Jon

Gimme a break. I was obviously referring to the masses of bandwagon fans that will come crawling out of the woodwork once the Cubs clinch a playoff spot, all scrambling to get tickets, thus making it tough for actual die-hards to get theirs. At least the lottery system gives everyone an equal chance, unlike the VWR and it's inherent potential for abuse. Don't take things so personally. Sheesh. I think it's quite the opposite. Lotteries encourage far more people to enter and try for tickets who otherwise would not have bothered. Opening up a ton of windows isn't some hidden trick. Most people figured that out many years ago and I'm sure a quick google search would give anyone the answer. Or you could spend a minute figuring out which url you need during the 30 minutes before tickets go on sale. Many people do have multiple windows, but they stop at 10 instead of in the hundreds. It isn't hard work. But what's even easier is submitting a lottery entry, of which there will be far, far more than the number of people who would have tried through a VWR. I don't think you should expect anyone here to be happy about this decision. It was easy to get NLDS and NLCS tickets last year and was going to be relatively easy again this year if you had the people and took the time. Now, the odds are quite slim. The only hope is if this will be unlike the other MLB team lotteries and they'll actually have a fair amount of people get selected (not unlike the lottery for the dugout, bleacher, and bullpen box seats). I assume they'll still use a VWR, so perhaps they just want to try and cap the number of people trying for the sake of the tickets.com servers. I kind of doubt it, though. As for the specific seats, those won't change. Nor will the quantity. It will be the 200, 500, and some 400 level seats that aren't season tickets, as well as bleachers, just like last year.

Just wait until the Cubs start doing this for the most popular games like Opening Day.

http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/chc/ticketing/pstixopp_form.jsp?partnerId=ed-1742770-55432997&source=ed-1742770-55432997 One game, two ticket limit if you get selected. Well I'm not happy. I was able to easily get tickets for games 3 and 4 of the NLDS last year, along with an NLCS game. Stupid fairness...

His release point isn't that far down, actually. It's not very consistent from start to start, but it's not significantly lower now than it was earlier this year. 2 or 3 inches lower at most according to the graphs on brooksbaseball.net. But maybe 2 or 3 inches is significant.

Josh Kalk's player cards really illustrate (literally) his consistent release point: http://baseball.bornbybits.com/2008/gifs/Carlos_Marmol4.gif That's for 2008. His slider is classified as a curve

Anyone want to get up the Week 1 Bears game thread?

I'd be actively rooting AGAINST any Cubs pitcher having a no hitter through 7 in a blowout if that situation were to come up the remainder of the year.

Mongo only pawn in game of life.

Sorry, Cuse, but the Orange were lucky to get 10 points today. Northwestern's defense dominated and if not for a few stupid mistakes and Bacher's poor accuracy in the first half, the game could have easily been 40+ to 3. I'm not sure there's anything positive to take away from it other than your punter unleashed a few good ones. That 72 yard punt into a slight breeze was impressive, though it just rolled into the endzone for the touchback.

Great news.

It's about his daughter who had a heart transplant July 31 (according to trib article). I had read that there was some personal stuff going on, but never heard any specifics until this morning. I hope it's about her recovery process... Yeah. Didn't someone say something on here a couple of weeks ago that the transplant didn't take? He's going to be talking about his foundation for whatever is going on, as well, so it's probably still serious. But we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Charles Tillman is holding a 1:30 PM press conference today from Children's Memorial Hospital and will be accompanied by doctors. That doesn't sound good.

Are you going Saturday? Please let me know how Syracuse looked when you get a chance. I received my season tickets in the mail about a month ago (probably a more magical day than the release of the two-deeps). Forecast calls for upper 70s and sunny. Typical early season day in Evanston. Hopefully it falls to at least the low 70s, though. Are you not going to be watching? If I'm home I will and thanks for the weather report. We didn't do too well against spread offenses last year, among other things, but at least we are familiar with them and play the best one each year. We're really young and deep at RB but the OLine has to improve big time. The 2 best receivers are gone so that will hurt but if Robinson gets sacked 50 something more times it's a moot point. Please let me know if the receivers get any separation and if they do, if they are open when Robinson gets sacked. I can't really see that stuff on TV. Hankwitz will hopefully bring some nice blitz packages, but we'll also be without our best lineman (Gill) this week. And I still wouldn't worry about too many sacks. I'm a little concerned about the interior run defense. Of course, they may really try to force Syracuse to beat Northwestern through the air, which might be the best tactic. I'm excited about the improvements that our secondary will make, especially with the return of our best defender, safety Brendan Smith.

I still like the idea of a "Other Chicago Sports" sub-forum here that could contain Bulls/Bears/Blackhawks discussion You may have awful taste in weather, but that's basically what I'd like to see, as well.

I would vote against it. We get so little traffic over there. The minor league game threads here put those game threads to shame last time we tried it.

That might have just been the best moment of the season to date. Holy crap.

Are you going Saturday? Please let me know how Syracuse looked when you get a chance. I received my season tickets in the mail about a month ago (probably a more magical day than the release of the two-deeps). Forecast calls for upper 70s and sunny. Typical early season day in Evanston. Hopefully it falls to at least the low 70s, though. Are you not going to be watching?

I don't know what was going on there, but Soto should not have been able to score that easily. Heck, I'm not sure he should have been able to score period. Not a good decision by Morgan.

The day the first two-deeps and game notes are released is magical.

I'm guessing ticket sales aren't going great for the qualifier against T&T. US Soccer now has full ads on the sides of CTA busses.

I believe it's measured as the difference between how much the ball falls vs. what the pitch would do with no spin due to gravity. The backspin on the fastball causes it to fall less rapidly than one with no backspin.

He had it up to 98 on the gun! The pitchf/x system had it at 98.5. It didn't have quite as much movement as most of his others, but it was still over 9".

Thought I'd let everyone know that the Cubs have released a fair number of tickets for the upcoming homestand against the Phillies and Astros. It doesn't look like they have pairs for next Saturday or Sunday, but there are a pairs or even four together for the Labor Day game. It looks like they have a huge chunk available in section 108.

Rather than starting a new thread, I'll just put this here. I looked up how Z has pitched on days that he hits a HR over his career. He has a 3.81 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 93/43 K/BB, and 13 HRs allowed. He allowed 5 runs, 6 runs, 7 runs, and 9 runs once each, but he also had 4 shutouts and 4 games in which he gave up just 1 earned. Other than the HRs allowed total, none of his numbers really jump out as abnormal.

Rod Wilson's injury Thursday night turned out to be a broken right forearm. Nick Roach had been suffering from a minor concussion, but I believe he was expected to be fine. Mark Andersen is expected to have a quick recovery from the thumb surgery he had last week. Anyone know how Clark is doing?