It’s rare that an 11th round draft pick qualifies as one of the highlights of any Major League Baseball team’s season. Then again, the 2011 season has been particularly miserable for the Cubs and their fanbase.
The team’s roster is populated with overpaid veterans that aren’t playing well and fan apathy is at an all-time high, with tickets available for as low as $8 for some home games. Depending on the day, you’re likely to see more seagulls in the outfield than fans in the upper deck. A spate of bad contracts combined with a dearth of talent in the minor league pipeline has fans feeling bluer than the caps being worn by Carlos Zambrano and company.
Of course, Wrigley being Wrigley, nothing sells quite like nostalgia. Which is why in a season full of lowlights, many were excited to see a familiar name, Shawon Dunston Jr., amongst the team’s draft picks if only for the possibility of the return of the vaunted Shawon-O-Meter.
In a ballpark that’s about as simple as the day is long, the Shawon-O-Meter fit right in. Cubs fan Dave Cihla created a cardboard sign tracking Dunston’s batting average in real time in the left field bleachers. What started off as a lark became as much a part of Wrigley Field as the ivy itself for about six years in the early 90s. It even earned Cihla a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Smithsonian Museum.
The elder Dunston was a fan favorite at the corner of Clark and Addison throughout the late 80s and 90s. A shortstop with a cannon for an arm, he played the game the way many of us kids growing up in the Chicagoland area did, with a reckless abandon and unfettered love of his craft.
Like his dad, Shawon Dunston Jr. is speedy and defense oriented. Like his dad, he’s well known as being a hustle guy, making plays by thinking on and with his feet. His arm isn’t quite as strong as his father’s but scouts have praised his solid mental makeup.
Cihla hasn’t said whether or not he’ll bring back the sign if and when Dunston Jr. makes it to the big leagues, likely around 2014 or 2015 at the earliest. But in a season that has only spanned three months while feeling like three years, the nostalgia of the good old days of Dunston Sr. firing lasers across the diamond to Mark Grace is about all Cubs fans have to keep themselves going these days.
