The 25th Year Comes to a Close

We have reached an historic end to the 2008 Baseball Season.

For the first time since 1907 the Chicago Cubs have made it to the playoffs for the second year in a row. For the first time since 1906 both the Chicago Cubs and White Sox have a chance to be in the post-season at the same time. As the Monroe Doctrine went to press the White Sox were waiting to play the Tigers (weather pending) to see if they get the chance to play the Twins to see if they get the chance to play the Rays.

Locally the CFCL has completed its Silver Anniversary season. As one of the longest tenured fantasy leagues in existence we have seen a lot over the past 25 years and hopefully this off-season the Monroe Doctrine will run a series of Commemorative Issues celebrating this accomplishment of longevity.

Congratulations to Steve’s Stones for capturing their second title, one of only five franchises to ever have won multiple CFCL titles.

The Clowns, Better and Revenge completed their inaugural seasons with varying degrees of success. The Revenge started strong and fought hard to stay in the money before fading. Even though the Clowns and Better finished 11th and 12th respectively, both picked up young, inexpensive talent that should help them be competitive in the coming years.

Over the course of the season much has been written on the Forum covering many topics. As we went to press, nothing was official, but two teams have voiced that this most likely is their last season in the CFCL. There are rumors floating about that there may be more than two teams not renewing their membership for 2009.

In conclusion I want to send out a heart-felt thanks to all of you for your loyalty as you checked in week after week. I hope you enjoyed reading the Monroe Doctrine as much as I enjoyed writing it. I know that each week wasn’t a stellar performance, - much like in our everyday lives - but I hope you found a consistency worth checking out. I wish you all a happy and safe off-season and my hope is that we’ll meet again next year to kick off the 26th season of the CFCL.

See you at the banquet! Speaking of which, head over to the Forum and read “Heading into the Home Stretch” for a beginning discussion on banquet days and availability.

NON CFCL NOTES: Can anyone explain to me Lou’s logic in Zambrano being the #2 starter in the playoffs? Is this yet another case of not wanting to upset one of your star players (See Sammy Sosa from 1992-2004). His ERA has risen 1.15 since August 3rd and that INCLUDES the No-Hitter!

Who Do You Want?

The deed is done. For the first time since 1907 the Cubs are in the post-season in consecutive seasons. Now we (Cub fans) await the final week of the campaign to see against whom we will start the playoff chase.

The Monroe Doctrine has never been afraid to put the cart before the horse - in fact we relish it, so let’s assume that our Dearly Be-Cubbed make short work of Philly, the Dodgers, the Metropolitans and/or the Brewers. The big question we have to ask is not “Who will we be facing in the World Series?”, rather “Who do we WANT to be facing in the World Series?”

Our choices are the Rays, Red Sox, Angels and most likely the White Sox. Let me preface the following that I know, I know, I know it’s going to sound like a man who hasn’t eaten in a year complaining that his lobster doesn’t have enough butter sauce. I get that, but I also want to make sure that if the ultimate does happen, it is viewed by historians and rivals alike as a well-earned victory.

So, because of that, I would most certainly hope that the Rays get knocked off the in AL playoffs. As fun of a story as they are this year and even though they have an amazing young, talented nucleus, I wouldn’t want the Cubs first World Series title in 100 years to be against a team that finished over .500 for the first time in their history.

The Red Sox are pretty beat up and are Mannyless. Considering that they have won two titles in the last four years, beating them would certainly be an accomplishment, but you just know that someone out there (and everyone in Boston) would happily say “Yeah, you beat us this year when we were injured. You wouldn’t have touched us if we were healthy like 2004 and 2008.” So I hope the Red Sox get eliminated as well.

The Angels are sporting the league’s best record by a game and a half and are considered the most balanced and deepest team that will reach the playoffs. So certainly beating the Angels would be saying something. They won the Series in 2002 and have a terrific owner in Artie Moreno, but every time I hear the name Angels, I think of the Angels of my childhood. The team that struggled to finish over .500 with guys like Dave Chalk, an aged Joe Rudi and heat throwing Tannana and Ryan. I would have to remind myself that these are not my childhood Angels, these are my son’s Angels.

So that leaves us with the White Sox. This year’s Sox are not as menacing as the 2005 group. However revenge lets us look past that. Once the Sox won in 2005, more than a few Sox fans pointed out to me that the Cubs would eventually win one too. My response was “Yeah, but thanks to the Sox we’ll have finally conquered Mount Everest only to find your empty Coke cans.” So we could enjoy our greatest winter ever by downing the Sox. Of course, this also opens the door for our greatest disappointment of losing to the Sox. But I just checked, the cart is still firmly ahead of the horse, so let’s get ready to pop the bubbly and put those White Sox fans back in their place. I mean, all they had to do in 2005 was beat the Astros who needed the Wild Card to reach the playoffs.

NON CFCL NOTES - I’ve never been a Yankee fan. In fact have hated them since I’m followed baseball (although I am forever in love with Lou Gehrig, not unlike Teresa Wright). But I have to say that the pre-game tribute to Yankee Stadium before Sunday night’s game while predictable was awe inspiring. Seeing the legends run out to their positions was pretty cool. And while Tino Martinez will never make the Hall of Fame, it’s amazing to see and hear the fans cheer for him louder than any other former Yankee.

And The Winner Should Be . . .

On the evening of Wednesday, September 10th, the California Angels of Anaheim and Orange County clinched their division. They are an outstanding 17.5 games ahead of Texas. So now for the remaining three weeks of the season they get to rest their starters and set up their rotation for the playoffs. Good for the Angels, but is it good for baseball? The Angels have nothing to play for. Now I’ve heard comments that Mike Scioscia is a former ballplayer and he won’t let his team get lazy and they’ll still compete, but c’mon. Torii Hunter isn’t going to crash into a wall in the bottom of the ninth to preserve a meaningless win. Mark Teixeira isn’t going to try to score from first on a long double to eke out a win against the Mariners.

Had Bud-dumber not decided that the All-Star winner would determine home field advantage for the World Series and instead declared that the team with the best in-season record would hold home field advantage, the Angels would still be competing. Currently they hold the best record in baseball, HOWEVA (imagine an ESPN sports anchor [name anyone?] doing his best Steven A. Smith impersonation) they only hold a one game lead over the Rays and the Cubs. (Interesting that since the Angels clinched, they have won five in a row and have extended their lead over the Cubs to two games and three over the Rays.) So perhaps my argument is lame since the Angels haven’t put it on cruise control – yet.

Now I know that this scenario isn’t going to play out every season. There are going to be years where the best team in baseball is ahead of everyone else by 10 games with two weeks to play.

[Side note – Going back to 2003 each year except for last year the best team in the NL was within four games of the best team in the AL. Here’s the breakdown not including last year.

2006 Yankees 97 wins Mets 97 wins
2005 White Sox 99 wins Cardinals 100 wins
2004 Yankees 101 wins Cardinals 105 wins
2003 Yankees 101 wins Braves 101 wins

There would be plenty of reason to still try and win. ]

But it would still force the #1 team in baseball to stay competitive and perhaps create a mini-rivalry with a team they wouldn’t normally care about. The Angels and their fans could watch the scoreboard and start to cheer against the Cubs, whereas now the Angels aren’t going to care about the Cubs unless both make it to the World Series.

I still think that home field advantage should go to the team that earned it. The Angels didn’t earn anything by having the AL compatriots win the game determined by a popularity contest. They will have earned the home field advantage by being the best team in baseball over the course of a full 162 game season.


NON-CFCL NOTES: Congratulations to Big Z on his no-hitter against the Astros. The Astros seem destined to be on the short end of historical baseball events for Chicago. Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Astros; The White Sox sweep the Astros in the 2005 World Series and now a no-hitter.

How would you like to be the Brewers management? They open their doors in a time of need and see the first no-hitter thrown in the history of Miller Park and it isn’t done by a Brewer pitcher, nor against the Brewer hitters. Nice little trivia question. Kind of like “Who got the first hit in the Houston Astrodome?” You would think the answer would be an Astro or some National League hitter (ok, so I’ve given you a hint – but I wanted to extend the comparison).

Long Live The Queen

Kim (The Lady Rebel) surprised me last month for my birthday with tickets to a Cubs game. Unfortunately, seats in Wrigley were scarce and expensive, so she made travel arrangements for us to take in a Cubs game in Cincinnati. We packed up our chartreuse microbus and hit the road like Jack Kerrouac with Willie Nelson blaring from our speakers (song anyone?)

Actually I had taken this trip twenty-two years ago. There were some differences, however. Instead of going with my two best friends from high school listening to the Best of Motown heading to Riverfront Stadium full of artificial turf I drove with my family of six listening to the audio portion of “SpongeBob SquarePants The Movie” (“I’m a goofy goober yeah!”) heading to the Great American Ball Park full of natural turf.

Staying at the Embassy Suites just north of Cincinnati was pretty cool. Even though the rooms were dingy, the rest of the hotel was nice and it was filled with Cub fans. Everywhere you looked there was a blue shirt or hat walking the halls, sitting in the lounge or eating in the atrium. The girls got a big kick out of the fact that everyone wanted to talk to them when they walked around (wearing their Cub shirts and hats didn’t hurt).

So Saturday afternoon we headed to the ballpark. Going into it, I didn’t know where to park or how long it would take to get to the park. I asked the front desk how long it would take to get there. “About 20 minutes” I was told. Yeah, right. Twenty minutes without traffic or construction. So I assumed an hour (I am from Chicago afterall) and off we went. Then an amazing thing happened. We arrived at the ballpark twenty minutes later having seen no construction and very little traffic. Parking was abundant and we were able to park right across the street for $10 (I can’t close my car door for $10 in Chicago).

On the way in to the park we passed the bronze statues of Frank Robinson and Ernie Lombardo and even though there ended up being almost 42,000 fans (at least 25,000 of them Cub fans), we weren’t crushed by mobs of people. The traffic flow is extremely fan friendly.






Inside the park it was a quick elevator ride up to the top concourse and then a few more steps up to our seats (six rows from the rafters).

The game was amazing. Katelyn’s favorite, Alfonso Soriano, hit three homeruns. Kim’s man, Mark DeRosa also went deep. And Rebel Star, Derrek Lee, went four for six. We even got to see the fireworks come out of the riverboat’s smokestack when Power Monster Jolbert Cabrera cranked Carlos Marmol’s first pitch over the leftfield wall for a heart-stopping grand slam. And considering it was the only game the Cubs have won in a week, it was all the more special.

Of course the trip would not be complete without controversy. Rumors are already flying of tampering that Rebel management met with Jay Bruce to encourage him to spurn the Clowns long term offer and play in flannel at Confederate Park. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was no meeting. All my calls ended up going into his voicemail and he didn’t even have the courtesy to call back.

CFCL Notes – Kenn: I have to give you props on both the city and the locals. Cincinnati is a beautiful city and the people are very welcoming. The Great American Ballpark is just a wonderful place to watch a game. Television doesn’t do it justice. Sitting near the rafters has its advantages. Throughout the night we could see all the different boats and barges float up and down the river. When the sun went down (artist anyone?) we could see the lights reflect across the water. Very, very appealing.

Baseball, PhD.

Leslie Ann Ivory may be on to something. She wrote the book “Everything I know I learned from my cat.” The next book written should be “Everything I know I learned from baseball”. Ronald Reagan was called the Great Communicator. Baseball is the Great Educator.

During the U.S. Championship of the Little League World Series, the coach for Hawaii called time out during the fifth or sixth inning when his pitcher was getting hammered. Louisiana had taken a big lead and the Hawaii coach kept telling his pitcher “Keep your head up. C’mon, let’s go!” Sure enough in the bottom of the sixth, Hawaii puts on this big rally and comes back to win that game as well as the World Series against Mexico.

What do we take from that to apply in real life? Just as Jimmy V. told us “Don’t ever give up.” You never know what’s right around the corner. Always give your best effort.

There are other axioms to be used in life that we learn from baseball.

Take two and hit to right. See what’s out there and take what the competition gives you.

Hit ‘em where they ain’t. Don’t try to overthink everything. Sometimes the solution can be very simple.

You can’t steal first. You have to focus on the proper order, no matter what your specific talent is. Pay attention and apply yourself to all the details.

Don’t make the first or third out at thirdbase. Don’t be so aggressive that you limit yourself on cashing in big or continuing a great run – although I never understood why it was ok to make the second out at thirdbase.

You don’t have to be on the field to learn something. You can become a scholar by sitting in the stands.

I didn’t learn percentages from my 4th grade teacher. I learned them from Jack, Vince and Lou and the Tribune sports section. Whether it was winning percentage or batting average, at the drop of a hat I could tell you (probably before 4th grade) that 1 out of 9 is 11.1%. Sadly there were plenty of Cubs that went 1 for 9 and plenty of Cub teams that won one of their first nine for me to learn from.

I didn’t learn to make change sitting in my high school General Economics class, I learned it sitting at Wrigley, giving the hot dog guy two dollars for a $1.25 hot dog and getting back seventy-five cents.

So all you parents out there, save yourselves the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on college. Send your children to Wrigley every day during the summer. It’s not an expense of season tickets, it’s an investment in their education.

CFCL Notes: My apologies for the delay in this week’s posting. The motherboard on my laptop gave way and I had to get a new computer which involved loading programs and transferring files and documents. It was appropriate that it was the motherboard that failed because when I realized that I would need to replace the computer and do all the file transfers, mother was part of the expression I uttered.

Non CFCL Notes: Even though last week I posted that the Cubs were basically a sure thing to make it to the World Series, the Cubs fan in me reared its ugly head this week. While the Cubs were in the throws of a four game losing streak at home, I thought “Here we go again.” Then I thought back to the ’69 Cubs. They had a pretty big lead and lost it. AND they had three future Hall of Famers (possibly four if Santo ever gets in). This year’s team doesn’t have four possible Hall of Famers. They probably don’t even have one. So unfortunately anything’s possible, even if ESPN’s website has the Cubs as a 99.4% chance of making the playoffs (probably the only time I’ll ever type – Thank god for the Wild Card).