The Chicago Cubs have had a good season so far, their play has been steady, and they currently have one of the best records in Major League Baseball, trying to make a postseason appearance in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1908, but they received some very bad news this week; Their left fielder and leadoff hitter Alfonso Soriano could be sidelined for six weeks with a broken finger.
Soriano was hit in the left hand by a fastball pitch thrown by Jeff Bennett in the second inning of Wednesday’s game against the Atlanta Braves. He was immediately briefly examined by Cubs head coach Mark O’Neal, and then taken to a local hospital for X-rays that revealed a bone fracture in the ring finger of his left hand.
This is a very unfortunate situation for the left fielder who was also on the disabled list for a few weeks early in the season with a calf injury. He even thought he was back and quickly recaptured his .283 batting average and even managed to hit 7 home runs in 6 games over a week in May, hitting nearly .500 during that span, finishing that month with 12 home runs and hitting .345. . average. Last Wednesday Soriano started the game for the first time in seven weeks.
For the Cubs, losing Soriano right now could be pretty negative, according to team manager Lou Pinella. “He was starting to run the way we thought he could, playing the outfield well and hitting the ball with some power,” Pinella said in a postgame conference call. “It’s a bad opportunity for us, it really is.” The Cub players also referred to Soriano’s injury as a very unfortunate event, but they are aware that they must move on and trust in the strong team they have.
Alfonso Soriano has been with the Chicago Cubs since the start of the 2007 season, when he signed the most expensive contract in franchise history, an eight-year deal worth nearly $136 million. In June of the same season he won the National League Player of the Month title and led the Cubs in home runs during June and July and in September he hit fourteen home runs, twenty-seven RBIs and led the Cubs to win the Central Division of the National League. National League.
The Chicago Cubs is the team that has had the longest drought between championships in the four major US sports leagues. Their last World Series championship was almost a hundred years ago, in the 1908 season. Here’s why which is why there is an urban legend that the Cubs have a “curse” on them since 1945, the last year they had a World Series appearance and were defeated by the Detroit Tigers. And at a time like this, when the team is 42-24 in the majors and suddenly finds itself without its first starter due to such an unusual accident, there may be a lot of people wondering, do you believe in curses?