2006 Schedule Provides Lackluster Matchups to Close Season
The Chicago Cubs have released their tentative 2006 schedule. It is available here. The Cubs will close the season with four games at Cincinnati, two at home versus Milwaukee, and three at home versus Colorado. The last game against the Cardinals is August 27. The last game against the Astros is August 16.
And here's something strange: The Cubs have the second day of the season off, after opening in Cincinnati on April 3. Then they also have the fourth day of the season off, just before a three game set against St. Louis. And then another day off after the St. Louis series.
I deplore the off day following opening day. The off day after the second game as well is going to be even worse. After 6 months of no Cubs baseball, I'm ready for lots of it.
One of the battles in spring training will no doubt be for the fifth starter's job. The first time the Cubs will need a fifth starter will be April 18, two weeks into the season, when they face the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
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2006
I don't know how lackluster the Milwaukee series will be. The Brewers could be pretty good. Although, on the other hand, two-game series are usually lackluster by their very nature.
I usually use the release of the next year's schedule as an occasion to make travel plans, and to that end, this schedule is very inconvenient. We were hoping they'd play in Pittsburgh in May or June, because we were planning on swinging up that way. But mid-April is probably not the best time to go to Pitt, and August is too late to work out for us.
So we turned our attention to the Reds, as Cincinnati is on the way up to Pitt. Or, more specifically, on the way back. And actually, we won't go to Pitt if the Cubs aren't there. Anyway, the plan was to swing through Chicago the weekend of June 4, maybe see the I-Cubs on the way there, and hit Cinci on the way back the next weekend. But the Cubs are in Saint Louis the weekend of the 4th, and while I'd love to see the new Busch, I really want to get back to Wrigley this season.
So now we're back to square one. And to make matters even worse, they play three series in Houston, but all three are midweek. So that's probably not doable, either. Ugh. What good is having a division rival 250 miles away if they can't even spend one weekend in town during the year?