Your Chicago Cubs

From Orlando Sentinel

Pitcher who beaned bird is demoted
By Tania deLuzuriaga
Sentinel Staff Writer

April 24, 2003

DAYTONA BEACH -- A minor-league pitcher accused of intentionally beaning an osprey has been demoted and could face charges.

Witnesses said Jae Kuk Ryu, 19, of the Daytona Cubs threw several baseballs at the bird during a pregame practice Monday before finally knocking it from a perch 40 feet above right field.

"People told him to stop, and he smiled and threw another ball and hit it," said Chad Efron, a conditioning coach for the Port St. Lucie Mets.

The bird, one of a breeding pair that makes its home at the park and have been nicknamed Ozzie and Harriet by fans, suffered an injured right eye and was taken to the Animal Clinic of Edgewater.

"The swelling's gone down, and he's a lot more alert than he was yesterday," veterinary technician Jennifer Rosenfeldt said Wednesday. The bird has not eaten and could lose its eye, Rosenfeldt said.

The birds have a nest on top of a light pole in left field and recently hatched several chicks.

"They are like pets to us," said Buck Rogers, general manager of the Daytona Cubs. "When we found out, we were just as disgusted as everyone else."

The team said Wednesday that it will give $1 to the Animal Clinic of Edgewater for every person who attends Friday's game, which will also include an auction. The team owner will match all money raised.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission hopes to finish its investigation early next week, spokeswoman Joy Hill said. Maiming, killing or harassing an osprey is a second-degree misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $500 and 60 days in jail, Hill said.

Ryu is a highly regarded prospect with a 96-mph fastball who landed a $1.6 million signing bonus. He will be sent to pitch for the Lansing Lugnuts in Michigan, said Oneri Fleita, director of player development for Major League Baseball's Chicago Cubs. "He is being punished from our end," Fleita said. "We don't condone this."

The guy you're thinking of is Ben Christensen (or something akin to that). Don't know what happened to him.

(either that or his lawyer really sucked)

Meanwhile, on a not-dissimilar note: anybody think Kansas City's for real? No matter what kind of qualifications you throw at it (it's early in the season, they haven't played any of the major AL playas, the Injury Fairy has started paying visits), 15-3 is a freaking impressive start.

I like this question conceptually.

The Cubbies, on the other hand - the rotation's tight (excepting Shawn Estes), the bullpen's doing all right, and the hitting is fierce (tho I really doubt Mark G. is going to keep up his ridiculousness much longer). LaRussa's fucking w/ the Cards too much, Jimy's fucking w/ the Astros, higher powers (and the team's starting pitchers) are fucking with the Reds, and the Pierats (esp. sans Giles) and Wallbangers are Dead On Arrival, so what the hey?

i'mnaht comin unless deysis got som'brahts.

I wrote what was perhaps the longest post I've ever written for ilx0r, going over the 2003 Cubs' roster position by position, even dealing with the interesting backups (Paul Bako!), and just as I was finishing up the entry on Joe Borowski (kick-ass reliever or guy who hasn't faced a team with any depth yet? time will tell!), my computer crashed. Like, "you can't do nothin' but restart now, beeyotch" crashed. 1500 unrecoverable words. Somebody somewhere is trying to tell me something.

be both a real iconclast and root for a winner ... GO PHILLIES! (anecdote: some seem to be getting this message ... i've been seeing a lot more people in NYC and environs sporting Phillies caps than i've ever seen before)

n.b.: i've been a yankees and a phillies fan since i was a kid in the late seventies (reggie! and tug mcgraw were my two faves as a little kid). yin and yang and all that, and which team i "emphasize" depends on the times and the particular composition of the team. and i'm originally from central New Jersey, so there's the geographical nexus.

first ballgame i ever went to see was the padres v. the phillies at the vet in 1978. dave winfield and ozzie smith were both padres at that point. i think steve carlton was pitching. and Davy Johnson came off the bench, hit a grand-slam and the Phillies won. when i came home my next-door neighbor was talking about Johnson's grand-slam and i felt so cool 'cause i got to see it up-close and personal! and even though the Vet's a shithole, i will feel sad when it's gone.

LUMPY!

my worst fear this year -- a yankees v. phillies world series. talk about dual loyalties!

They have the worse pitching this side of Detroit. They would make a pretty good home run derby team. Cinci doesn't mind, they are some of the most fickle fans in sports, they like to bitch even when they are good. I sometimes think they just brought back Junior so the fans would have someone to torment. Thing is that Junior was stupid enough to think it was a good idea, even against the supposed disagreement of his wife.

The difference about the Cubs now and at any time that I have been a fan is that their minor league teams are turning out some good prospects and they are actually keeping them around unlike what they did with Joe Carter and Rafael Palmeiro.

The Cubs were on cable a long time before it really became a big hit. They owe Harry Carey a whole lot, which is why Chip Carey will probably have a contract for life, unless he sleeps with the wife a of a bigwig Tribune exec., which is supposedly why Harry got fired from the Cardnals (Annheiser Busch).

I've been a Cubs fan forever, since the the double play combo was DeJesus to Dillard to Buckner, when I was nine years old. I've been real apothetic about them ever since the idiots let Greg Maddux leave, with Ryno and Mark Grace gone, it just isn't the same.

Back then, Harry Carey was getting lit up every night with Jimmy Piersall doing Sox games, always wearing a cheap black windbreaker that said "SOX" that looked like he got made at a sporting goods store. Another thing about Harry Carey, he was the FIRST one that I ever said that if Sammy Sosa ever got his act together and started laying off bad pitches, he could be a hall of famer. Even Steve Stone used to kind of chuckle when he said that kind of thing. Harry knew baseball pretty damn well, I think the party old crazy nutcase image obscurred his knowledge a bit towards the end.

"Baker had plenty of support before Saturday's doubleheader even began.

His son, Darren, who served as a batboy for the Giants last season, told him Friday night after the Astros lost to the Brewers that good things were ahead.

``My little boy said, `Yeah daddy, Houston is going to lose. I told you. You are going to win tomorrow,''' Baker said.
--

Ugh.

(I'm holding out for the Red Sox, though, of course. I have classes two nights of the World Series, but if the Sox are in it, Italian can live without me for a week, by God. And if it's a Red Sox - Cubs Series, fuck it, I'm just gonna get my affairs in order and watch the games with a bag of deep-fried candy bars and a bucket of unprotected sex.)

xpost!

(I'm curious because my boss tells me church is a hugely big deal here, and since everyone seems to be a Cubs fan and I only know of one local White Sox fan, I'm wondering if that has anything at all to do with it.)

These dolts are continually raped by the Tribune corporation for the sheep that they are. The recent ticket-scalping scandal (the "world's greatest newspaper" basically operates its own licensed ticket scalping operation in which it allocates tickets to be resold at exorbitant prices to the sheep) is just another in a long line of "grab yer ankles" practices orchestrated by the "trib".

White Sox fans are decent, hard-working, multi-ethnic, blue-collar people who have lived in the city of Chicago for generations, with a real respect for the history of the game and their team.

That's about it.

There are honest-to-god Cub fans, longtime Cub fans. These people I have no problem with.

LONG STORY here.

When I was a kid, if you lived on the south side, you were a Sox fan, and if you lived on the north side, you were a Cub fan. There were families that were fans of each team since their grandparents had gotten off the boat. And for a long, long time that was okay. You stay on your side, and we'll stay on ours.

If you go back and look at the history of the north side - it was heavily blue-collar as well. Lake View, where the Cubs are, was full of working-class people. I believe that there were loads of Irish there - hence the bars. There was tremendous wealth in pockets of both sides of the city. So the class conflict didn't even matter that much, although the north side definitely had the wealthier suburbs by far (although there are rich suburbs south of Chicago).

One branch of my family moved to the north side, and they were as blue-collar as we were. They were expected to be Cubs fans, and that was that. The only thing you absolutely could NOT do was root for the Sox if you were on the north side, and the Cubs if you were on the south side. I had one uncle, a very serious and religious man, who switched to the Cubs because of 1919. We all thought he was an apostate. I remember when I walked in on him watching a game, and it was as if I had walked in on him shooting up heroin.

Sox fans must never forget that the Sox were Chicago's team, and I believe that they have higher attendance overall, historically speaking. HOWEVER, I must be fair and admit that Sox Park was the beer garden in the seventies. Sox fans HATED this, though - even though they adored Bill Veeck. See "Disco Demolition Night": those weren't Sox fans - they were fans of a radio station who had gotten into the park for 98 cents and a disco 45.

Anyway, as Mr. D hints, things started to get really sour in the eighties - new owners for both teams, but a declining economy on the south side while the Cubs took off in terms of popularity. Harry Caray had a conflict with the new Sox owners and split. The Tribune owned the Cubs and the station WGN. The Cubs media hype took off, and that's where Sox fans got really bitter. I think the rivalry was more theatrical before that. Then you factor in gentrification, as Mr. D says - if you are a college graduate, and you move to Chicago, you move to the north side and root for the Cubs and that just kills, because people never bother to venture past, say, Roosevelt, or even learn the city's history and culture.

It's not really about baseball - it's a civil war.

And in today's Tribune, there was a letter describing Cub fans as "well-educated". As opposed to whom, and why is this necessarily better?

My mother is miserable right now because she lives in senior citizen housing on the South Side in a building filled with Cub fans (they must be from "1919" families - get over it). And guess what? They didn't even watch the games today, and she did.

I begrudge the team nothing, I love Dusty Baker, and I am happy for the real Cub fans - some of whom really are sick of the beer garden mentality, if you read online forums.

Thanks for reading all of this.

Smoltz did not look very good yesterday while blowing that lead to the Phillies. He got shelled.

Old Commiskey Park looked like a park that was run by a park-recs department. I always thought they must play softball there when the Sox were not playing. Of course, you wouldn't want to hang out in the neighboorhood where the ballpark is located (or Chicago Stadium/United Center) unless you want to play DOOM III live in person.

Harry Caray was even more bizarre when he did games with Jimmy Piersall. He always wore this black windbreaker that had "Sox" spelled out on it in those letters that they put on with those heat sealers.

In the AL, I have NO IDEA what to expect, except that the A's-Sox series should be fantastic.

I don't know why people say that. I've spent time in both neighborhoods, and Bridgeport is less rowdy than Wrigleyville. Yes,
there are lots of condos and townhouses down there.

Stuff like that keeps us down. It is *not* a bad neighborhood.

This is another one that oughta be on snopes.com, though White Sox fans will cling to it like Catholics to the rosary. Either way, THANK YOU, GOD. I have been waiting most of my life for the Cubs to win the pennant.

So but then I fell victim both to the post-strike backlash and to a growing sense of conflict about being an "artist"/"intellectual" and a sports fan at the same time, and from 1995-2000 I didn't really follow baseball at all, despite post-seasons for both teams in that period. Flash to 2001: I'm working in an office with two huge Cubs fans -- one a 40-year-old whose fandom was shaped by the 1969 Cubbies in the way mine was shaped by the '89 team, and the other a 23-year-old who's a part-time beer vendor at Wrigley. There's much Cubs chatter, and we listen to Cubs radio broadcasts in the office. Slowly, I grow interested in baseball again (the exciting 2001 World Series helps immensely as well) and in the Cubs franchise in particular. (Yeah, I also do live on the north side, but I can't stand the archetypal north-sider Mr. Diamond describes, even though it's a fairly accurate description.)

What I've never been able to do, however, regardless of who I've been rooting for, is to hate the cross-town rival. While current Cubs fans I know hate everything about the Sox, from the ballpark to the announcers, I was really pulling for the team during the stretch and was happy to see Loaiza rack up his twentieth win.

The radio station was "The Loop" WLUP. What was that shock jock's name? Steve something. What was his name?

I am your prototypical North Shore-raised suburban Cub fan who had the swimming pool in our public high school, so please direct your categorical hatred at me. Thanks.

Wasn't Steve Kerr a short white guard for the Bulls?

(Re: your previous comment, Kerry, no hatred. I'm just saying, I like the unflagging optimism of Cubs fans.)

WTF??? the cubs won the pennant?

Anyway, re: Mr. Diamond's comments on the nature of Sox fans vs. Cub fans and J0hn's rebuttal, I think the truth lies somewhere in between. You do see a more varied racial and economic mix of fans at Comiskey, whereas there is a homogeneity to Cub fans, especially those who've climbed aboard the bandwagon since the mid-1980s. But, I see many young, urban, professional drillrods at Sox games all the time, and on the rare occasion I venture up to Wrigley, I see lots of ugly, frumpy, stereotypically "sout' side" types there, too. But on whole, the stereotype of a Cubs fan (big Midwestern state-college graduate who lives within a mile of the park, wears Abercrombie & Fitch clothes, backwards baseball hats, looks exactly like 95% of the residents of Lincoln Park/Wrigleyville) is apt because you see so much of it -- especially in the bleachers. Meanwhile, I don't think there is an analogue for Sox fans; they look like Bears fans, sort of -- big, burly, mustached, with loud voices, if anything.

Part of the reason I chose to start hating the Cubs in the late 1980s was because their fans reminded me of the kind of people I went out of my way to avoid in college. I realize this is a facile reduction of an entire fanbase, but it works for me.

Go Braves!

I do not laugh, sir.

This is the reason I've been reluctant to post on Chicago-related threads lately. This kind of attitude, prevalent mainly with white, middle-class jerks on the North Side that don't go anywhere aside from their lakeshore condos or their jobs in the Loop. Fuck that noise.

I was being a bit over-exuberant, BBT. I'm more of a Sox fan (what can I say? I like hitting), but I'm glad the Cubs are in it, and not just for my dad, J0hn, the "part-time beer vendor" whom jaymc mentions who's one of my best friends.

-- earlnash (stereo99_9...), September 28th, 2003."

Sometimes I hate being right. Maybe they will unload Beckett for $50 bucks and a couple of bush leagers...nahh probably not this time. If they can sign Rodriquez, the Marlins (and perhaps the Cubs) are going to be the team to beat in the NL next year.

On another note from above, I haven't been to a Sox game since the mid 90s. Maybe the area has improved or my perceptions were wrong. Either way, I suppose thinking like that keeps the rent down.

I'd like to meet you, Mark.

@jonahkeri 13h
This is the first bad thing that's ever happened to the Chicago Cubs.