Woke up this morning to some annoying news -- the Cubs traded for the Marlins closer and aren't planning to re-sign Kerry Wood. This pisses me off, as Wood has long been my favorite Cub. I understand the reasoning behind it, and I'm not a big fan of giving closers huge contracts in general, but still. This is Wood. He's supposed to be a Cub. I want the Cubs to be in a position to get to the World Series, but I want Wood to be part of it. He deserves it.
It's pretty ironic, too, considering Wood posted a sparkling 1.08 WHIP last year, the best of his career. IMO, WHIP is by far the best stat we have to measure a pitcher's effectiveness. I see a pitcher with anything below 1.15 and I start salivating. (If you really want to see me start drooling, bring up Greg Maddux's stats from the late 80s/early 90s.) OK, this is kind of gross imagery. I'll stop.
Anyway, I am going to be depressed to see Wood in a different club's uniform. He's been a Cub for 10 years (ten years! God, time goes by fast). I've told my friends this story a lot, but I always like to claim that I should have been at his 20K game in 1998. I was a senior in high school at the time and one of the sports editors of our school yearbook. (BTW, 1998 yearbook = best designed yearbook Central ever put out, I guarantee it).
So, as spring rolled around and we were putting the finishing touches on the book, our yearbook advisor decided that we had earned a field trip. She entertained suggestions from us, and mine was obviously that we should go to a Cubs game. But I guess she thought she wouldn't be able to pass that off as educational enough, so we ended up going to the Museum of Modern Art (where, it turned out, one of the halls had a huge exhibit up dedicated to vaginas--well, I'm sure it had some kind of thematic meaning beyond that, but all I remember 10 years later is looking at lots and lots of vaginas and thinking, "why am I not at the Cubs game?"). Then we spent the afternoon at Watertower Place (fancy shopping mall on Michigan Ave)--highly educational of course. That day was May 6, 1998. On the way back, in the bus, I listened to the game in disbelief as Wood racked up strikeout after strikeout and got home just in time to see the ninth inning on TV (and Wood's postgame interview, where he shoke like a leaf as he held the headpiece to his ear).
The next day one of the many articles about the game in the Tribune was a little blurb about how the tickets from that game had become instant collectibles and were already selling for a couple hundred bucks a piece. Just to be cruel, I brought it in to show to everyone in my yearbook office.
Anyway, ever since that day, Wood has been my (and I'm sure thousands of other fans')favorite Cub. I'm gonna miss him.
P.S. Looking for a photo of Wood's 20K game, I stumbled upon
this site, where someone I've never heard of reviews pitching mechanics. Really interesting stuff.
Also, I am so proud to see that he listed
Greg Maddux as someone who has superb mechanics. When I taught myself how to pitch when I was a kid, I modeled my windup and pitching motion after what I saw Maddux do, as he was my favorite Cub at the time. As I grew up, and he left the Cubs, I completely forgot that I had learned how to pitch from watching him. You can imagine how shocked I was in 2004, as Maddux returned to the Cubs and I watched him closely for the first time since I was about ten years old, to realize that I had the exact same windup and delivery as him. It was one of those bizarre moments of suddenly recalling a memory you didn't know existed, as my brain leapt back over a decade to an image of myself standing in the middle of my family room, mimicking his motion as closely as possible with every pitch projected on the TV in front of me.
Sadly, I never progressed past the windup stage of pitching knowledge, so my childhood repertoire of pitches consisted of one 40 mph fastball, over and over. Hey, I could hit a target, at least! I guess I should be thankful that I didn't model myself after Mitch Williams.
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