Cubs Get Slammed

It's pretty safe to say that if you are a baseball fan in the city of Chicago, you had a pretty crappy weekend. The White Sox were swept out of the Bronx, and though the Cubs managed a win Saturday against the Mets, any joy from that victory was blown away in Wrigley's gusting winds the next day.

The Cubs entered the sixth inning of their Sunday night game with a 5-2 lead on the New York Mets. Though the Cubs have had a horrible season, they always seem to do well when playing on ESPN, beating the Cardinals at Wrigley earlier this season.

It's been a long year already for Cubs fans, and it's still only July. What happened in the 6th inning didn't help the faithful get through it. In fact, it may cause them to snap.

The Mets would score 11 runs in that inning, thanks to 8 hits, a walk, and 2 errors by second baseman Todd Walker.

Two of those eight hits were grand slams. The first was by native Chicagoan Cliff Floyd, who reached out at a pitch about 4 inches off the outside corner and shoulder high, and used the jet stream to watch it soar out into the basket in left field. That made the score 6-5 Mets, and that would in all likelihood have been enough. You could see it in the Cubs' body language, both their fans and players.

But more was to come.

A few hits, a walk, an error, and a run later Carlos Beltran came to the plate with the bases loaded. He quickly unloaded the bases himself with another shot to left center field, making the score 11-5.

It was at this point that fans in the bleachers began littering Wrigley Field with trash. It's the second time in a matter of weeks that Cub fans have shown their disgust in such fashion. After AJ Pierzynski hit a three run homer off of Ryan Dempster in the top of the 9th on a Saturday afternoon to give the White Sox a lead, and eventually the victory, the fans delayed the game over 5 minutes with their garbage shower.

David Wright, being the super great nice guy that he is, then decided only thing to do would be add another home run - this one only a two-run shot - to the Mets total in the inning.

13-5 Mets.

As bad as Cubs fans are no doubt feeling right now, I don't think anybody in Wrigley Field felt worse than Todd Walker. Of the 11 runs scored, only three were earned thanks to Walker's two errors.

"I was embarrassed to be out there today," Walker said. "I didn't catch either ball. I was responsible for the 11 runs in that inning. You can pin this game on me. I don't know what to say. It's humiliating. I wouldn't wish that feeling on anybody. You want to crawl in a hole."

Now I've been one of Cubs manager Dusty Baker's harshest critics but even I felt sorry for the guy on Sunday night.

"It was a total nightmare. We gave them too many outs. A team like that who can score runs, you can't give them outs," Baker said. "I've never seen two grand slams in the same inning."

I really am starting to wonder how much more Cubs fans are going to allow themselves to take. While there is a certain amount of honor and respect to be given to a group of people who remain so loyal to a team, there has to be a certain point in which it's realized maybe the best thing for both team and fan to do would be stop watching.

I'm not saying, stop caring, I'm just recommending that you do it from a distance. How many more times are North Siders going to react the way they have twice in the last few weeks? You get the feeling that there will be some kind of revolt in the not-too-distant future with fans storming the field, taking Dusty, Jim Hendry, and Andy MacPhail prisoner and sacrificing all three at the feet of Harry Caray's statue outside the park.