[...] Monday dawned hot and hazy and by mid-afternoon, the sun was shining, the cold beer was flowing, the wind was blowing out and a fleet of baseballs hitched a ride on the jetstream over the walls at Wrigley Field. Throw in a pre-game flight by the eagle Challenger and a seventh-inning rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" by actor Brian Dennehy ? in town starring in the play, "The Iceman Cometh" ? and it was entertaining enough to send fans out the door wondering where the party was relocating and exactly what they were so upset about in the first place. The last six of the Cubs' dozen straight losses came during a seven-day road trip at NL Central rivals Houston and Pittsburgh, two of the only half-dozen or so teams Chicago actually has a chance against. Yet he marveled the way Cubs fans had stuck by his team thus far. Never mind that he preached patience upon his arrival last October and despite his best efforts, still has only two everyday ballplayers ? Starlin Castro and David DeJesus ? who could start for most clubs, a barely adequate rotation and a mess in the bullpen. Unfortunately, though beyond "start scrapping and keep grinding for pride," Epstein was short on specifics on how to improve things over the short term. Last week's brouhaha was over whether Joe Ricketts, the conservative patriarch of TD Ameritrade and the family that owns the Cubs, was really planning to finance a nasty political attack campaign against President Barack Obama ? and whether that would make it harder for the Cubs to gain concessions to modify Wrigley Field from the city's staunchly Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and the city council. The week before that, it was the nostalgia kicked up by the retirement of one-time pitching phenom Kerry Wood and an essay in The Wall Street Journal calling for the destruction of Wrigley Field, suggesting the aging shrine was actually the reason for all that losing:
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