Happy Days

Cubs win! Prior made it back to the mound today and was sizzling, giving up one run in six innings and outdueling Jon Garland to help the Cubs take two out of three from the best team in baseball. This is especially sweet for me. After Prior's injury on Memorial Day weekend, I sent out the following mass e-mail:

"GOD HATES THE CUBS.

Can we just fold this season? Say look, 10 guys REALLY isn't enough to field a team. Sure technically we can do it, but isn't it a bit ridiculous? How about this, we just send the real Cubs to Cuba to rehab and bond as teammates. Give Derrick Lee a whole barrel of Cuba Libres because he's having a MVP type season, make everyone read Hemingway because that's what one does while in Cuba.

Let Prior and Wood rehab in the crystal blue waters of Caribbean, keep Zambrano off the computer, bring along Mia along for daily massages of Nomah's groin. Dusty will love it, some of the world's finest toothpicks reside in our little Communist neighbor to the south.

Meanwhile, back in Wrigleyville, the real Cubs will be replaced with deathrow inmates. Rather than the relatively boring and clean lethal injection, we will just put the cons out on the field in Cubs uniforms and wait until body parts rip and tear and swell and eventually fall off. Wouldn't this be much more fun than what is currently taking place at the Friendly Confines?

I swear the Cubs play mostly day games just so the baseball gods can hold a giant magnifying glass over Wrigley and torture the stupidly hopeful fans who fill it every day.

Perfectly fitting that the death knell rang on the eve of summer's big kickoff. While the rest of you enjoy your lemonade and lawn mowing and beer drinking and sun bathing please stop to pour out a little liquor for the Cubs fans of the world, the people for whom summer is already over."

The Cubs responded to that potentially crippling injury, although I guess potentially didn't apply to Prior, by reeling off ten straight wins and getting back in the thick of the wild card race. Since then there performance can best be graded fair to middlin', but they're hanging around. Considering the injuries they've had, I'm happy with that. Woodie's coming back this week, maybe it will come together.

I know, it's true-blue Cub hopefulness, but that's going to be part of the beauty of this blog. You can check back next weekend and Wood's arm may have exploded on his first pitch back, Patterson may have struck out in 36 straight at bats (in the leadoff spot) and they could have lost four straight. But this weekend, they took the series against the Sox and all is good.

Hey, Hey!