Off-season distractions give way to regular-season questions
On the South Side, White Sox fans will be starting their fifth straight season since celebrating their last World Series championship. On the North Side, Cubs fans will be starting, well, let's just play along with creative marketing and call it Year One under the new Ricketts family ownership.
The Cubs and matured starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano kick off the 2010 Major League Baseball season today with an afternoon game against the Braves in Atlanta. The Sox, behind perennial Opening Day starting pitcher Mark Buehrle, take on the rival Cleveland Indians at U.S. Cellular Field.
These are not the Sox and Cubs teams that limped to disappointing finishes last season.
The White Sox put their World Series MVP right-fielder Jermaine Dye and slugging designated hitter Jim Thome out to free-agent pasture. It wasn't exactly Clash for Clunkers, but the Sox essentially traded their old, slow-moving, power-guzzling softball lineup for a younger, faster squad built around defense and pitching. Gordon Beckham, who broke into the Bigs last year as the Sox third-sacker, moves to second this year where Manager Ozzie Guillen will expect him to bring home the bacon.
Much of the Cubs' spring talk centers about a new, illuminated Toyota billboard planned for the left-field bleachers in Wrigley Field. But fans are just happy to be rid of last year's monstrosity in right field. Brought in to be a great-hitting, fiery, club leader, volatile right-fielder Milton Bradley was not only terrible in his only year as a Cub, he blamed everything on Cubs fans, Cubs management and Cubs history.
In addition to updated bathrooms and the potential for more advertisements, the Cubs plan to erect a statue of sweet-swinging Hall-of-Famer Billy Williams outside Wrigley. Meanwhile, the tweet-slinging Guillen clan created a social networking preseason buzz on the South Side.
Will fully rehabbed Jake Peavy and closer Bobby Jenks pitch the Sox to a division title? Can the Sox find production from a rotation of designated hitters? Can Cubs skipper Lou Piniella and new hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo coax comeback seasons out of Alfonso Soriano and Geovany Soto? Will new center fielder Marlon Byrd soar in Wrigley?
Cubs and Sox fans will sort out some of the details when the teams take on each other in June. If things go according to plans, the teams will meet again in October during the World Series.