I love the game because I get to sing Take me out to the Ballgame like a baffoon every day. I can run down the hall of the bakery I work at after the Cubs clinch, screaming at the top of my lungs. I live for the escapism. I love ivy and wind. Haggard likes talking in the third person like Z.

Like those MLB commercials say...

"I Live for This.."

Will there be a Talking Cubs Live for tomorrow's game?

Ever since I was a little kid I have been lost in the game, and to be a fanatatic of the Chicago Cubs.

Baseball brings me back to when I was young, 10-14, and really good at the sport, before those pesky curveballs got me lunging every time.

The best thing about it though, and this may sound cheesy but it's true, is the feeling I get upon entering Wrigley Field. I can't put my finger on it, perhaps euphoria is the best word, but I have only gotten that feeling when entering Wrigley. This is what made me a Cubs fan when I was 7 and went to my first game. While I haven't been to many parks, The Cell, County Stadium, Miller Park, Busch, not one has ever given me that feeling and it only gets stronger as the years pass.

Here's to baseball, and specifically the Cubs, for offering all of us something that can't be taken away, yearly hope, unyielding loyalty, and Old Style in the sun.

Go Cubs!!!

Base-a-ball been berry berry good to me. The smell of hotdogs. The crack of the bat. The pop of the glove. The roar of the crowd. Sunshine, beautiful women and cold beer, what's not to love? It's time for another summer of Cubs baseball! It's the time of year where my productivity plummet's, my enthusiasm soars, and my emotions run wild. There truely is nothing better, in this world, than sitting down to watch a Cubs game on a sunny afternoon. Well....a cold October night is pretty damn good too!!! Today is a great day. The first spring training game. No, its not a well played game, it doesn't mean anything, heck by the 6th inning you don't even know half of the names on the field, its what it symbolizes though, BASEBALL IS BACK!!!

I can't wait to hear those magical words stream out from Pat Hughs. "Chicago Cubs baseball is on the air"!!! This is the year boys and girls. This is the year.

Go Cubbies!!!

The Cubs were the first MLB game I ever watched (thank you WGN), I was a fan from the first pitch I saw. I would race home from school in the spring and catch the game already in progress. That summer we went to visit my family in Park Forest Ill. What I didn't know was they planned on taking me to Wrigley Field. That was my first live game I have ever been to at the time. My Aunt still remembers the look on my face when we walked into the stadium. I think I still get that same look when I enter the stadium now a days.
I don't have words to describe how I feel about baseball, it has been a part of me for as long as I remember. God I love this sport and I love the Chicago Cubs!!!!!

So Neil, Instead of what may have been your best, you simply gave us one of your best--taking us back to our memories. And the recollections of all of the Faithful add to this baller's appreciation of The Rite of Spring. Thank you all.

My own memories include a dad and a brother, now gone to a really level playing field. The memory is dad's daily drill of hitting ground balls on bumpy ground and flies that seemed to go half way to the sun before descending to the vicinity of our gloves. That happened sixty years ago--mostly from my years 6-12. I still proudly show the inside-lip scar of a fly ball that landed flush on the mouth at age 9. There was the question, "Do you have all your teeth?" And the admonition, "Shade your eyes with your glove and keep your eyes on the damn ball." I now hollar that at one of our Cubs' ballers who loses one in the sun.

Baseball reminds us that all can play, that nobody's perfect and that anyone with a bat in his hand can has a chance to do something with it.

Thanks guys....and yes Matt there will be a Talkin'

The Baltimore Sun's beat reporter for the O's says that Gallagher and Cedeno have been "agreed to" in a trade of Roberts to the Cubs. He adds that the O's have sent a scout or scouts to Mesa to check out next week whom the third and possible fourth player from the Cubs might be. Roberts is quoted as saying that he will save any comments for later. The article also says Payton may be traded.

Maybe our saga over Roberts ends by the end of next week. I think the odds are about 80--20 that we get Roberts and Payton. My guess is Veal will go but not Ceda.

I'm thinking maybe a Marquis or a Marshall and the O's lefty reliever Sherrill get into the mix too.

When I was young Jack Brickhouse was my babysitter. With help from Ivan Dejesus and Bill Buckner, Barry Foote, Dick Tidrow etc. until Harry and Steve took over the job with Kieth Moreland Ryne Sandberg, Jody Davis, Don Zimmer, Andre Dawson to entertain me. I learned the Birds and Bees from Steve Stone, at least why you don't throw a breaking ball when you have a 2-0 count and why you hit and run with a slow runner on base.

During the summer, I would wake up in the morning eat breakfast then go into my garage and get my glove, bat and tennis ball(parents wouldn't let me use a real baseball after I broke a few windows, thats fivne though I could hit a tennis ball farther anyway). I would try to get a game together with a few friends but if they were busy. I had a game I could play by myself which consisted in throwing the ball up and seeing if I could hit it over the bushes at the end of my yard (more complicated then that (trees were outs, ground ball that didn't go by the first tree were outs, past first one was a single, etc, etc.) But I had the Cubs lineup memorized which I would use. And would play a whole game with me being the the whole cubs team.

My girlfriend dont understand now why I get mad if I miss a game or unable to watch one. "Why dont you just fast forward the tape and see what the final score was" she dont understand every game is chapter within a 162 epic story, with tides and turns all the way through. A male soap opera. Every season is a portion of a even bigger story which is the history of the Cubs and a big portion of many, many people's lives just like me.

Oh yeah Jim, I got one of those inside lip scars too. My dad finally talked me into getting in front of ground balls and sure enough the first one hit to me, at the last second bounces up and hits me in the mouth. Still scars me mentally now. lol

Brian Roberts???

Since when have we been trying to get him????

Why haven't I heard anything about this?????