Ryan Dempster Will Make You Root For The Cubs

A reader named "Al" sends in the above picture, and the following story, after the jump.

I just had my first Wrigley bleacher experience after being a lifelong Cubs fan who grew up in Hawaii. I had three buddies in town from back home, and for a bunch of first timers at Wrigley, the bleacher experience was just awesome. Ryan Dempster was warming up with some long toss in front of us on the field, and my trash talking buddy starts it up with him with the standard, "Dempster, you're killing my fantasy team" routine. Dempster was having none of it, stops the long toss, looks up to the bleachers and shouts back, "What are you talking about man? I got myself on my own fantasy team and I'm doing pretty good this year." A bit startled that a professional baseball player would actually respond to the taunt, someone in the bleachers shouts back "Oh yeah....so what's your fantasy team name?" Dempster, looking to get back to his long tossing, "The Taints, man. The Taints".

The entire bleacher section cracked up. What was really funny was what came next, when Christine (the lady in the picture) asked Dempster for the ball he was long tossing with. After she first asked, his response was something along the lines of "what am I going to long toss with if I give you this ball?" After Christine pleaded for the ball again (in that semi-annoying way only girls can pull off), Dempster responded back "I'll give you the ball if you take your top off." By now the entire bleacher section was rolling over itself, a few beers deep and chanting "Take it off" in support of Dempster's response. Christine, now embarrassed said that her boyfriend was her and that he wouldn't like that, or something to that effect. Dempster, in an act of kindness and to stop the crowd from chanting at this poor girl to take off her clothes, then gave Christine the ball and went about his warming up business.

A bit later on, a bunch of bullpen players are walking by the bleachers and people are throwing down items to them to get their autographs. Christine, now relishing her role as "that girl" in the stands, goes and gets Dempster to sign the ball he gave her. He throws it back up, and this is when the magical picture was taken. I thought it worthwhile for you to send over in case you guys wanted to post it, especially because it's the least I could do to try and rally the Cubs from their 0-2 hole against the D-Bags.