Chicago Cubs story

I'm sure there are Cubbie fans on here (is Sue Casey still around??)

This happened to me last summer when I was in Pittsburgh for a convention. I wrote it up after it happened so I wouldn't forget.

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I have two friends (Carol and Ed) who are from Chicago, and I've hung out with them at the last couple of conventions. Knowing that the Cubs were in town (and that they were both fans) we'd made plans long ago to go to the Monday night Pirates/Cubs game. Had a great time, Cubs won, everyone was happy.

One of the people at our convention mentioned that the Cubs team was staying in the Westin Hotel, which was also one of the sites of convention activities. On Tuesday night, I attended a late evening concert, and then went into the Westin bar to meet my friends at about 11pm. They pointed out that across the bar from us were Dale Sveum and one of the Cubs announcers, as well as a couple of people who looked like other coaches. On the other side of the room were Starlin Castro and Alphonso Soriano, and one other player (never figured out who that was). We decided not to be the gawking fans and go ask for any autographs, just keep our distance. As it turned out, we got down to last call and one of the coaches sent a beer over to my friend Carol. Of course, she got up and went over to thank him and stayed there to talk. After a while she motioned for Ed and I to come over.

I'll give credit to Carol for being cool. She pretended she had no idea who these guys were. She asked the guy who sent her the beer (who turned out to be Tim Buss, the strength and conditioning coach) what he did for a living. He just said, "ummmmm, I'm in the baseball business." So Ed and I come over and we do introductions all around. Stood there and chatted with all those guys for a while, and eventually Castro and Soriano came over. Dale was giving a bunch of crap to Soriano because he was wearing this shirt that was 3 sizes too small, just so he looked completely ripped. He and Castro were both being goofy (they'd ordered quite a bit of Hennesy from what I could tell). Soriano had a huge plate of mints from Ruth's Chris steakhouse and he handed them out to everyone. Dale kept telling us that Soriano wasn't really black, he was purple. Eventually they left (bar was closing) as did Dale. The two remaining coaches asked if we want to go up to their room and have some more beers.

Well they had a regular hotel room, nothing fancy. Tim orders a dozen Buds (for a total of 66$). They called the beers "oils" though. I sat and chatted with Andy Lane, the bullpen catcher. He said he played a little bit in the majors and had been with the cubs for a couple of years.

Most of the rest of the evening is kind of a blur. I remember watching Sportscenter with Andy, and seeing Alex Rodreguez get hit in the hand against the Mariners. I made a comment about it and Andy immediately said, "well , nobody likes that cocksucker anyway". Tim told us a story about Dale having the whole team dress in superhero costumes on the plane ride over, as a team building exercise. We all thought he was joking until he showed us a picture of him with some of the players all dressed up, and then got out his Mr. Incredible outfit from the closet.

Carol at one point asked if the players stay up late and party on nights like tonight (with a day game coming up). Tim said no, there's millions of dollars on the line for these guys. I popped up with, "yeah well we're church musicians. There's literally HUNDREDS of dollars on the line for us. That's why we're in here".

Ed squeezed in a couple of questions about currently players, and trades and all that. They gave us some inside info but I honestly don't remember any of it.

Eventually Andy left, and we decided to head home. Tim said if we wanted to go to the game the next day he would leave tickets for us. I wasn't sure he was serious, but we said yeah that's be great. It was about 2:30am and he had to be at the ballpark at 8:30. And he was toasted.

Ed couldn't go to the game, but Carol and I did. Got right down to the field and gave a wave to Andy and got a thumbs up from Tim. Our seats were great....as it turned out we were sitting next to Anthony Rizzo's mom, and his first time up for the Cubs he hit a home run. It was great to see her so excited. Not a part of the game I really thought about....all of the family who are so proud of their ballplayers.

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but maybe it's better that way. They were really cool guys, and fun to hang out with.
Go Cubs!!!

Great story, thanks for sharing.

I hope they continue to have fun between games, they are going to need to stick together, gonna be a long season. My Cubbies have a legit shot at 100 losses, again.

Good story.

Go Cubs, go Reds. I'm heading to Orlando next week for a little golf. We're going to catch a Nationals vs Braves game in the Disney area. I'm hoping to have a chat with Brownsburg's Drew Storen. I watched him pitch as he was growing up.

It's interesting how some kids are late bloomers and some are early bloomers. I always figured Brownsburg's Lance Lynn would make the majors, and he's been a Cardinals starting pitcher for some time now, and was throwing 75mph as a 12 year old and 95 as a 17 year old. Drew Storen, while a good pitcher/first baseman, certainly wasn't a major league prospecton early . When he was 16, he had decent stuff and probably brought it at about 80mph. Two years later he was occasionally touching 90, then off to Stanford. Now, when he's on he will hit 98mph occasionally.

I missed this post the first time around but thanks for Loren's mysterious inquiry, I got to read it.

Being a Yankees fan, it's common for the Yankee players and game announcer to note when a new player gets his first hit or home run. For a guy that claims he's doesn't follow baseball, Derek Jeter always seems to know when it's an opposing player's first game or first hit.

It's tough to get the major leagues. It's even tougher to stay there.

Funny, i'd forgotten about this whole story.

Convention is in St. Louis this year, but I'm not going unfortunately. Would have been a great place to see a game. The following year is Grand rapids. Yuck

Cool story.

Yes, I'm still here, lol. Enjoyed your story.

FYI, the person (with one post to their credit) who bumped this thread a couple weeks ago, identified herself as the strength and conditioning coach's wife. Apparently doing some digging on her husband's extracurricular activities.