So much for promise. The Cubs’ fading fortunes paralleled the fickle Chicago weather in the weeks leading up to Monday’s home opener at Wrigley Field. Hopes for a speedy return by Kerry Wood proved to be as unrealistic as that 70-degree heat wave in March. Wood’s return was pushed back, and his rehabilitation regimen at times seemed confused. General manager Ed Lynch promised an early return–perhaps because he’s the one whose job is on the line this season, after he fired manager Jim Riggleman last year–but new manager Don Baylor promised not to hurry Wood and said a June season debut wasn’t out of the question. Wood himself was saying one day that he wouldn’t be throwing curveballs, in order to protect his reconstructed elbow, and another day that he’d refrain from throwing the even more damaging slider, but reported last weekend after pitching in an extended-spring-training game that he’d thrown both. Yet his prospects glowed next to those of Ismael Valdes, the starter picked up from the Los Angeles Dodgers along with second baseman Eric Young over the winter. Valdes went down with shoulder tendinitis in spring training (at least the Cubs hoped that’s what it was); he’s still throwing, and it looks at this point as if surgery won’t be necessary. (Even so, his injury puts me in the lead for next year’s BAT.com Award: I’d pointed out in this space over the winter that he was at risk for arm trouble after throwing 200 innings three years in a row in his early 20s with the Dodgers.) Elsewhere, newly acquired third baseman Willie Greene suffered through a miserable spring training. Arriving late in Arizona because of family illness, he passed out his first day in camp thanks to dehydration brought on by the flu, and then sustained a cut to the hand serious enough to put him on the disabled list. Less dramatically, left fielder Glenallen Hill suffered a hamstring pull that kept him from opening the season with the club.
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Millwood’s replacement, Mike Remlinger, walked the leadoff man and departed for Kerry Ligtenberg, the Braves’ razor-sideburned former closer who, thanks to the suspension dealt out to John Rocker, has resumed the role after a year off due to arm surgery. Ligtenberg walked the first batter he faced, putting men on first and second with no outs. Fortunately for the Braves, the goatish Andrews was up. Ligtenberg got two quick strikes on him, the second a fastball that Andrews didn’t come close to catching up with. Ligtenberg wasted a pitch, then made a fatal mistake, hanging a rolling slider over the plate. Andrews pounced on it and hit it to the perfect part of the ballpark given the direction of the wind, left center. The breeze blew the ball away from deep center and just over the short 365-feet sign on the wall; it dropped into the bleachers for a game-tying home run. The rattled Ligtenberg then allowed a single to new center fielder Damon Buford, and Joe Girardi showed a little of the proficiency he developed with the New York Yankees by bunting him over to second, in spite of the high, hard-to-handle fastballs thrown by new reliever Luis Rivera. (Organist Gary Pressy was urging Buford on by playing “Show Me the Way to Go Home.”) Up came backup catcher Jeff Reed as a pinch hitter, and lo and behold, he slapped a double down the left-field line to score Buford and win the game. Just like that, four runs and a victory.
