Baffoe: Wednesday Night Chicago Baseball Got Mixed Up
By Tim Baffoe--
(CBS) Wait, what happened? Oh no. You got it wrong, baseball gods.
I get it — Hump Day after a holiday weekend and maybe you haven't quite recalibrated. The All-Star break is approaching, and the sharpness might just not be all there. Plus, you couldn't look away from the DeAndre Jordan movie unraveling on Twitter that was so ridiculous that Kevin Costner almost negotiated a trade for a first overall pick in it.
You marked the wrong box on a spreadsheet or something. I've been there a hundred times. But I don't yet have the ability to manipulate space and time.
That's not how the games for both the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs were supposed to end Wednesday evening. With all due respect, you fouled up big time.
The White Sox need to lose games. C'mon, we established this already. There's no future contained in this season. Even you gods did a spit take when you read what Kenny Williams said the other day.
"We've been patient for a long time now,'' he Kenny'd in USA Today on Sunday. "But then you look at us, and you say, wait a minute, this team will only be held down for so long."
That cockeyed optimism is Hawk Harrelson-ish, not executive vice president-like. We've looked at the White Sox all season. Nobody needs to hold them down because they've played like that special kind of South Side drunk clutching the lawn so as not to fall off the face of the earth.
"We're still in the evaluating phase, and it will be a collaborative effort on which direction we want to go," Williams said.
The evaluation, Kenny, should at this point be how much the White Sox can get for whom.
"It's important that we not lose sight of what our organization goal was, and that was to give us the best three-year window," Williams said. "And we're not going to abandon that completely with only three months to play."
See, baseball gods? When you go to lunch at a time like Wednesday, you exacerbate this noise. Taking over Adam Eaton's brain momentarily? A walk-off homer from him in the 11th inning to beat the Blue Jays? No way.
"For some reason, I don't know how -- I blacked out -- it happened to work out well," Eaton said. "I'm very fortunate it went out."
Hey, that all sounds really cool until his next brainfart. The bit of mojo that produced that homer was supposed to go to the other side of Chicago.
Now you have Cubs fans mumbling to themselves at work today, thousand-yard stares going through and beyond office walls. Woulda, coulda, shouldas are weighing on that one twitchy eyelid.
Big picture, the Cubs are fine. Their more-than-realistic playoff hopes haven't included winning the division for some weeks now, and their best ball is still ahead of them.
But taking three of four from the St. Louis Cardinals? It was a strike away. It was winning a game against the great Michael Wacha when the Cubs' starter, Jason Hammel, left after an inning. It was overcoming the Cardinal devil magic for once.
"We had it, and we just lost it," said Pedro Strop, who gave up the game-winning ninth-inning homer to Jhonny Peralta. "Two outs in the ninth inning with two strikes, I mean, it doesn't seem like, 'Oh, we're splitting.' We should've got that one."
Instead you, baseball gods, let Bob Costas smugly sip tea from his booster chair somewhere instead of allowing almost-hero Miguel Montero to tweet #wearegood. You let the Cardinals leave the table even despite uncharacteristic shoddy defense the past two days. You let Cardinals fans get their sucker-punch in while Cubs fans were enjoying the high of a comeback after a doubleheader sweep of the Redbirds for the first time since 1992.
"I have nothing bad to say about our game tonight," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said afterward. "We just had a tough break in the beginning with (Hammel), and then we made a pitch that their guy got to. Otherwise I'm really pleased with our group."
Oh, shut up with your kumbayas and chakras for a minute, dude. Baseball gods don't jibe with that stuff. Yes, things will probably be OK in the long run, fans tell themselves while increasingly moving into the fetal position. But the Pittsburgh Pirates, San Francisco Giants and even the stupid New York Mets are smiling from a distance at the wild-card separation game that wasn't for the Cubs.
Both the White Sox and Cubs needed -- nay, deserved -- Wednesday divine intervention in very much the opposite way it happened. Greatly appreciated if you baseball gods were more on the ball going forward, please.
Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.
