Be still, my heart

Via Bleed Cubbie Blue, this item about Mike Fontenot's "star turn" on the sitcom My Boys is certainly the best thing I've heard all week:

Fontenot, a natural ham, was perfect for the part. He said he has seven lines overall and already has learned them..."I've been standing in front of the mirror rehearsing," [he said].

I don't know about all of you, but I'm prepared to be amazed.

Ashes

Man, I'm hungry.  I'm not very good at fasting.  I did get to hear a really extraordinary sermon this afternoon, though.  The priest said that "Ash Wednesday seems almost superfluous this year," which is undeniable.  He talked about our special responsibility to do good work in these bad times when the entire world seems to be degenerating into ashes and eventually concluded that we are not, in fact, doomed.  I desperately needed to hear that and cried, of course.

Well, since I am tired, hungry, and incoherent I will save commentary on the amazing Vine Line photoshoot of Z and Fontenot being "very playful" until later.  I hope all of you who observe Lent will have a peaceful and reflective forty days. 

Beat it

Lots of interesting stuff today.  The Tribune tells us that Z threw his first batting-practice session yesterday, then "bypassed the media and stomped out of the clubhouse shouting 'beat it' in Spanish."  Well, that's dispiriting, isn't it?  I hope we're not looking at a repeat of the second half of last season (I'd take a repeat of the no-hitter, of course, but mostly not the rest of it).

On a lighter note, Chicago Cubs Online linked to an entertaining Daily Herald article about the height of the Cubs' middle infielders, which begins, "After shooting his bow and arrow this winter, Mike Fontenot made it his target to get stronger so he can start at second base."  I'm not sure there was any need to go beyond the bolded part, personally - that is more than enough awesome for any piece of writing.  But if we must:

Both Fontenot and Miles check in at 5-feet-8, and when either pairs with shortstop Ryan Theriot (5-11), they'll give the Cubs one of the most diminutive double-play combos in the, ahem, "big" leagues.

Nice job, Daily Herald.  But, really, how great is it that our two potential second basemen are both 5'8?  What is this, the Little Rascals baseball club?  (Just kidding.  You know Theriot and Fontenot are my two favorite people ever, and I look forward to seeing Aaron Miles in action.)

I turned in a couple of sermons last week, have to talk to a bunch of people about baptism this week, and have 93 midterms due shortly, plus many terrible applications for financial aid, so I am more than usually grateful that baseball exists.  I'm clinging to it as a distraction from my FAFSA and various Latin terms.

I just came across a picture in my psych textbook of two super-old Japanese people and a little boy.  The caption reads, "These Japanese grandparents, who are avid baseball fans, are very proud of what their grandson can accomplish."  Grandma is full-on crouched behind home plate with a catcher's mitt, even though she's 95 years old.  That child is under a lot of pressure.

For the public good, I'll just republish Jessie's birthday gift to me here:

"Top Prospects."  Yeah, I'll say.  No wonder I had that dream that I was married to him.  This makes me want to do a Cubs rookie card extravaganza.  I doubt any of them could surpass that, but I'll have to see what I can dig up.

Go Phillies, I guess?  Scott Eyre, you'll always be a Cub in my heart.

Twenty Things I Learned from the 2008 Chicago Cubs

1.) I don't think I can do this again.  Cubs fandom is, as my mother mentioned frequently this weekend, part of my heritage, and I've dealt with the disappointment that goes along with that many times, not to mention the Rockies last year.  This was the worst loss I can remember, though, because this year's team was (as you may have noticed) my favorite.  I just can't go through another season that ends that way.  

But more than anything, I don't want to feel like this season was all for nothing.  Right now it does feel that way, but I'm trying to remember that this team was special; they taught me some things, and here are a few of them.  All pictures from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, or Getty Images via Yahoo!Sports.

2.) Let's begin with shallowness, okay?  I think we all need a little shallowness after last week.  Thus: something about this team really, really makes women want to have their babies:

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

3.) No one in baseball - in fact, no one in the world - has a better autobiography than Carlos Zambrano.

4.)  You totally want to hear the first line of Z's autobiography again, right?  I knew you did:

"The life of Carlos Zambrano is that of the eagle that flies in the middle of a storm and, facing opposing winds, ascends powerfully until it reaches the top of the mountains."

5.) At the beginning of this season, I barely knew who Reed Johnson was.  Now, he's the guy who made The Catch (and did other great defensive and offensive work).  I hope he sticks around with us for a good long time.

6.) We have some good guys on this team:

7.) Ryan Theriot and Mark DeRosa: best manlove ever, seriously.

8.) Cincinnati and Cleveland are TOTALLY different cities.

9.) Puppies.  Also, Geo lounges very handsomely and Theriot and DeRo laugh like frat boys.

10.) Ted Lilly barreling into Yadier Molina like a crazy man (not to mention almost throwing his own no-hitter the day after Z's)?  That guy is intense.  Probably as the result of a lifetime of being named Theodore Roosevelt Lilly.

11.) All of the following, which my friend R. the Red Sox fan laid out for me one night when we were talking about baseball fanfic.  I wrote down everything she said because it was so true:

"I feel like our team [the Red Sox, that is] would be a story like Blade Runner.  Everyone is insane, and some people, like Josh Beckett, are either an alien or a robot.  Tito is the guy trying to save the world and restore justice and order.  Your team is more like a story about a family reunion.  The family is crazy, but not in a bad way.  Geo and Ryan Dempster would be the guys everyone loves, who hold the whole family together.  Then someone would be the crazy uncle who everyone's scared of.  I see about four candidates there.  [She didn't name them.]  Z would be the guy who frightens the children just by being so gigantic, but by the end of the evening the children are all hanging off him going, "Daddy, pony!"  On that note, then there's Mike Fontenot."

12.) Which provides me with an excellent segue:

Mike Fontenot: Amazing Person

This man definitely deserves his own subsection.  Where to begin?

13.) Perhaps with this interview at Bleed Cubbie Blue:

BCB: I read an article last year that said you watch [Theriot's] kids sometimes. Is that true?

Mike: I think that was the "Sports Illustrated" where it said I’m more of a kid than his kids. That he came in there and I was jumping on the bed.

BCB: That’s the one. So, is it true?

Mike: Not necessarily. I wouldn’t say that I was jumping on the bed. I mean, I might have done it once or twice but Houston, his son, was the main one jumping on the bed and I’m like hey watch out and he started getting a little crazy. But I’ll go over there, spend time, hang out. And he just had another one, so they have three now. I’ll go over there and hang out every once in a while.

14.) Zambrano on Fontenot's hitting prowess: "I didn't know short men could hit the ball like that.  He hit the ball like a man, you know?"  Z's right; Fontenot hit .365 in July and almost hit for the cycle on,  if I remember correctly, June 20th.  He went on a similar hot streak last year.

15.) And to what can we attribute this "hitting the ball like a man"?  

"I don't know," Fontenot said. "I've always had decent power my whole life. I guess it's bat speed. Timing a little bit. My grown-man strength."

16.) And of course, the highlight of this particular section has got to be:

The explanation of what's going on in this picture may be more awesome than the picture itself:

"I really can't remember where we got it from," Fontenot said. "It's just driving a nail into the ground, and then we implemented a thing where I jump on his back and he carries me to the promised land."

17.) Ryan Theriot could beat up Mike Fontenot (although he wouldn't), but even the two of them combined couldn't take out Z.  Theriot can also pitch.  He has a 0.00 ERA.

18.) No Cubs pitcher had thrown a no-hitter in 36 years, until this guy came along:

19.)  Every time I thought they were done, they weren't even close.  There was that insane comeback game against the Rockies, there was the game I went to, there was that hideous losing streak in September.  They always came back...

20.) ...except when it counted, right?  It's so hard to believe it's over, even now.  So does the rest of this stuff mean anything at all?  

I think it does.  We'll remember how miserable it was to lose last week, but maybe we'll also remember everything that happened during the rest of the season, and I haven't even covered half of it here.  I think, for me, the last word on this year will always be Geo's home run in the game I went to.  I hope everyone else has a story like that from this year  - that they got to see something amazing, whether on TV or in person.  And I hope that, whenever I think about how much last week hurt, I'll also think about how I got to be at that game, and how it encompassed everything I love about baseball.  I can't help thinking a passage in Mark Helprin's story "Perfection," which is about baseball and God, among other things, where he writes,

[It] was as if God had chosen that moment to make his presence known, and [fans at the game] reacted accordingly in wonder and delight.  For the moment, at least, they felt as if the deepest circles within them had been squared, their ragged doubts knit smooth, and the world were ablaze with the light of perfection.

Puppies

I'm guessing most Cubs fans have already seen this, but there it is, just in case.  When Mike Fontenot appeared I started fangirling so loudly that I'm pretty sure my roommate is going to come over and tell me to be quiet.  Also: Geo.

A warm glow of contentment

I'm very happy about sweeping the Braves, and also happy that a fight didn't break out tonight, even though the benches cleared after Teddy's incident with Yunel Escobar.  Escobar then, our announcers explained, "spent the commercial break staring menacingly into the Cubs dugout."  Brrrr.  I'm also glad Aramis seems to be okay - it looked like he was really in pain after that slide.  I hope he'll be back soon.

In perusing other Cubs blogs, I'm reminded that some of the bad blood between the Cubs and the Braves started last year, after Teddy was ejected from a game for hitting Edgar Renteria with a pitch.  Later, Renteria slid into second and punched Mike Fontenot in the face.  Really?  You feel like hitting somebody and you pick Mike Fontenot?  That's just so low.

I am a seventh-grader (not literally)

My aunt got me one of these, because of how awesome she is.  I'm planning to hang it over my bed at Jesus School.

That is all.  Oh, except: Z and Fontenot's dugout antics during tonight's game were too much for my heart to take.

Here he comes to save the day

Sometimes when I'm feeling especially angsty, I cure myself with "the Muppet picture," as I have come to think of it.  This always cheers me up beyond anything.  I was just thinking about this picture contentedly when I realized I'd never posted it here.  So, for your entertainment and delight, here is the Muppetiest picture I have ever seen of a professional athlete, or perhaps anyone:

I'm so glad he didn't get struck by lightning.  (Picture from Yahoo!Sports, I think - I saved it a relatively long time ago.)

Lightning is striking again and again and again and again...

Remember how I said wild stuff was happening at last night's game?  Um:

Photo from the Chicago Sun-Times.  I'm just glad everybody's okay.  This article has more, including a clip of players sprinting off the field seeking shelter and the answer to the question on everyone's mind: What did Mike Fontenot make of all this?

"I'm thinking I'm not the tallest guy on the field, so I probably wouldn't get struck," he said.

Well, there you have it.

ETA: My friend R. has just pointed out something I didn't notice from the article linked above: "I ran a little bit," said Cubs reliever Carlos Marmol, who was in the bullpen at the time."  Now, wait a minute.  He was already IN the bullpen?  Where was he running TO?  I suspect that may be totally nonsensical.

What the heck was that?

First of all, I hope everybody's okay out there (we had just some crazy weather blow through the area, for non-Midwesterners).  As most of you know, I go into fits of irrational terror at even the weakest hint of a thunderstorm, so I won't even discuss the scenes that took place in my house tonight.  

I cannot believe they're actually finishing this game.  As this article explains, tornado sirens went off all over the place, including Wrigley, and the weather got pretty terrible.  The fans, of course, were concerned and...um...

A couple of fans ran on the field and started body sliding on the tarp. There were oohs and aahs from the crowd as thunder and spectacular lightning crackled in the sky.

I love this town.  Also, during my episodes of utter panic, the only thing that made me feel better (besides my parents and dog being extremely patient) was the coverage they showed from time to time of 1.) fans doing absurd things as mentioned above and 2.) Ryan Theriot, Mike Fontenot, and Reed Johnson waiting out the delay in the dugout and acting silly over something.  I think they actually started punching each other in the arm at one point, clearly unconcerned about the actual tornado that was actually barreling down on them.  I suppose they probably had the right idea.

You may not need to know this

I thought I was all done fixing fonts and colors and layout stuff, but then a kind person told me how to add pictures.  That was many hours ago.  I'm almost satisfied now, but although I love this rainbow-and-tarp picture very much, of course I really wanted the Z-piggybacking-Fontenot shot to be my header forever.  I just couldn't get the blog title any color that would actually show up well, though.  It kept disappearing against Little Babe Ruth's hat or the lights.  I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Something else happened today, right?  Oh, yes - SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Little Lord Fontenot

All my reasons for starting this blog, all my reasons for loving the Cubs, all my reasons for believing in the basic goodness of people and God and all that kind of stuff are expressed in the following image:

Yeah.  Oh, yeah.  (Seen in several places, but I think originally from here.)

"Who is this guy? What the heck is going on?"

As you may have noticed from my previous post, I'm back and mostly recovered from the wedding; my college classmates and I all disgraced ourselves pretty thoroughly.  I was welcomed home with some excellent Cubs victories yesterday and Sunday.  

It seems, though, that I missed an amazing moment before the game.  I've been informed that Mike Fontenot and Z have developed a new little routine in which Z pretends to hammer Fontenot into the ground like a spike.  As they were delighting everyone with this yesterday, Fontenot took it a step further and leapt onto Z's back to get a piggyback ride.  Of course I was overjoyed to hear this, but very sad to have missed actually seeing it.

Sensing my distress, my friend Jessie kindly took pity on me and provided me with this article from last year's Tribune.  Here's the most relevant part, with the highlights, well, highlighted:

Fontenot arrived too late to get an All-Star invite, though no second baseman in the league is playing as well as he is right now.

Fontenot hiked his average to .408 with a 3-for-4 afternoon and barely missed becoming the first player this season to reach Sheffield Avenue with his 415-foot, fourth-inning home run off Jason Hirsh.

"I didn't know short men could hit the ball like that," Zambrano said. "He hit the ball like a man, you know?"

Fontenot laughed at Zambrano's comment. Do people underestimate him because of his size?

"I don't know," Fontenot said. "Nobody ever comes up to me and says, 'You can't do this or that.' "

Whenever the 6-foot-5-inch Zambrano high-fives the generously listed 5-8 Fontenot, he puts his hand as high as possible to make Fontenot jump up, like a dog trying to catch a Frisbee.

"That's one of his things," Fontenot said. "I kind of like it. I just slap him on the forearm."

If Fontenot's forearm slap ever becomes as ubiquitous as the fist-bump, you will know it really is the Cubs' year.

"Hats off to Mike Fontenot," DeRosa said. "What he's doing, to come up here and hit .400, is unbelievable. It's not even fathomable, to be honest …

"Every third-base coach has asked me, 'Who is this guy? What the heck is going on?' He's in a zone right now, but when you look at his numbers, he has hit all his life."

I don't really have much to add beyond that.  "Generously listed."  I think that may actually be my favorite part.  Can he really be shorter than 5'8?  I believe the reporter is trying to imply that Fontenot is actually about five feet tall. 

In other news, I've got about three weeks left until I start Jesus School, and OH MAN, THE EXCITEMENT.  

This is really too much.

OH NO LOOK AT THIS RIGHT NOW

Michael Fontenot, who are you?  How are you possible?  Where did you come from?  Are we for-real married in that land?  Because if so, I will find a way to live there forever.  

We love you, Theodore

Technically I'm still taking a baseball break, but thank you, Lord, for Reed Johnson.  As a few different sources have informed me, while Mighty Mike congratulated Reed after his grand slam last night, our announcers made up a little conversation they might be having.  Len suggested that Mike was saying, "That's right, us little guys can hit them out of the park too!"  I like to imagine Fontenot saying it in a squeaky, indignant voice.  (To be fair, I have no idea what he sounds like; I don't think I've ever heard him interviewed.  I'm sure he has a very manly voice.  One would hope.)

I'll be out of town for a friend's wedding this weekend; enjoy the not-too-unpleasant-for-July weather if you're in Chicago, and go Cubs.

SIGH

I've entered a period of melancholy over the Cubs.  I'm acting fitful, nervous, and generally unpleasant to be around.  More than usually superstitious, also; I actually believe that my watching the games is negatively affecting their performance.  From time to time I'll come out of my room and dart through the living room, glancing at the score without turning my head.  It's deeply absurd.  

Secretly, I believe that staying on top of our division, let alone anything beyond that, will require a genuine miracle.  I imagine something very Biblical; possibly Jesus will descend onto the field and bat for us.  I keep reminding myself of John Updike's matter-of-fact line from his essay Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: "All baseball fans believe in miracles.  The question is, how many do you believe in?"  I just tore a piece of paper out of my notebook, wrote this down, and put it in my wallet, because I want to remember why I love baseball.  

Of course, on my better days, it also says a lot to me about the non-baseball parts of life.  (Also, I was just reminded that even if we don't get Jesus on the field or some other variation on what we're all hoping for, this season has already had lots of gorgeous baseball and quite a few of those moments that make you glad to be a fan despite everything.  I'm thinking especially of our first game with the Cardinals, after which I said to my parents, "Right now, I don't care what happens in the rest of the season.  Seeing that was enough," and meant it completely.  I was probably delirious.)  Unfortunately, the angry, screeching monkey that has currently replaced my normal personality doesn't think much of any of this.  Possibly a baseball break is in order.  

To end on a lighter note, I should add that the only person exempt from this angst is Mike Fontenot, who makes me as happy as ever.  As I told my friend J. last night, he reminds me of a character from a children's book.  Or in her more awesome words, "He's like the Teeny Little Super Guy who lives in a juice glass...but this one hits home runs!"  So I'm going to try to calm down, concentrate on my imaginary marriage to Little Mike, and hope that all will be well.

Cubs dream update #2

This morning I woke up from a dream involving Geovany Soto, just as I requested.  But now I have a new question: why can I not remember a single detail about this dream, other than the fact of his presence, and maybe something about us...playing soccer? I think? while at the same time, I remember with much greater clarity the dream where I was married to Mike Fontenot?

Now, as I said before, I love Mike Fontenot more than life itself, but just so we're all on the same page here: this is Geo.  This is Mighty Mike.  I really do not need the vivid memory of his wavy blond hair in my marital bed.  (I'm sure my div school professors will be reading this entry someday.  Hi!)

Probably not a good sign

The state of my life: when thunderstorms woke me up this morning, I was dreaming about Mike Fontenot.  He giving some kind of press conference, talking, I would assume, about his grown-man strength, but sadly I can't really remember that part.  I'm almost sure we were married in this dream.  Perhaps I should stop thinking about him so much, but what can you do, really?

Also: subconscious, next time could I be married to perhaps Geo Soto?  Of course I love and adore Mighty Mike, but not THAT way.

More high-fiving

Let's not talk too much about today's game, which was just weird.  Instead, let's enjoy the greatest picture I've seen yet of Mike Fontenot: he really is Mighty Mike!  

According to the wisdom of Ryan "The Riot" Theriot, quoted in a recent MLB news article, "[Fontenot]'s always been able to hit the ball out of the park.  It might have something to do with his arms being shorter than anybody else's."  I guess that pretty much sums it up.