserved through the final out. It just dawned on me that the Cubs accomplished something remarkable in their series against the mighty Padres: they allowed the home team to score in only 2 of 4 games. Go Rusch. Go Zambrano.

Erik relaxing and writing (with terrible live music in the background) on the deck of the Hotel del Coronado.

Andrew taking a smoke break from writing this very blog entry on a different deck of the hotel.

Greg Maddux pitching.

Derek Lee on first, neifi Perez on second in the fifth after the Cubs had already scored 7 runs in the same inning.

High energy victory walk as the Cubs celebrate their colossal win over the Padres Saturday night (game 3).

Petco Park hosted Dog Days of Summer, where fans get to bring their dogs to the park. Pets have reserved seating out behind center field. This man and his cool bulldog came all the way down from San Francisco to participate. Clearly, they'd rather be in San Diego than back at home, where the Giants are...well, I'll save that for another post.