That’s two years in a row now that Wilson Alvarez has eaten a grocery cart full of Jack In The Box, hiked up his size 58 pants and stumbled out to the mound to humiliate the Cubs offense.

Honestly, how can you shut down an offense with Damian Jackson and Ramon Martinez batting 1-2? I turned on the game last night, saw the lineup and thought the Dodgers were playing the Pacific Coast League All-Stars.

Then reality hit me in the face.

Damian and Ramon couldn’t make the PCL All-Star team.

This is reminiscent of the Cubs starting a game last year with Tony Womack and Doug Glanville hitting 1-2. They actually won that game, which still stupefies me. Last night’s result comes as no surprise.

Let’s start with the good news. The Cubs took Kerry Wood to the hospital yesterday and they x-rayed his right arm, and everything looked good, then they did a Magnetic Resonance Imagining test on it and it looked good, then they a Cat Scan on his elbow and found out it was full of furballs!

Not the elbow, the Cat! Oh, I kill me.

Anyway, they basically told Kerry he’s got a sore tricep muscle (I’m not pluralizing it out of protest for Mike Murphy insisting we should) and he’ll be OK in a couple days.

Now the bad news. The Cubs have forfeited his start on Sunday. They were going ot start Glendon Rusch, but decided to skip the inevitable and they’re just going to fly home on Saturday night. Besides, what are the odds Glendon could do better than the 9-0 forfeit score, anyway?

Dusty dusted off a new lineup last night, and if not for the presence of Damian Jackson in the leadoff spot, it’s a good idea. He moved Ramon to the second spot and dumped Corey to number seven. In his first at bat, Ramon took the first pitch, stepped out of the box and threw his arms up in triumph. It marked the first time all season that an opposing pitcher had to throw a second pitch to the Cubs second hitter.

No, that’s not true. Corey doesn’t always hit them, he just always swings at them.

The most humiliating moment of the game took place in the third inning when, with runners at first and second and two out, Clement made a great pitch to Milton Bradley. Bradley pounded the ball harmlessly into the ground in front of home plate and it took a nice, big, easy hop to Clement. Only, Matt dropped to his knees to field it, then was too lazy to get up off his knees and threw a lollipop to first that Bradley beat out for a single. Two hits later (also both anemic dribblers) it was 2-0 when the Cubs should have been out of the inning.

It’s also true that first base ump Kevin Kelley blew the call, and that Bradley was out on the play at first. But when you make that pansy throw, that’s what you get. Just sad.

Oh, wait, did I say that was the most humiliating moment of the game? How could I forget? How about the 18-pitch at bat that Alex Cora had in the seven inning off Matt Clement. The at bat in which Cora fouled off 14 straight pitches, all of them sliders, all of them the same speed and all in the same spot. Not once did the Cubs try and go up and away with a fastball. Mike Barrett just kept squatting in the same spot, calling the same pitch, and Clement kept nodding yes. Cora had finally found a pitch he could hit, he just couldn’t keep it fair.

Finally, on the 18th pitch of the at bat, he homered to right field. Just proof that if you throw Alex Cora the same pitch 15 times in a row, he’ll eventually hit one fair.

What should have happened next was that Dusty Baker should have come out of the dugout and knocked Barrett and Clement’s heads together.

I dare say that if you threw Paul Bako the same pitch 15 times in a row, even he could hit one out. Wait, nah. Never mind.

What really made the whole thing fun was Chip Caray and Steve Stone acting like the at bat was boring. Chip and Steve haven’t had a good road trip, and it’s only the third day. They don’t seem to want to be there, and quite frankly, we don’t really want them there either.

Chip finally got excited as the ball left the park. Just to prove that he never has any clue about when to be happy and when to go away.

Our loathing of Chip is well known. He’s cloying, he never shuts up and he never adds anything…ever. He’s basically a fog horn with eyebrows. No, make that eyebrow.

Steve is a disappointment. A lot of it is Chip, no doubt, because his work in the playoffs last year with Pat Hughes was good. But it’s not all Chip’s fault. It’s just that his act is old, and bad. Sure he can still impress us with a good, “a slider low and away here and he’ll strike him out” bit is impressive. But not nearly as impressive now, considering he’s wrong about half the time now.

Joe Carter’s cameo on ESPN yesterday afternoon during the Blue Jays-Royals game reminded us just how low the bar was set when Steve came back to the booth. He hasn’t seen fit to raise it a whole bunch.

Don’t you think that when Chip looks into the Dodgers TV booth and sees Vin Scully that a little voice inside of him (in a grating deejay voice) says to him, “Buddy, we need to find a new job. There’s a guy who is pushing 80 and he still does this job better than we could ever pretend to,”?

The problem of course is that Chip never thinks that. He actually thinks he’s entertaining and (gasp) good at his job. It’s the same kind of self delusion that affords Wendell Kim the ability to drive to work every day.

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Dr. Lewis Yocum, the reknowned Tommy John surgery specialist, looked at Kerry’s elbow yesterday and confirmed that yes, it’s still attached to his body. The Cubs then asked Yocum if it was alright if they got second opinions from Dwight Yoakam and Heathcliff Slocumb. To which, Dr. Yocum replied, “How about you pay me in cash?”

All four NBA quarterfinal serieseseses are tied at two games now, as Matt Turvey points out today in his column.

This is interesting to me because in his SportsCenter lead-in last night, Dan Patrick referred to game four of the Spurs-Lakers as “what might have been Kobe Bryant’s last home game as a Laker.” Where exactly are they going to play game six? It says on my schedule that it’s going to be in the Staples Center, but perhaps ESPN knows they’re going to play it in Vegas, or maybe in the Eagle County courtroom?

By the way, Mavis is my favorite Staples.

After two games, three of the series looked like they were going to be walks. The Pistons had outclassed the Nets, the Spurs were spanking the Lakers and the Heat looked dead and buried against the Pacers. Only the Timberwolves and Kings seemed like a real series, and even that could be over if the Kings hadn’t thrown away games two and three.

So now everybody’s in a best two-of-three. If ESPN had NBA coverage that was even remotely watchable, you’d be excited about this. They’d tell us the title is wide open. They’d tell us that we’re in for some exciting and compelling basketball. They’d be right. And we’d actually notice.

Maybe we still will.

Maybe we won’t bother.
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Alex Cora “won” the at bat that would never end. But it just seems more like Matt Clement lost it.

Kerry will miss at least one start with a sore tricep.

Rey Ordonez? Oh, God why? Mark Belanger’s not available?

Ramon is getting comfortable at short. You would be too if your competition was as useless as Rey Ordonez and Damian Jackson.

Rosey with one of those stupid Out Loud things, this time with Doug Eyechart.

Groucho gets giddy over Kobe’s game four performance. Gee, just think how much energy he’d have if he didn’t have to fly to Colorado that day to get charged with rape? Pardon me if I’m just not in the mood to brag on Kobe.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut and seems to think the Cubs deserve the injuries to Wood and The Franchise. How can we get the point where we deserve for Jay to fall down a flight of stairs?

Greg Couch says peeing on things doesn’t make them better. He’s never talked to R. Kelly.

“But R, she’s only 14?”
“I’ll just pee a couple years onto her age!”

The Wizard of Roz goes to noted baseball injury expert Rick Sutcliffe to get his insight into Kerry’s sore arm. This is the same Sutcliffe who insisted that two years ago that Kerry’s arm was going to fall off then, and the same guy who suffered through injuries when he played because he was too lazy to do a sit up during the offseason. How about Roz go find somebody dumber to quote, like Joe Morgan, or this guy?

Jorge Posada took a double play throw off the schnoz. I saw it when it happened on YES, and though nobody deserves to take one off the honker, Jorge didn’t even try to get down on his slide. So, that’s what happens.

It’s official, we’re now sending guys to the Olympics, who couldn’t find Greece on a globe.

This column is so bad, I’m surprised the type stuck to the monitor.

Just how gay is this football team?

America’s finest news source on some potential John Kerry campaign slogans.