abuck1220

i don't understand why people continue to assume that patterson's attitude sucks. macias is a terrible player, does that mean his attitude is bad? you can be struggling on the field and not be a jerk. fyi, patterson has signed autographs at all three i-cub games i've been to in the past week. so, not only is he the best signed on the big league club, but he's the best signer on the AAA squad as well.

i've been to three games in des moines since he's been there, and the fans have been overly enthusiastic in their support for him. he gets by far the biggest ovation, and they cheer everything he does. i'm not saying that you're wrong, i'm just passing on what i've seen in the past week.

Go see Hustle & Flow by yourself. eh, not interested in seeing that. looks cheap. if i go to the game tonight, i will be going by myself if that makes you feel any better. Psh, even Rocket got a date. well played. my wife did go w/ me on friday...and she watched me (note that i didn't say 'let me') spend $200 on hill's jersey...so she deserves a night off.

Yes. Luis Montanez with a 1-out walk. easy for you to say...what is it, 74 degrees for the 495th day in a row in california today?

Go see Hustle & Flow by yourself. eh, not interested in seeing that. looks cheap. if i go to the game tonight, i will be going by myself if that makes you feel any better.

the heat index is supposed to be 104 in des moines tonight at 6 pm...do i like watching rich hill pitch that much?

i hope dubois gets an extended chance in cleveland. i would liked to have seen what he could have done during the past few weeks against this run of crappy lefties the cubs have faced. i still think dubois would outproduce murton over the course of an entire season...his slugging alone makes him a better option. and murton won't keep getting bloop and infield hits all year. not that it really matters, but, in my opinion... dubois > murton gerut > hollandsworth dubois > hollandsworth so, i think our best lf option is gone, though it's not like he's head and shoulders above everybody else. and he is far from the best option out there. i hope this means dunn, though i'd be surprised.

quite a comeback for the i-cubs... boy, has leicester had a rough time since being sent back down...

thanks for the concern, guys. the smell has improved. i just hung it up to let it air out over the weekend, and it's much better now. if you get up close to it, you can smell it, but since i don't do that too often, i can live with it.

that reminds me...oneri was in des moines the other night when hill was on the mound.

pics of the hill jersey... http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/3435/1000573aut4vj.jpg http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8893/1000574aut7lh.jpg

that's a good score! get anything else? Vance got an Iowa team signed bat. I also bought a ceremonial first pitch and my friend bought lunch with Ribbee. :lol: lunch w/ the mascot sounds brutally awkward. they had a pretty sweet iowa team signed helmet at the iowa game the other night. the guy who bid me up on the hill jersey got it for $105, which i thought was pretty decent.

that's a good score! get anything else?

No but I did hear he almost never signed autographs as a Cub, so its kinda weird. he signed all the time when he was on the cubs. i got him four spring trainings in a row, and no one signed more than him.

also forgot to mention that corey had his right hand taped at the iowa game. doesn't seem too serious, as he still played the field and signed autographs w/ it before the game, which was weird because i heard he hated people and spat at babies.

sweated through five innings of the i-cub game tonight. patterson's first inning single was an 0-2 high fastball that he lined hard up the middle. stole 2nd easily after that. dubois reached on an E5 after that...if the 3b would have had his wits about him, he possibly could have nabbed corey, who had strayed a bit far from 2nd. dubois was promptly picked off 1b by the catcher during mcclain's ab. mcclain tripled off the cf wall to score corey. corey popped to the pitcher in his 2nd ab, as he was sawed off badly...he broke two bats in his first two ab's. dubois flew out to medium deep cf in his 2nd ab. patterson got up 3-0 in his 3rd ab, took a strike, then flew out to right...not the best at bat. koronka's a bad guy to be pitching when the heat index is 98. he nibbles so much that he goes to two balls on just about every guy, and each batter hits a couple foul balls per ab. kelton continues to impress me. i'm convinced he could be at least a serviceable backup of. seems like he always hits the ball hard when i'm there. i'd like to see him play some cf when corey comes back up/is traded. also, frese was playing 3b...has he played there before?

1. pie 2. hill 3. dope 4. marshall 5. murton 6. harvey 7. patterson 8. cedeno 9. pawelek 10. gallagher pinto, moore, petrick, nolasco, jvb would probably follow... never really been on the marmol bandwagon...

are they signed? they had an auto'ed hill bat for auction tonight, and i was going to get the jersey and the bat, but then my $125 bid for the jersey suddenly jumped to $200. :-k i put the $125 bid in during like the 5th inning, and it stood until the top of the 7th (auctions ended at the end of the 7th). this guy had bid $135, so i topped it with $150. then he looked at me and said, "if you want this, you're gonna have to bid pretty high" and put down $175. i'm thinking, oh crap, this dude's gonna drop five hundo on this. then i wrote down $200 and he bailed. weak! talked all that crap like he was in it for the long haul, then i sent him walking after ONE more bid! umm....no. i had to sit in some hot freaking weather to get this thing...i earned it! i'll try and get a scan up of it tomorrow. Yes they are signed. They are having an unreal auction tomorrow night. They have all kinds of stuff from the Jaxx and the Cubs. I've put in a request for game used baseballs, lineup cards, etc. $200 is cheap for that! That's cheaper than the Murton jersey Vance got! dubois (who is #44...not a fan of that) and kelton's jerseys went for quite a bit too...both were around $125 when i looked in the fifth inning. they had dubois, wellemeyer and kelton bats as well. they had much better stuff at the winter fan fest auction. if i'd have missed out on the jersey tonight, i'd have you try and nab me those cleats...but i think i've spent enough on a guy who has less than 10 major league innings under his belt. :D

by the way, this jersey stinks BAD. i have it hanging in my den, and it's smelling up the whole room...any ideas on how to tame this beast? washing it is not an option since it's signed.

are they signed? they had an auto'ed hill bat for auction tonight, and i was going to get the jersey and the bat, but then my $125 bid for the jersey suddenly jumped to $200. :-k i put the $125 bid in during like the 5th inning, and it stood until the top of the 7th (auctions ended at the end of the 7th). this guy had bid $135, so i topped it with $150. then he looked at me and said, "if you want this, you're gonna have to bid pretty high" and put down $175. i'm thinking, oh crap, this dude's gonna drop five hundo on this. then i wrote down $200 and he bailed. weak! talked all that crap like he was in it for the long haul, then i sent him walking after ONE more bid! umm....no. i had to sit in some hot freaking weather to get this thing...i earned it! i'll try and get a scan up of it tomorrow.

yeah, so i got to meet him briefly after the game, as they were doing the 'jerseys off our backs' thing for MDA. i won the auction for his jersey (one of the more expensive ones thanks to this guy that bid me up from $125 all the way to $200... :evil: ). they have you go on the field afterwards to get it from the guy...just talked to him for a second, told him thanks for driving up the price of his jersey by pitching so well...and thanks for sweating up the jersey real nice. i was gonna start in on him w/ the questions, but i figure we'll have our chance w/ the chat. i've met him briefly a few other times in ST, and he has always been a cool guy. patterson's jersey was up to $300+ when i last saw it. oh, and for the record, the guy who bid me up on the hill jersey told me that corey was signing autographs before the game. he wears #11, which is weird. his ab's were nothing special. he reached on an error in the first...may have been a DP ball had the 3b not booted it. made a catch on a deep fly to cf, threw a gun to 3rd, holding the runner at 2nd. the crowd practically gave him a standing O...kinda sad, actually. dubois' single was an absolute laser off the very, very top of the rf fence...probably two feet from being a line drive homer. he got gunned trying to stretch it into a double. the guy can hit. made a nice running catch in lf as well. it surprised me because i was told he sucked on D.

rich hill = good at baseball went to the iowa game tonight...hill looked pretty good. man, does he NOT give up ground balls, though. if he gets traded to cincy, i'm gonna feel bad for him. when he did give up grounders tonight, die hard screwed em up anyway. the home run pickering hit was a bomb...hit the light pole next to the scoreboard in right. i'm not so sure hill liked his mosey around the bases, as he plunked the next batter with the next pitch. :D the second run scored on a infield dribbler that should have been an out. fontenot fielded the little nubber and threw in the dirt to first. should have been an easy dig for mcclain, but he booted it. the guy who scored got on when he swung late on a hook and looped it to right for a double. hill got into a jam in the 3rd (bases loaded, no outs). struck out gemoll, pickering (twice really...he was getting squeezed early on), and got the next guy to ground out (after he should have struck him out...squeezed again). people talk about his average fb, but he gets some pretty sad looking swings with it. he was hitting 89-90 on iowa's slow gun in the 7th. the hook was snapping real nice tonight as well. also of note was the fact that he was hitting some 84's during the 7th...possibly his cutter, as i could tell that it wasn't a breaking pitch. :? thanks to the stupid i-cubs, i didn't see much of the radar gun (which is crap anyway). they said the only available seats were general admission, which is basically hell on earth...fat, sweaty, BO toting drunks...the wife and i sandwiched in the middle of the row. needless to say we sat there for three outs and went to sit beyond the rf fence in the aluminum bleachers. from there you can see that probably 50% of the entire crowd is concentrated into three small general admission sections...while 50% of the reserved areas are empty. wow, was that frustrating. oh yeah...one more thing...i'm not going to say i didn't come home with a wet, stinky, game-used autographed rich hill jersey. and i also won't say that i didn't come home $200 poorer...but it was worth it. :wink:

criticize corey for things like plate discipline, mental lapses, etc, but this crap is getting tired. just because corey is quiet, people assume he hates his teammates, fans and coaches. have you ever heard a teammate say anything bad about corey?

why? they're both young, toolsy, raw cf'ers who lack plate discipline and will both be rushed to the majors and yanked around in the batting order. it's actually a pretty good comparison, and you'd think the cubs would have learned from the mistakes they made w/ patterson.

patterson finished 1-4 w/ 2 k's and a hr (off a lefty). dubois was 3-4 w/ a double and an rbi.