Chicago Cubs

As the 2009 season progresses, there are plenty of issues on the minds of not only the Cubs organization, but also Cubs fans alike.

The high-powered offense of last year—the same offense that was supposed to thrust the team into this year—has been eerily quiet. The talented pitching rotation that made so many strides last year has been marginally acceptable this year, and the bullpen that was touted as one of the best a year ago has yet to separate itself from the average.

Another day, another walk off win for the Chicago Cubs. Earlier in the week when the Cubs' offense struggled mightily, I would never have guessed that these last three games would have ended the way they have. Overcoming huge deficits and coming up in the clutch, it may look like the Cubs have started to turn the offense around.

Photo above from espn.com

Filed:June 19th, 2009

Ryan Theriot is mauled by teammates after his game-winning single (Cubbie Nation)

Click here for the photo gallery of Friday's game.

On Thursday, the Chicago Cubs offense dragged itself from the grave to score four runs on back-to-back home runs from Derrek Lee and Geovany Soto against their crosstown rival White Sox and eventually won on a walk-off single in the ninth inning.

On Friday, the offense took six innings off again, only to rally back from what started as a 7-0 deficit to the visiting Cleveland Indians. The Cubs scored four runs in the eighth inning before, in a moment of poetic injustice, longtime Cubs hero Kerry Wood was taken out of the yard by Lee to tie the game in the ninth inning.

Another one bites the dust.

With this week's disappointing, yet predictable news that Sammy Sosa failed a drug test in 2003, the running list of great home run hitters linked to PED's continues to grow.  

While many people had already subconsciously assumed this to be true, the news put another dark cloud over America's past time once again.  

Then, the discussions began, does Sammy Sosa still belong in the Hall of Fame?

There may be no crying in baseball, but there's definitely some heavy-duty lying going on. And it isn't just the players saying they've never done drugs.

It's the owners, the managers, the commissioner, the entire baseball establishment. Everyone's lying about drug use. The establishment still wants the public to believe that steroid abuse is the exception rather than the rule.

The Chicago Cubs' offense has been called a lot of things over the past few months—scary, awful, woeful, and laughable. When looking at the statistics, people may be missing one word from the Cubs 2009 batting performance:

Historic.

Heading into Friday's tilt with the cross-town rival White Sox, the Cubs, as a team, were hitting .212—that's a tabulation of every Cubs player that has had a single at-bat this year, including the ghost of Cubs' past, Aramis Ramirez.

As promised, the members of this blog will be taking some road trips this season and covering the games we attend. The first of these road trips will be on June 30 to Pittsburgh, PA to visit the Pirates' PNC Park as they take on the Cubs. The Bucs will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the opening of Forbes Field and are offering general admission bleacher seats for a mere four dollars.

Peter, Thomas, and I will be in the City of Champions on Tuesday, June 30 and will bring you the recap a day or so after the game.

The Chicago players say that they try to approach this series the same way that they would any other, and I'll try to do the same old White Sox recapping I've always done.

With that said, no one can deny the added feeling of fire in their bellies when they watch the White Sox and the Cubs go at it.

Perhaps John Danks is no different. Having been sub-par this season, at least as far as expectations were concerned, the southpaw came out to Wrigley Field sporting his A game, as did the rest of the Sox pitching.