Wrigley Feel

I swear I've seen tonight's game 100 times before: Early-season trip to Wrigley, horrid underwater conditions, a gale that you know will abruptly vanish at some undetermined point, pissed-off Cub fans out to crucify one of their own, umpires behaving strangely, testiness all around, cruddy field conditions that will play a role, at least one starter turning in a good performance that will become a footnote, random good plays from not-so-good players, sucky relievers lurking in both bullpens like land mines, and the only thing you know for sure is that you'll be very tired when it's finally over.

I'm just glad it didn't end with Sammy Sosa hitting one into the weird batter's-eye shrubs off John Franco. In fact, I was heartily glad not to see Sammy Sosa or John Franco at all, for opposite but nonetheless related reasons.

I think Heilman 2.0 can be moved out of beta and declared saleable — that change-up is awfully good, and the fastball has enough sink and slither on it that he can miss and not automatically get killed, the way Heilman 1.0 constantly was. (Still, it didn't escape me that after all that hoo-ha about Don Drysdale, the secret to Heilman 2.0 seems to have been undoing all the damage done by Met minor-league instructors.) I think Mike Piazza is not done yet after all. (Ain't it great being wrong?) I doubt they keep stats on this, but Doug Mientkiewicz has a chance to save four figures' worth of total bases with those soft hands of his. Heath Bell is properly fearless. Dae-Sung Koo, on the other hand, has forfeited his right to be called “Mister Koo” until he demonstrates he can get people out when it really matters. In fact, I'm not going to acknowledge his first name at all until he improves. He's Koo from here out. I think the Cubs' groundskeepers need to read the DiamondDry manual again. (But last year Jose Reyes would have been carted off the field, so that's something.)

On the Cub side of the ledger, Jeromy Burnitz is still every inch the wacky player whose misadventures and very occasional triumphs diverted us in those two tours of duty. He's like Bam Bam in a baseball uniform: None of the parts ever seem to be in sync, and you're always vaguely afraid he'll brain himself with a bat or get so tangled up that his limbs fly off in opposite directions. Those two singles he hit were ridiculous — triumphs of muscle and dumb luck over pitch selection. And that catch off Floyd? Six inches higher and it's in the basket. Six inches lower and it hits Burnitz in the throat, sending his head pinwheeling into the stands or injuring him in some other preposterous Burnitzian fashion. As it was, he got to run off the field with the ball like the world's happiest golden retriever.

I always liked Burnitz — anybody ever seen him and Rocky Swoboda in the same room? — and for a while there I was sure he was going to beat us, because that's the kind of Wrigley Field night it was. I felt bad that his return to the Mets was such an unmitigated disaster, that he would have done a lot better if he'd cared a lot less, and that he'd only just started to win the fans back when he shipped off to L.A. Still do. But all that said, I like him a lot more playing somewhere else.

By the way, now that the Great Cable War of '05 is over, does Keith Hernandez have the best job in sports or what? Dissect a few finer points of the game (he was clear and interesting as always), cop to boozing it in Chicago and playing hungover as hell, skedaddle long before “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Nice work if you can get it.