Wednesday Will Start The Real Shark Weak

Tempe, Arizona. Gotta love it.

The kid, the Canadians, sloth and a shark. This is your Cubs starting rotation, at least for another week. Sounds more like a bad cartoon than a baseball team. According to Cubs.com, Notre Dame is ready to start, although I would prefer to see him and Marshall "platoon" the position, with each taking about 4 innings a piece, similar to what Lou did on Friday. Hopefully Gorzey can look as sharp as he did his first outing, as he was supposed to be replaced by Lilly when he got off the DL, but now with Z down it looks like he way have a couple more starts than we expected. So does this mean that right now WWWWWWWWells is the staff ace? That's pretty scary to consider really.

The Cubs will need to keep up with the Cards for the rest of the month in order to keep themselves alive going into September. The two teams play a similar schedule, with both playing series on the West coast against the Mannys and Padres. The Cards schedule is much easier for August, only playing against one team with a decent shot at the playoffs, while the Cubs will need to face both the Phillies and the Dodgers. But the Cubs will gain back 2 games, as the Cards have 3 off days and the Cubs only one. With the teams tied in the lost column, these couple extra games can either make or break the rest of the season.

So the talk at the Saloon will soon turn to include football. The Bears will have their first preseason game this Saturday against the T.O.'s. Is September probably the greatest sporting month of the year? You have football all weekend with college and the NFL, and you also have baseball heading into the final stretch. Nothing is better than watching the Bears in the morning, playing a couple games of poker and then tuning into the Cubs that night.

So let me hear your thoughts on this, 'Merica. The past 2 seasons that I have been living in AZ, myself and a group of friends from the Chicago area all get together at my buddies house to watch the games. We have our traditions including rotating weeks for cooking traditional Midwest fare, doing cannonballs into his pool and then Irish Carbombs for touchdowns and then playing poker after the game. Over this past year, he got a serious with his girlfriend and had her and her son move in with him. She has refused to let us have our gathering on Sunday, saying we are too rowdy for the 12 year old son. BUT, he said he will keep the package so that his GFF's son and his friends can watch football. Now, being the only one of our friend's to have DirectTV, the games will probably be at my new house, sans pool. The thing I'm questioning is whether or not to my friend come over to watch the games, or just make him watch them with his GFF's kid and his friends. So what do you think? Should I let him come over or "punish" him for pussying out on us?

Go Cubs!