They gone!

Well, folks, it turned out to be a wonderful weekend for Chicago Cubs baseball. That's a rare enough thing for me to get to say, but sweeping the Sox at the Cell deserves a post.

The good: Three quality starts by Cubs pitching. The Sox were held to 16 hits and 2 runs over the entire 3-game series. Alfonso Soriano gets a gold star for homering in all 3 games, plus a beautiful throw to the plate in today's game. The Cubs looked solid on both sides of the plate.

The bad: Saturday's game subjected me to the atrocity that is the Sox broadcasting team. For those of you unfamiliar, allow me to give you a crash course. The duo consists of Ken "Hawk" Harrelson and Darrin "DJ" Jackson. "DJ" is apparently fond of loading up on Valium before every game-he seems to have serious trouble with minor things like, um, words. If he wasn't calling Cliff Floyd "Gary Boyd," he was bumbling his way through promo copy in a fashion that would have made Mushmouth look like Casey Kasem. And as for the "Hawk?" There are so many levels of awful here, I'm just going to hit the major ones. He's been criticized for being an obvious "homer," which he certainly is. However, Harry Caray was definitely one as well. The problem is that "Hawk" takes it to a whole other level-referring to the Sox as "we" or the "good guys." Irritating to hear a score like this..."end of the 4th, good guys down 2-1."

He also has some of the most annoying catchphrases in the history of sports. After an opposing team has a player strike out? "He gone." Not "he's gone," as anyone with a sense of grammar would say, but "He gone." And when the Sox get a home run? I suggest covering your ears, because you're about to get both "Hawk" and "DJ" screaming at once- "you can put it on the board....YES!" This, combined with "Hawk's" random references to "duck snorts" and "cans-o-corn," had me yelling at the TV by about inning number four. These guys are so bad, their own team's fans are calling for their heads:
Heave the Hawk
and also here.
Pretty bad, folks, pretty bad.

And the ugly: One of the strangest baserunning plays I've ever seen in today's game. I won't even attempt to try and describe it. Even the umpires were confused. The game was held up for a good 15 minutes while they had a conference on it. For a pretty good explanation of what happened, swing over here to one of my favorite Cubs-related blogs.

All in all, a fine weekend. The Cubs get out their brooms, the weather here is nearly perfect, and it's all topped of nicely with a heapin' helpin' of ribs, chicken, and turducken at Fin's place. That definitely works for me.