Baseball is here. The beautiful Spring air has arrived, and with it, the beginning of 30 long, treacherous journeys to the playoffs. But most importantly, it brings us the excitement of the Cubs and White Sox.
However, their respective seasons have been off to rough starts. Both teams currently sit at 3-4, and are looking to improve off of what is safe to say, disappointing opening weeks.
The Cubs opened their season on the road in Atlanta, and Braves rookie Jason Heyward stuck it to Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano, en route to an easy 16-5 win. Atlanta took the series from the Cubs by winning the next game as well. The Cubs then traveled to Cincinnati where the results were similar, with the Reds taking two of three from the Northsiders.
Meanwhile on the South Side, the Sox opened its season on a high note when the team did everything right in a 6-0 blanking of the division rival Indians. Starter Mark Buehrle pitched very effectively and made one of the best plays you’re going to see all year in the process. Alex Rios and Paul Konerko went deep for the Sox and the bullpen came in and shut the door. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the series as the Sox dropped its next two games to the Tribe and went on to make it four straight losses when the Twins came to U.S. Cellular Field on Friday and won the first two games of that series.
But it’s the start of a new week, and it has already brought good tidings to both sides of town.
The Cubs hosted the Milwaukee Brewers in their home opener at a renovated Wrigley Field. The bathrooms have all been improved, the bleachers have been upgraded, and concessions have been revamped. But the Cubs didn’t need any of the newly installed improvements to take care of the division rival Brew Crew and cruised to a 9-5 victory. Behind the bats of Xavier Nady, Aramis Ramirez, and Jeff Baker, and a solid starting effort from Ryan Dempster, the Cubs faithful enjoyed a sunny afternoon of baseball triumph.
The Pale Hose started its first road trip of the season in style with an 8-7 extra innings win over the Toronto Blue Jays last night. The Jays came in red-hot offensively and were alone atop the eastern division at 5-1, but the Sox offense finally awoke from hibernation and cranked out 14 hits and rode Andrew Jones’ two homers and Mark Teahen’s late heroics to victory. Jake Peavy had a rough outing, but fortunately the Sox rare occurrence of actually scoring runs led to the team’s first win in Toronto in the last 11 attempts.
