Adversarial Pitchers Duel Turns Into Shootout

CAUGHT LOOKING
The famous rooftop stands across the street from Wrigley Field show both kind of Ks in this game. The backwards K is street talk for “caught looking.” The Mets were caught looking as the Cubs came from behind after a great pitcher’s duel.

Copyright c 2006 Evan Pritchard
July 15th, 2006

The entire Amazine staff (consisting of two reasonably attractive but slightly out of shape males) attended the Zambrano v Glavine trial at Wrigley today in order to form their own independent opinion. We got in line at 8 in the morning just to get standing room tickets in the gallery. It was a carefully argued duel of wits between two great baseball minds; Tom Glavine who led the league in wins and Carl Zambrano who led the league in strikeouts, both of them Cy Young candidates. The two exchanged rapid repartees and delivered powerful rhetorical spheroid statements that hit home time and time again in the careful judgement of the umpire for over an hour. Zambrano had a no hitter going into the fifth, matched by Glavine’s sort-of no hitter, also into the fifth, just one line drive through the box by the first defense witness, which almost passed for an error as it touched Glavine’s velvet glove before leaving its footprint on the soil behind second base. Umpires at the scene described it as a base hit, considering the speed it was driven at the time of the incident.

New York’s most celebrated Public Defenders broke through the stalemate and scored two in the sixth. Valentin started off with a triple to right, which broke up Zambrano’s no-hitter. LoDuca grounded out to short, then Beltran walked, then Delgado singled to right to drive in the first run of the game, breaking up the shutout. Wright struck out then Floyd walked then Chavez singled in the second run. Woodward got to three and two, two out, bases loaded, but could not produce admissible evidence, grounding to second. Still, it looked good for our side.

Just when our jury was about to find the Mets worthy of victory, in the bottom of the sixth, notorious members of the Chicago baseball family known as The Cubbies burst into the venerable courthouse located at 1060 West Addison and started shooting up the place, denting the ivy covered back walls of Wrigley with their cannon shots. Many ERAs were destroyed, including that previously stainless ERA belonging to young Henry Owens, a stranger to adversity who had not given up a run before in his major league life, not to mention that relatively pristine ERA belonging to Pedro Feliciano. Chad Bradford made some underhanded remarks and was shot down as well. It was a bloodbath of bad luck and bad hops. This was ironic because Bill Buckner, former batting champ for the Cubs, threw out the first pitch of the game. He is the Baseball demi-god associated strange errors. When the smoke cleared it was 8-2 and the verdict fell in favor of the Cubs. The Mets were led off the field in the emotional equivalent of shackles and leg irons.

Chavez started off that horrid sixth by losing a fly ball in the sun, a three base error, and then a long line of singles followed that drove starter Glavine from the mound in a tie game. The chickens came home to roost and a third run was credited to Glavine as well, a run which the Mets never matched, and so Glavine’s goose was cooked. At the end of the day, he lost the decision. Tom rarely loses a case, in fact it was the first defeat for Glavine since early May. The Cubs’ machinegun-like massacre of singles continued into the eighth inning leaving no one unscarred, and the verdict of most Mets fans was, “it got ugly.”

Look for updates in about two weeks with photos from the event. One fan modeled his tee shirt for us, one which bore a photo commemorating Michael Barrett’s famous punch of another catcher’s face; the caption read “Who says the Cubs can’t hit?” The Cubs have had a lot of trouble scoring runs this year, (311 until today, matched in ribbies by Mets starting batters 1 through 6, in fact Mets part-time bench jockey Valentin would be third in rbis for the Cubs if he played for Chicago) but they certainly remembered how to score runs in this game, after the fifth inning that is, and they came up winners. Ironic, because Wrigley Field has probably never seen so many Mets supporters at one time as at that contest. But justice is not democratic, but is as they say, blind as a bat. Nonetheless, Wrigley shall continue to be a true Temple of Baseball in our estmiation, and we shall hold malice towards none from the north end. The White Sox however, should watch out in October. We can match Ozzie G *** for *** when New York push comes to Chicago shove in a possible World Series confrontation.