A Catch Like No Other

I could not be a Cubs fans, or even remotely justify having even a free, lightly developed, Cubs blog, without taking note of this catch, made by Reed Johnson, one of my favorite surprises so far this season, and he just keeps getting better.



This guy, I'd never heard of him before Spring training, late in spring training, when the Blue Jays cut him and we picked him right up. What a pickup. Apparently, the Blue Jays are loaded, or maybe he just needed a change of scenery, but Reed Johnson is the Ryan Theriot of the outfield, with possibly a little more speed, and the same giddyup that is beginning to signify the Lou Piniella era.

I've come to believe that you can tell a coach not by his stars, but by his peripheral players. Rare is the coach that can really change a star player, especially if they are already successful, but it's the players that a coach keeps around to fill in the other spots that tell his ability, and character. I felt the same way when Dusty came in, because his Neifi Perez's actually were a cut above the guys we'd had previously coming off the bench. His unexplained overuse of them, despite performance, is another story.

Lou Piniella plays the hot hitter, period. Want to play some baseball, Mike Fontenot, take advantage of the AB or two you'll get from sitting on Lou's bench and soon you'll be starting, keep it up when you get an extended chance, and you may start sharing time with a regular starter. Conversely, start playing stupid baseball like I've seen the last two outings and you will lose any tan you may be working on sitting back in the dugout shadows. You too, Henry Blanco. There have been some good points, but you need to start acting like the player that signed that nice fat contract.

Reed Johnson knows Lou's game. And he doesn't rest on his laurels, or bitch about his batting postion, or field position, he doesn't bitch, he doesn't even preen for the cameras after making such an outstanding play. One that might have required a five minute semi-pro dance routine anywhere else. He doesn't even bother to put his cap bill back down and he runs away, holding up the ball.

My love affair with baseball, and the Cubs

As long as I can remember, I have been a Cubs fan. Probably before I even realized that baseball was a game, or what a game was, I have been a Cubs fan.
Blame my mom.

As a little boy, before I can even remember now, she took me to Cubs games. I met, well saw and got autographs from, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Ernie Banks, and many others. Those were the days where the players hung around the field and the stands before the game, signing autographs and talking to the fans.

No, shit, talking to the fans.
I remember Billy Williams as being the nicest person outside of my family that I had met at that point of my life. I don't have any specific memories of those early Cubs games, when I was 4 and 5 years old, but they set a pleasant tone for the rest of my life, following the Cubs.


I'm not the biggest Cubs fan in the world, not even close, but I'm in the upper ten percentile. I don't have single baseball card left or the statistics of the 1984 lineup logged into my cranium but I did find a way to watch the last game of that playoff series against the Padres, stationed in Europe, before ESPN globalization. Unfortunately, it was the worst game of the season.

Like many, WGN played a huge role in my being able to take the Cubs with me wherever I went. Still, watching a team that bad year after year can turn things the other way, and set someone rooting for them up for ridicule. I never jumped off the bandwagon, though at times I wasn't exactly waving the Cubby flag.

I watched the Boys of Zimmer from Des Moines, Iowa, amongst a crowd of Cub fans nearly ass pervasive as in my hometown, and the Boys of Dusty, in Arizona, with my buddy, a Cubs fan in the 99th percentile, which I will call the Ernie Banks Percentile. They nearly killed me that summer, because the Cubs were all I had.

Things aren't quite like they were in Arizona, more is good in life for mme and the Cubs have more than blind faith leading them into this season. Lou Piniella is the best manager they have in my lifetime and ownership has opened the purse strings a little to get some free agents. Maybe Alfonso Soriano was over priced, and has some issues as a player, but he was the best available, and they ponied up for him. Bottom line, wherever he hits, he makes the team better.

Every season, Spring comes and I gear up for baseball. I read, watch, listen, and breathe Cubby stats and talk, and listen or watch every game I can. There is very little that preempts a Cubs game for me. I won't give up on them, because in some cosmic sense, I think that it comes back around and the world hasn't given up on me.