Upon noticing an impressively excessive gaggle of media laborers in the Cubs’ clubhouse, bullpen creature Turk Wendell could not contain his astonishment.
“Got a lot of front-runners here today,” Wendell said to no one and to everyone in particular.
While sarcasm may be of no help with the bases loaded and the manager’s foot on the top step of the dugout, it can feel better than a postgame shower.
Especially on a team that has yet to win a baseball game in this calendar year.
An imprecise check of statistics does determine 1,176 future Cubs fans have been born since last the team won a baseball game, and that is just figuring from the Loop north.
Cable infants are harder to count, but judging from WGN ratings, a safe guess can double or triple that count, replenishing front-runners for long after Wendell is just another vague, right-handed Cub footnote.
Any of the 35,393 Opening Day witnesses to Cubs history would happily accept being called front-runners, rather than, say, fools, masochists or repeat offenders, all of which they were on a day better suited to the Iditarod than Wrigley Field.
Enduring the balled and frigid fist of winter as well as the Cubs in an active losing streak is beyond both sanity and sentiment.
“We are professional baseball players,” said Sammy Sosa, though he did not offer to sign an affidavit to that effect.
And Wendell did manage to wriggle (riggle, man) out of the aforementioned situation in the eighth inning, stranding three of the five runners the Florida Marlins would leave on base.
No such luck for starter Steve Trachsel, whom manager Jim Riggleman allowed to go a batter too far, he being eighth-place hitter Charles Johnson, who whacked a two-run double that took the lead that sent the Cubs to 0-7.
“One bad pitch,” said Trachsel, taking the minimalist view.
If the Cubs had by now managed to win one or two games, none of this would seem as dire as it does. When the Cubs are, oh, say, 2-13, questions will begin not with when but with why, no matter that the answers will be the same.
Poor pitching. Careless fielding. Inadequate hitting. The usual.
“This is not the only year we’ve been in the same boat,” Sosa said. “How you are starting is not how you are finishing.”
How the Cubs finished last year (2-14) is how they are starting this year.
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Sosa had more or less guaranteed that Opening Day would be just that, the day when the Cubs opened a victory.
“I hoped that today was the day,” Sosa said. “I feel like that every day. Every time I cross the line, my mind is to win the game.
“I hoped that everything would go our way. We are the type of team that does not give up. There is another day coming.”
Actually, there are 155 days coming, but not another one until Thursday, and not counting rainouts and double-headers. No major league baseball team ever has lost every game it played, providing hope both statistical and tangible.
“Every baseball team has bad streaks,” reasoned Doug Glanville. “Ours just happens to come at the beginning of the season.”
It last came in this big a beginning pile in 1962. That Cubs team started 0-7, moved on to 1-9, righted itself at 4-17, won 59 games and finished ninth.
Such numbers are Cub mileposts on the way to an identity.
“It is frustrating,” said Brian McRae, “but there is not a whole lot you can do about it. You take the next step and don’t worry about something that has already happened.”
Riggleman insisted he is not unhappy with anything but the results.
“You will not hear me using the words frustrated and disappointed,” Riggleman said, while using the words frustrated and disappointed.
Well, who’s listening? Just the front-runners.