Happy, Sad and Mad

The White Sox had themselves a walk-off, 9-8 win over the Tigers last night, so I should be glad. The Sox bullpen coughed up six runs, and that makes me sad, angry even. Yasmani Grandal, aka Captain Crank, hit two solo-shots, and that leaves me bleh. Grandal, who revealed that his right knee has been giving him all sorts of problems since spring training, has his BA up to .154 and now has as many homers (nine) as he does errors and passed balls. Like I said, bleh. Manager Tony La Russa is channeling his inner Rick Renteria by the way he insists on using Evan Marshall, stats be damned. After giving up three runs—more like five, if you count the two inherited runners who scored on the first of his two gopher balls—in an inning of work, Marshall now sports a 6.23 ERA. That means Marshall is channeling his inner Jimmy Cordero, and then some. Cordero’s ERA last year was a slightly less outrageous 6.08. The Tribune, now officially circling the drain under new hedge-fund ownership, didn’t have a story in its hardcopy edition, and that makes me mad. The Sun-Times did, but that doesn’t make me any too happy. Why? The story was buried on page 18 in the S-T’s special weekend sports’ section. Pro football stories and pics took up the first five pages, including close to two devoted to the second coming of the USFL. Only in Chicago, and that makes me sadder yet.