Love for and From the Cubs New Manager, Bill Murray, Rizzo HandSan, CardinaLOLs, and Other Cubs Bullets

There’s a weird underlying feeling in me this morning that I definitely didn’t anticipate, and I haven’t yet been able to sort out. I’m not even sure I can articulate it very well. But it’s something like this: to go from no baseball at all, and the threat of no baseball for another year, to a full slate of games … it’s overwhelming. My head is spinning by just the volume of suddenly having so much baseball to digest.

•   Early game today, folks, which means the lineup is already out. To David Ross’s credit, today’s lineup is exactly what I would’ve done, right down to the order of the batters.

•   Turns out, when David Ross went to the mound with two outs in the 9th last night, he wasn’t asking Kyle Hendricks if he had one more in him. He was telling Hendricks he had one more in him: “You’ve got this last guy. Go get him and finish it.” (Cubs.com)

•   Ross sure loves his Opening Day starter:

•   Hendricks, who was thrilled to get Ross his first win as a manager, returned the favor (NBCSC): “I love that guy,” Hendricks said. “And we love playing for him. We’ve been waiting for this moment.”

•   Ross knows he wasn’t supposed to hug Hendricks – social distancing – but he couldn’t help himself after the game:

(Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)

•   Respect from the opposing manager, via The Athletic: “He pitched really, really well,” Craig Counsell said. “No mistakes. His changeup was good. He was really good on the first pitch. That’s what he does, but I think he did it as good as he can do it today.”

•   The 7th Inning Stretch last night was as beautifully weird as starting the season with no fans in late July, which is to say it was wholly appropriate:

•   Speaking of appropriately weird things, Anthony Rizzo was ready at first base:

•   Of the move, Rizzo told Cubs.com: “Honestly, just sitting around with some of my friends, talking with some of my friends, just joking around like, ‘First guy that gets on, I’m going to give him some hand sanitizer.’ We were all talking about it and we all just started to laugh,” Rizzo said after the Cubs’ 3-0 win. “I kind of forgot about it, and then the other day I remembered it. Listen, we’re playing in obviously unusual circumstances. I mean, you guys know me as well as anyone, and how much fun I like to have and joke around and keep it loose. It’s no different. We have a lot of respect for the Brewers. They’re a good club and they bring a lot of energy, too. So, it’s just one of those things that I’m surprised the cameras got it.”

•   Bonus love to Rizzo? When you consider that the leadoff man reached for the Brewers in the 9th, with Christian Yelich up third, it’s highly likely that Rizzo’s insurance run homer in the bottom of the 8th to make it 3-0 was a critical factor in giving Hendricks a full and fair chance to finish off the shutout.

•   Beautiful Cubs Productions piece on last night:

•   Among the Cubs demonstrations before last night’s opener:

•   Pretty cool by Jason Heyward, with shades of Sammy Sosa:

•   Old friend Joe Maddon was in the spotlight last night because his team was the first in baseball history to start extra innings with a runner on second base (unfortunately for them, Shohei Ohtani, who was that runner, goofed and got thrown out on a grounder). In the bottom of the 10th against the A’s, the Angels suffered the first extra-innings loss of this era – and it was a grand one:

•   The Cardinals won last night, which whatever, but at least there was this:

•   A reminder that there’s a big pre-registration offer for DraftKings Sportsbook – people who know about these things tell me this is an offer they haven’t seen before:

written by

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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