Cubs Fall on Overrated Opening Day

Opening Day in Major League Baseball is one of the best days of the sports year.  It's up there with the Super Bowl, the Final Four, any Game 7, the NFL Draft, etc.

That being said, I think there is way too much fanfare for Opening Day.  Especially now that Opening Day is actually three or four different days.  Plus, it's one game out of 162.  ONE GAME!!!!  The way baseball fans react to the first game, they either think their team is going 162-0 or the exact opposite.  Get a grip people!

It was Tommy Lasorda who said...

"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference."

 It's a long, long season.  So much is going to happen between now and September.  It's not like football where the first game can actually give us a good idea of what the team's strengths and weaknesses might be.  For example, we knew after one game (and probably before that) that the Bears were going to have trouble protecting Jay Cutler.

Can we say the same about the Cubs?  No way, no how.

Ryan Dempster spun a gem against the Nationals, going 7.2 innings, giving up one run on two hits, striking out ten.  He's not going to give you thirty starts like that.  That's just now how baseball works.  He'll have his days where he gives up seven earned runs in the first two innings and be done.

Kerry Wood won't always be all over the place, and Carlos Marmol won't always melt down with two outs (or maybe he will).  There's a lot of baseball left to be played.

Unfortunately for the Cubs, and Cubs fans like myself everywhere, I don't think the Cubs will win more than 70 games this season.  I'm actually OK with that.  But that didn't take away the sting of losing a game the way the Cubs did today.

Welcome to Cubdom, Dale Sveum.