There was no real reason for any of us to be at Wrigley Field last Sunday. Sure, the Cubs had won two in a row, seven out of the last ten, and ten of the previous fourteen games, and were going for their second straight sweep of a three-game weekend series, and it’s true they were a season-high two games above .500, only seven and a half games out of first. But the pennant race–if there is, in fact, a pennant race–won’t begin in earnest until next week, when the Cubs renew play against their East Division competitors.
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In fact, I’ll deal with all those owners later. I went to Wrigley Field last Sunday in a strange sort of attempt to leave sports owners behind, to crawl inside the game and pull it in on top of me and leave the owners and their latest high jinks somewhere outside. I don’t know how many of my fan comrades had the same aims, but I imagine that–in some small way–such thinking played a part in the thoughts of most fans there. It takes a real baseball fan to attend a nearly meaningless game at the end of August, on even the best of afternoons–especially on the best of afternoons. Owners, who consider the fans a cash cow that must be milked or else it will go dry, don’t seem to understand that the fan is a thinking, feeling being who actually derives some sort of pleasure from watching the games athletes play.
The Cubs took batting practice with professional dispatch; they showed neither the giddy game playing of their good years nor the dutiful apathy of their bad years. Down the left-field line, pitching coach Billy Connors put Mike Morgan through the paces of his between-starts throwing. He halted Morgan between pitches and guided him through his motion. Connors has a reputation as a hands-on coach, and the label fit literally here, as he took Morgan by the shoulders and showed him how to delay his delivery to the plate to add snap to his pitches. Morgan, it should be stressed, is fourth in the league in earned-run average, but there was still work to be done.
Bullinger, meanwhile, was slowly, quietly creating something of a stir. He walked two men in the third inning but worked out of the jam, and in the fifth walked the leadoff man, who was eventually retired stealing; otherwise, he wasn’t letting anyone reach base–no hits, no errors. The crowd started out very subdued, seeming more intent on enjoying the day than the ball game. The pock of batted balls echoed around the stands, caught balls popped in gloves, and one could even hear the clapping of San Francisco third-base coach Wendell Kim between pitches. Yet in the seventh the buzz picked up in volume, especially after Bullinger got Clark on a deep fly to center. He then walked cleanup hitter Mark Leonard, but struck out the not-so-threatening Matt Williams (he’s suffering through a sub-.220 season). When he got Greg Litton on a fly to left that Salazar made a nice, if routine, running catch on, the fans took the seventh-inning stretch with a sense of anxious expectancy. Bullinger also received a warm reception when he batted in the bottom of the inning.
That’s why fans turn out on a beautiful Sunday for a game that, in the grand scheme, doesn’t mean anything, and isn’t even packed with meaning in the small scheme of a pennant race that hasn’t really begun yet. It’s the chance for small dramas–a rookie pitcher throwing the game of his life–of watching things done well–Cubs third baseman Steve Buechele and the Giants’ liquid-smooth rookie shortstop Clayton were especially impressive in the field–of observing the dragonflies swarm above the field, feeding on city insects lured by the promise of the green grass.
The Bears have made a tradition of mistreating their players over the decades, but this was the latest and most painful of several recent slights. Don’t these owners realize that there’s more to their games than just the bottom line, and that if they insist on treating the bottom line as paramount the games are diminished? It seems such a simple point to have to make. It takes someone with an independent mind like Fay Vincent to state it, because company yes-men like Mike Ditka won’t.
