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I got a chance to meet Wild Bill Holden. For those who missed my earlier post, Wild Bill is a Cub fan who is walking from Arizona to Wrigley Field and raising money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) along the way. He’s made it all the way to Illinois and through public events and donations over the web, he’s raised over $75,000.

Wild Bill’s stop on Friday was at a Culver’s Frozen Custard and Butterburgers Restaurant in Morton, Illinois. My buddy Brando and I were traveling through town so we made plans to stop. We got there around 6:30 and the only signs that anything special was happening were 1) Culvers’ workers were wearing Cubs hats, 2) there was a table with some items for auction and most evident 3) there was a line of (mostly) guys in (mostly) Cubs hats and shirts waiting patiently in line to have a few minutes with man dressed in Cub blue sitting at a table enoying a double cheeseburger and fries.

Here is Bill sitting with two reporters while trying to squeeze in a bite or two.

Wild Bill granted an interview to a local TV new station. Before the interview started, he spotted me in my Chicago Cubs 1908 World Championship T-shirt. “Hey, nice shirt!”, he said.

In the background, they have the This Old Cub video playing. This Old Cub is the story of former Cub thirdbaseman Ron Santo. Wild Bill says he was inspired to do his walk by this video.

Finally, I got a chance to spend a few minutes with Wild Bill. I found him to quite charming. He spoke of the Cub fans’ “ownership” of the team which he feels is unique to the team. He related a couple stories of Cub fans he has met throughout his journey.
I asked him how his knees were holding up. He said they were fine but I could tell by the way he moved that I bet he’s getting a bit sore.
At the end, he favored me with a photo which you see above.

Rumor has it that Wild Bill will be throwing out the ball at Wrigley Field on July 1 and will also be leading the crowd in Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Finally, if you have any dollars left in your budget, please consider donating or purchasing the This Old Cub video which helps the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

Well, it turns out Colorado shortstop Clint Barmes wasn’t carrying groceries when he tripped on the stairs and broke his collarbone as previously reported.

It was a package of deer meat he got from buddy Todd Helton after they tooled around on ATVs all day according to today’s stories.

But don’t even think that Barmes’ injury had anything to do with his ATV riding. Not a bit. Because Todd Helton says so:

“I cannot say it strongly enough — he did not get hurt riding an ATV,” Helton told the newspaper.

Hmm… it’s one of those times when it wouldn’t have crossed my mind except for the fact that he’s so vehement about convincing us it isn’t true.

Barmes only has good intentions…

“I just didn’t think it was right to bring Todd Helton into something like this,” Barmes was quoted as saying.

Nicely kept secret, Clint.

Followup: I caught this on an article on ESPN’s site.

Helton said he, Barmes and rookie teammate Brad Hawpe were riding about 5 mph.

That made me chuckle… I envisioned Barmes, Hawpe, and Helton puttering about in their ATV’s going about 5 mph.

Good grief, Helton. If you’re going to tell a story, make it believable.

Barry Bonds is in the news again and it doesn’t have to do with his knees, his homeruns or even steroids. It does show, however that his reputation with the media may be justified.

A quick summary of the story:

Ron Kittle, former outfielder, has claimed in a tell-all book that Bonds once denied him an autograph back in 1991 because “I don’t sign for white people”.

Now I’m not going to get into whether this is true or not. I have my doubts, though with Barry, anything is possible.

However, consider the following comment to the media by Bonds in response to Kittle’s book:

“Who is Kittle? How long did he play? He played in our league?”

Ok, call me a baseball purist but the fact that he doesn’t remember or know of Ron Kittle, a former rookie of the year who hit 176 homers in his career, bothers me. Jeez, they both played together in the majors for 6 years.

Or worse, he’s feigning ignorance with a macho in-your-face attitude.

Get a clue, Barry.

As for Kittle (emphasis mine):

“It’s the truth. I don’t lie,” Kittle told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday. “I tell it as it is. It’s unfortunate it happened. And I didn’t bring it up to sell the books.“

Riiight.

I was cruisin’ the blogs tonight and ran across this entry on one of my personal favorite people in baseball, Don Zimmer. I found it on WasWatching.com a Yankee site.

It’s a backhanded homage to the Zim and calls into question whether he might have been one of the brains behind the Yankees dynasty.

Still trying to figure out what PITA stands for, though.

Behind the pitching of Livian Hernandez, the Washington Nationals have won their season-best seventh in a row.

This is the latest a Washington baseball team has been in first place since 1933.

A headline I saw:

First in war, First in peace, First in the National League East

Well, two out of three are right.

For those who haven’t heard about Wild Bill Holden’s adventures, it’s quite a story.

Wild Bill has pledged to walk from Arizona to Wrigley Field… all 2100 miles of it. Inspired by the story of former Cub Ron Santo, he’s doing it to raise money to help fund research to find a cure for juvenile diabetes.

He’s made it all the way to Illinois… and he’s raised $75,000 in the process.

Not bad for a 56 year old man with two bum knees.

He’ll be in Morton, IL for an event this Friday. As it is, I’ll be passing through there so I’m planning to stop by to see him.

My uncle was telling me the other night at dinner he was reading a book I had to read. I was surprised to learn he was talking about Canseco’s “tell all steroid” book.

Uncle Jerry said he wasn’t a fan of Canseco, but thought he raised some interesting points in the book. From what I understand there are a lot of Dominican players making lots of money that might not be in the majors if it weren’t for steroids. Jose claimed he wouldn’t have had nearly the success if it hadn’t been for “the juice”. It even made him faster, he claims. Canseco was touting steroids as a way for players to make it big in baseball. From like high school, on up. I told my uncle I wasn’t interested in reading Canseco’s book. The real problem I have with books like his, is him getting his and then ratting out his fraternity.

Ball Four was the first book I ever read and it was different. Jim Bouton was basically talking about players wiping snot on other players arms and watching them throw up. Or drilling holes in the back of the bullpen to get some peeks up unsuspecting women fan’s dresses.

I’d be interested in hearing your take on Canseco’s book. Did you read it? Would you read it? What did you think?

Well, the draft is done. To no one’s surprise, Arizona picked high school shortstop Justin Upton. As a matter of fact, 35% of the draftees came from the high school level.

Number Two was Alex Gordon, a Cornhusker third baseman.

There were some familiar names in the draft. This is from mlb.com’s web site:

The Cardinals chose Jesse Schoendienst, the great nephew of their Hall of Fame infielder and former manager Red Schoendienst, in the 40th round, while the Twins grabbed Toby Gardenhire, son of skipper Ron Gardenhire, in the 41st round. Seattle grabbed Andrew Hargrove, son of manager Mike Hargrove, in the 47th round while the White Sox grabbed John Wolff, the grandson of Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Wolff, in the 47th round.

Toby Gardenhire?? Wait a minute… I know that name!! He’s the slick fielding shortstop from our own University of Illinois! Way to go, Toby!

As it was, five Illini were chosen in this week’s draft. Not surprisingly, Chris Robinson was chosen pretty high. Robbie was chosen in the 3rd round (90th overall) by the Detroit Tigers.

From fightingillini.collegesports.com, here is the list of Illini that were picked in the MLB draft.

Illini Picked in the 2005 MLB Draft

Chris Robinson – 3rd round – Detroit
Jimmy Conroy – 19th round – New York AL
Drew Davidson – 22nd round – San Diego
James Morris – 23rd round – Cincinnati
Toby Gardenhire – 41st round – Minnesota

Congrats to them all!

ESPN/Baseball America has a scouting report of the top draft picks. Check it out.

The latest to succumb to injury is hot Colorado shortstop Clint Barmes who has fractured his left collarbone. This was due to a “dummy” injury which I categorize as any injury I could easily inflict myself. See Moises Alou and the treadmill incident a few years back.

It’s reported Barmes who was carrying groceries, couldn’t wait for the elevator then tripped while walking up the stairs.

Barmes will likely be out for 12 weeks.

There was an article about the Urbana High School baseball team in our local News-Gazette’s Commentary (not the Sports) section I found interesting. I wish I could provide a link but the N-G doesn’t put many of their articles on the web. Anyway, I’ll summarize.

The Tigers posted an 11-19 record this year. Pretty dismal unless you consider that 11 of those losses were by two runs or less.

But that’s not the point of this article. Apparently, all 17 players won Big 12 Conference Scholar Athlete awards. To win this award, one must be a sophomore, junior or senior, earn a varsity letter and have a 4.0 grade point average.

In addition, 14 won Illinois High School Association scholastic achievement awards. These go to juniors and seniors who maintain a 4.5 GPA.

Very impressive. Kudos to Coach Steve Waller who understands priorities of young student-athletes. In his words:

“As a coach, you always stress that schoolwork comes first, that without school, there is no baseball. That’s what is going to carry them into the future. These guys know that academics is serious.”