Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your Web browsers to the new location of your favorite Kevin B. O’Reilly-related program activities, kboreilly.com.
For a little while longer, you’ll find that when you visit kevin.oreilly.net you’ll be redirected to the new site.
UPDATE: kevin.oreilly.net is now out of commission.
As horrified and disappointed as I am by the White Sox’s World Series victory, I hope Ozzie Guillen is right and this propels all the drunken louts who have polluted Wrigley Field in the last couple of decades — and especially since 2003 — to pick up their beers and head south to 35th & Shields.
If the ChiSox now “own the city,” in Guillen’s words, then perhaps loyal Cubs fans (you know, the kind that didn’t jump on the bandwagon — not to mention any names, ahem!) will once again be able to show up at Wrigley on game day and be able to get a decent seat without shelling out a fortune, for a change.
But I guess it’s that kind of fantastical thinking that led the Cubs to think that Nomar Garciaparra could stay healthy and productive for a whole year.
… is this kind of fun?”
— U.S. Rep. Tom Delay, addressing three boys at a Houston shelter for Hurricane Katrina refugees and likening the experience to camp.
Starbucks has truly proven its commitment to racial harmony by setting up shop in Albany Park. Finally, the few white people who live there have a place to gather and feel comfortable paying $5 for coffee.
Here’s what the Chicago Tribune’s Rick Morrissey passes off in his column today as “a little eye opener to go with your daily dissatisfaction with Dusty Baker”:
A month or so ago, Baker opened a letter from a Cubs fan. He gets a lot of letters. This one was different. This one was uglier, nastier, viler than the normal fare. This one … well, this one was almost beyond comprehension.
“This guy wrote that he hoped I would hurry up and get my cancer back and die so the Cubs could get a real manager,” Baker said.
A vile sentiment, no doubt, but not exactly the dose of reality Morrissey promised. Yes, there are lunatics who write letters to public figures. Welcome to Earth, Rick.
The reality is that just about nobody worth listening to believes that Dusty Baker is entirely at fault for the Cubs’ mediocrity. That’s a classic strawman, just as this anecdote so willingly dished out by Baker and happily lapped up by Morrissey is classic misdirection.
The Cubs have suffered devastating injuries to key players and disappearing acts by others. That is largely responsible for their subpar performance. But on the margins, Baker does deserve some blame. Baseball is a game of averages, small differences in which make the difference between success and failur over the course of a 162-game season.
Baker, for example, is responsible for fielding yesterday’s lineup. That lineup included Jose Macias starting in centerfield and leaving Matt Murton and his .500 on-base percentage on the bench. The way things played out, the choice didn’t make much of a difference to the outcome of the game. I suppose the best that could be said about Baker’s recent tenure is that his bad management of the club has been overshadowed by factors beyond his control.
Baker’s like the captain of a submarine that simultaneously crashes into an iceberg and gets hit by an incoming torpedo. We can’t honestly say that the sub’s sinking is entirely his fault, but neither can we honestly say his captainship was stellar.
I call this girl Melissa Bean. Click here for a couple of other photos from my trip to “Cloud Gate” in Millennium Park.
… making my swing a little shorter. It got out of whack. It was pretty long. That’s really the only thing.”
— Corey Patterson, explaining why he expects to be back with the big-league club sooner rather than later.
My take: Corey, you could have the shortest, quickest swing in baseball, but it won’t help you hit balls in the dirt or over your head.
(Also posted to CubsNet.com.)
Since Dusty Baker inexplicably reinstalled Corey Patterson into the leadoff spot June 23 and through July 1, Patterson has had 29 official at bats, scored 3 runs, hit safely 6 times, walked twice and struck out 13 times.
That leaves him with a .207 batting average, a .275 on-base percentage. Forty-five percent of his at bats have ended with a strikeout.
The Cubs have gone 4-4.
As of mid-July, my reign of terror at Insurance Journal will officially come to an end. I’ve enjoyed insurance reporting and hope to continue doing it on a freelance basis, but I’m moving on to new digs. American Medical News is “the newspaper for America’s physicians,” at least the ones who are members of the American Medical Association. Here is some general information about the newspaper and here’s a “descriptive profile.” Unfortunately, access to the Web site is restricted to members of the AMA, so I’m not sure how or whether I’ll be able to make my articles available on kevin.oreilly.net.
I’ll work as a reporter covering the medical ethics and patient safety beat in the professional issues section. I look forward to working with the section’s editor, Bonnie Booth, who was a journalism instructor of mine at Columbia College Chicago. Aside from the challenge and excitement of tackling a new beat, a big plus is that I’ll be leaving home and working in a newsroom every day.
Working from a home office as an editor for IJ has definitely had its advantages, but I think that my professional and personal development was beginning to suffer a little bit from being home-bound most days. In two months, I may long for the good ol’ days when I could work in shorts and didn’t have to talk to anyone before noon if I didn’t feel like it. I think that on balance, though, I’ll benefit from the new downtown (OK, River North to be exact) work environment.
Another big plus about the new gig is that I’ll be able to focus solely on reporting. I think I’ve handled the reporting/editing juggling act well at IJ, but I haven’t really liked it all that much. So as you can tell, my reasons for leaving IJ really are personal. It’s staffed by a bunch of kind, hard-working and generous people, led by smart people with real vision, and the magazine itself serves a real need in the marketplace.
If my experience with AMNews is half as good as my tenure at IJ, I’ll have really lucked out. Of course, I’ve had more than my fair share of luck already. Thanks to the generosity and confidence of my journalism mentors and colleagues, I’ve prospered where so many beginners struggle. And thanks to the support of my wife and my family, I know that regardless of my professional travails, love is … love.
Last night, Corey Patterson went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts batting leadoff for the Cubs. He was booed heavily. Then in the 8th inning he made a fantastic diving catch. He then alertly threw the ball to second for an inning-ending double play. He left the field to a standing ovation.
Patterson is clearly capable of moments of great brilliance on the baseball diamond, whether in the field, at the plate or on the bases. This is what makes his overall terribleness so frustrating to fans. I don’t think Patterson’s performance is a booing offense, but his slot in the batting order is.
Patterson may be stubborn in keeping his undisciplined, swing-from-the-heels approach to the plate, but he’s clearly trying his damnedest. I’m open to a trade if it means getting more than you give, though I’m not in the trade-him-now-no-matter-what camp. But that doesn’t mean I believe he merits a a spot atop the batting order.
The numbers are startling: Of the 148 major-league hitters with at least 250 plate appearances (Patterson has 289), he has the 144th worst on-base percentage – .277. Of those 148 hitters, 133 see more pitches per plate appearance than he does — 3.41. Of Patterson’s 289 plate appearances, 75 — 25 percent! — have resulted in strikeouts. He is, at this moment, truly terrible.
One could make an argument that when a player gets this bad, he ought to be replaced in the lineup. That may or may not be an option, depending on one’s opinion of Jerry Hairston Jr.’s ability to play center field. If that’s the determination, fine. At least minimize the damage Patterson can do by batting him lower in the order.
And yet, and yet, and yet … manager Dusty Baker insists on batting him first. And, to compound the travesty, he has backed up Patterson’s whiffology with Neifi Perez‘s unique brand of easyoutism. Remember that list of 148 major-leaguers with at least 250 plate appearances? Perez’s on-base percentage is 132nd worst — .300. His career on-base percentage is .301. He is one of the worst hitters to ever play major-league baseball for an extended period of time.
Once again, necessity perhaps means Perez must play shortstop, thanks to Garciaparra’s terrible injury. But why must he be put in a position where his reliably bad performance will hurt the team the most?
The Cubs won yesterday’s game 2-0, following up a 2-0 win Sunday, but they cannot continue to shutout teams indefinitely — even with Wood and Prior back in the rotation. Patterson’s catch may have saved the game yesterday, but perhaps it wouldn’t have needed saving if he and Perez hadn’t combined to go 0-for-8. If one of them had been on base, Lee’s third-inning home run would have been a two-run shot.
Patterson, now 25, may yet figure it out. I’d like him to do so with the Cubs. There’s no good reason, however, for him to occupy precious real estate at the top of the order while he does so. Perez is more than one of those “proven veterans” Baker so adores, he’s a proven outmaker. He oughtn’t be anywhere near sniffing distance of the top of the lineup.
Baker simply cannot continue with this madness — not if he wants to give his club its best chance to win, not if he wants to keep his job.
(Also posted to CubsNet.com.)
… wins. If everybody’s drifting off, nobody wins.
— A Warren Park Little League coach, urging her team of 7- or 8-year-olds to stay seated on the bench and cheer on their teammates.
I thought that Comcast’s decision to delay the start of a Cubs broadcast last week so it could show commercials and promote its mediocre late-night sports news program was pretty bad. But last night’s performance was even worse.
Bottom of the ninth inning, Cubs trail by two, and — pfft! — the screen goes … purple. The Cubs went on to lose uneventfully, and so far as I know the screen is still purple.
Comcast Sports Net has got to get its act together. The Cubs should insist on it.
Apparently, Peter Gabriel is finally compensating me financially for foisting Genesis — and Phil Collins — on the music world.
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