My lineup, FWIW

So, based on the performance of players today, and based loosely on past performance, here's the lineup I would trot out there -

Theriot - This isn't so much a choice as a lack of options. I would also tell him to never drive the ball again.

Lee - Lee used to be the best hitter on the team, and by all rights, by now he should've heated up by now. He hasn't. He has it within him to be more of a patient and situational hitter, so the two hole should be accomodating for that.

Byrd - Byrd has been the best hitter on this team hands down for the season. Your best hitter hits third. Period.

Soriano - Soriano is the best power bat we have, except for Colvin - he's next. Soriano has been far better than he was last year - he's not hurt, but still not your ideal #4 guy. I'm hesitant to insert Colvin into the 4 slot though, so for now Sori it is.

Colvin - All this dude does is hit. Part time, full time, Pinch hit, whatever, he's ready to perform. He's certainly done better then the Right field flop we were so excited about - how are those headband sales going anyhow?

Ramirez - He's sucked. Put him after Colvin where it'll be harder for him to screw things up. When you start hitting again, we'll talk.

Soto - Soto has not lived up to expectations. In 2008 he hit here because everyone else was so much better. Unfortuantely, that's still the case.

Castro - Castro lit up the league for his first month and since has started to come back to earth. As long as he is abel to maintain discipline with pitch selection, he will be fine as a #8 hitter. The only other real slot he could fill would be leadoff, but the Cubs have killed too many rookie players there...

So there it is. Feel free to rip away. Plenty to go around.

Reflections on Chicago, the no-seriously edition

Things we know -
- Carlos Zambrano is a lunatic - This should be filed under "Things we already knew"
- Nothing he did on Friday was a surprise, or even all that new
- He's still the greatest pitcher that'll never be

Things we suspect -
- Jim Hendry is determined to set a record for most suspensions in one tenure
- He's already gotten the record for most crappy FA contracts in one tenure
- The Cubs are allowed to play exactly one good baseball game per week.

So the BP cup shall reside onthe South side of Chicago for at least a year and no one who doesn't have BP in the upper left hand corner of their paycheck gives a crap. actually Sox fans probably do so, let's just say no one who matters cares. The big story though was Zambrano, wo finally flipped his lid, and I have to say he probably lasted a month longer than most thought he would. On the plus side, this freak out did not involve Gatorade or instant messaging, so it's nothing that several hundred hours of therapy won't fix. Of course, he'll be getting that therapy in a different city thanks to Jimmy and Lou's knee-jerk overreaction.

My minute's up for now, but there's sooooo much more to discuss....

Reflections on Chicago

F*ck the Sox.

What sucks more than suck?

Besides the Cubs I mean. I've been trying to think of a word to accurately describe this team. "Sucks" just doesn't do it justice. Actually, if this team sucked, it'd be an improvement over what they're doing now.

"Bad" doesn't seem to fit the bill. There are many levels of bad, and this team passed through all of them on their elevator to the basement.

"Shit" or "shitty" would work, but as a rule, I generally try to avoid cursing in the written word. Spoken, I would make a drunken sailor blush, but there's a permanence about writing that I'm not comfortable expressing myself in that way. Besides, this team is too bad to qualify for shitty anyway.

"Blah" describes a lot of their play. Lollygaging, to use a Bull Durham term. That's just one dimension of how bad they are though. So that brings us to the current description of choice -

Pitiful. They're just so bad, so blah, so sucky and so shitty, that it's pathetic. THey are a pathetic excuse for a baseball team, and that's about it. I pity them. I pity the fact that an entire city is finally catching up with the rest of the nation and actually hating them. You suck so bad, you transcend words. You're just pitiful. Now get out there and win, you ridiculous, pitiful, fucktards.

So, ummmmmm, wha?

I don't get it. I really don't. I heard it. I saw it. I don't get it.

What did Zambrano do to get a suspension? I heard it on the radio, and heard post game comments, so I was intrigued. I DVR'd the replay of the game last night. I watched it this morning and what I saw wasn't even close to the way I heard it described. From what it looked like, Zambrano stomped back into the dugout, yelling out loud at no one. Then, DLee looked like he shouted something and Zambrano came back and shouted back at him. At some point in there, he threw over a water cooler.

So, uhhhh, what's the problem? That's not even the worst thing he's done this (calendar) year. There's a certain Gatorade dispenser residing in a VA hospital right now that can attest to that. So, um, why the hell is he suspended? Sure he's sucked on the mound, but that's not unique to this season. Sure he was volatile and uncontrollable, but that's not new.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't agree with what he did. And, I don't know what he said to Lee. Maybe he said "C'mon you monkey funky! Get's get at it right here mammer jammer! You're daddy was a troll and your mother smelled of Elderberries!" in which case, ok, you send him home. Zambrano even came back out into the dugout and was ready to pitch the next inning. He sat not 6 feet away from Derrek Lee for several minutes. They didn't look mad at each other.

What it seems to boil down to is, Lou is sick of Z and wants him gone. Jimmy took the opportunity to suspend him to make him want to waive his no trade clause so Jimmy can pay 85% of his salary to go pitch for the Angels, or wherever. Zambrano is the new Stevie Eyre. Welcome to the Lou hates you Club. Last time Jim was forced to dump baggage of behalf of Lou, that baggage got a ring. Just sayin'.

Good night, Sweet Lou, well it's time to go....

I'm kicking myself for not being able to find Lou's comments yesterday that money has to play. I heard it last night on the radio and can't find it in print. Gar. Moving on -

A caller to WSOX on Tuesday made the same argument to Dork and Dipsh*t that I've been making - Lou if you don't know what else to do, it's time to go away. Of course since they did not agree with the caller, Boers and Bernie proceeded to constantly ask "What do you want him to do?" "What do you want him to do that he hasn't already done?" And the caller rightly responded - "It doesn't matter what I want him to do." But he forgot to finish the thought.

Lou is the captain of a sinking ship. There's really nothing that can be done, except to inspire confidence that something will happen. We don't all want to sit around and wait for a freakin' priest to stand up and lead us to the bottom of the boat. We want you to have a plan. We want you to stand up in front of the microphone and say "We're going to be implementing new strategies to maximize....whatever."

When you go in front of millions of people and say "If we can't hit the ball, we're not going to win" then that sends a "you're not good enough" message to the team, and that is never a message you can send. Because then, you've given up and you're counting the days until tee time. My advice is to stop counting and just go f*cking play golf.

No, Lou. You haven't done Everything. Rated R.

Recently, Lou was quotes saying "I've done everything I can do." Here's my answer to that -

You know what Lou? You haven't done everything you can do. You want to know what else you can do? Sit down players that make butt-fuck shithead errors like Sorry I Suck just did to kill a rally. With 0 outs, Dipshit made a break for home without first making sure the fly ball hit the fucking ground. And then he had the balls to go ask for his glove.

In my world, motherfucker's sitting his ass down. Kosuke can go in and not hit. It's that simple. By not punishing stupid ass dumbfuck shit like this, you're fucking condoning it. Have your players accept some fucking responsibility. You'll still lose the fucking game, but at least you'll have the respect of the fans for doing what should be fucking done.

Soriano had NO BUSINESS going back out on the field after that mother of all fuck ups.

Here we go again...

Carrie Muskat and Paul Sullivan are both reporting Lou's quote: "We've done everything that I can humanly do to get this thing turned around. That's all I can do."

That's it folks. One of my biggest gripes last year was when Lou, at the beginning of May, started saying "I don't know what to do" "What else can I do?" yadda yadda. You are admitting your own uselessness. IF you're useless, get out of the way. Did wonders for the Rockies. Now, I'm not saying that firing Lou Piniella is the cure for this team. I'm not saying it's his fault. I'm not saying Jesus Sandburg has it in him to win win win. What I am saying is, even on a sinking ship, the masses need a leader to tell us which way to run before we die. There has to be hope. There has to be a solution and you better not rest until you freakin' find it! Or step aside and let the priest lead us to safety. I think I just took that Poseidon Adventure metaphor too far.

Maybe Jim Hendry just doesn't want to be the guy who fired Lou Piniella before he retires. All the more reason he should follow Lou out the door.

Reflections on Oakland

Things we know:
- Baseball is a funny game that often makes you want to cry.
- If you commit 2 errors in the same inning - twice - nothing good is going to come from that.

Things we suspect:
- Things have gotten interesting on the North side.
- DLee may have gotten pissed off enough to start hitting.

We're going to be optimistic here, so lets pretend the first game didn't happen. These past two games had an interesting look to them. On Wednesday, the Cubs won in convincing fashion, overcoming an early deficit and tacking on runs throughout the game. On Thursday, the Cubs got a home run in the first, lost the lead, and tied it late, with a walkoff hit in the 9th. The interesting look they had to them was that of 2008, when the Cubs won late, and the Cubs won decisively. Could the Cubs have finally turned a corner this season? Ohh time will tell, and it's far too early to start planning parades. If the Cubs can build off of these two games, the Central Division just got a bit more interesting.

Or maybe the A's are just a sh*tty road team.

Reflections on Chicago, no the other team

Things we know
- Ted Lilly is one BAMF
- It's not ok to bunt for a base hit in the midst of a no hitter regardless of the score. Earn it bitch.
- Joe Morgan continues to defy logic by getting even more stupid every time we see him.
- There's only one cup that matters in this city - It lives on Madison

Things we suspect
- Steve Stone will not be joining Lou for drinks any time soon.
- The only thing that can make a 2010 Cubs/Sox game interesting is dueling no-hitters
- Whoever wins the BP cup will undoubtedly do nasty things to it, but for an entirely different reason that the other Cup.
- The dueling no-no's had more to do with bad offenses than good pitching.

Ok, let's get things out of the way now - Lou, Tyler Colvin needs to play more and everyone seems to know it except you. Deal.
Joe Morgan - who is your player of the game? The guy who took a no hitter into the 9th inning or the closer who walked two guys, loaded the bases, and still manged to get a save despite thimself? Really idiot? And they pay you for that?
The Sox won the series - whoopdeefreakindoo. So have a lot of other teams. If pretending this series means something means you can sleep better at night, undoubtedly with a blood relative, then go ahead Sox fans, gloat. You'll still have a really bad baseball team, and so will we, but we won't be f*cking our cousins.

Reflections On Championships....

A sad, sad fact occurred to me yesterday. I've seen every major sporting franchise in this city win a championship in my memorable lifetime. I remember every team winning. It's not like I was born in 1982 and was physically breathing with no real memory of the event. I was aware and still have memories of every franchise winning a championship except 1....

in 1985, I was 9 years old. I remember mostly the Superbowl shuffle. Yeah. I remember my brother and I actually made a parody video called the cuddle bear shuffle. "I'm the cuddle QB, knows as the huddle. When I'm picked up I love to cuddle." Hey. We were 9 and 12 and used teddy bears...

In the 90's, I was in my late teens. My clearest memory of the championships is driving home from Minnesota one night, we were listening to the finals on the radio and my friend who was driving said "Man, if we didn't have cruise control, we'd be going about 120 right now." The Bulls won that game. He was far more into basketball than I was, but it was still quite a dynasty.

In 2005, I was in my late 20's. I watched every World Series game and heard them win it all on the radio on my way home from watching most of the game at a birthday party in a bar. I remember telling my wife "Half the Sox stuff in here smells like moth balls and the other half still has the tag hanging off of it." At the time, I was supportive of the Sox - even bought a hat that I've never worn. But that was before I remembered what colossal douchebags Sox fans were. Now, I still don't give a rat's ass what the Sox do, except so much as I hope they fail so Sox fans will just shut the f*ck up.

In 2010, I sit, 33 years old. Father of 1.667. The Hawks have won Lord Stanley's Cup. I was a bandwagon jumper, but I'll probably stick around. I'm pretty stoked about all that's happening today - before 1:20 that is. So go Hawks!

Some day, I'll be significantly older than I am right now - or dead - and the Cubs will finally, finally win. They will cease to be the laughingstocks of professional sports and literally make history. How I will feel that day I can only guess at. But however I feel or whatever I do, it will probably not involve teddy bears.

It's Santo's time...

...to retire. Sorry Ronny. Face it. It's time. Rather like your brief stint with the White Sox, when you should've just walked away. You've been ill on each of the last 2 or 3 road trips, necessitating a last-minute replacement, be it the passable Dave Otto, or the utterly miserable Judd.

Ron, you've never belonged in a radio booth. Ever. You've been consistently whiny and prone to over reaction. You've been the monkey to Pat Hughes' accordion. You're old. And you kinda suck. Having said all that, I wish you no ill. I don't want you to be sick and I don't want you to die. I want you to take a dignified step back, and enjoy the games on TV. Heck - stop by every once in a while and remind the world you're still an idiot. But just back off and enjoy a few years of retirement. Kick back. And last, but not least - get the hell off the air waves.

My work and drive time will be better for it. and what that will provide for Sport-sync radio sales, I cannot even imagine.

Thank you Blackhawks!

So, this is a Cubs blog right? Yep. But I think it's no secret that I jumped on the Blackhawks bandwagon last year during their playoff run. Those were some exciting games and I didn't even know what icing was! Then this year, I decided to see if regular season games were as exciting. They were! And I still didn't know what icing was! Now, I'm happy to say, I know what icing is, and I can even follow a game on the radio - without even seeing the puck. Oh my.

I watched many games this year - not all of them. To be honest, if it was overly inconvenient for me to watch a Hawks reg season game, I didn't. I didn't go to the lengths I will typically go to to watch a Cubs game, but I watched/listened to many of them. It was a good time. And now they're the champions. So once again, why am I writing about them in a Cubs blog? Quite simply because the Blackhawks have been the only thing that made this Cubs season anything more than miserable. And now they've won. They're done.

Shit.

Dear Milt, Shut up.

Bawl four: Pappas knows how Tiger feels

Ok, you think you got screwed. We get it. Shut up already. Even two years ago when Zambrano threw his no-hitter and you were asked about it, all you could do was talk and Bruce Freakin' Froemming. Who knew one blog could get so sick of two Cubs named Milt?

But you don't know how he feels. Because in his case, he actually got screwed. In your case, you threw a borderline pitch that could've gone either way. Galarraga had the guy out by 3 feet. You screamed like a 3 year old girl. He smiled. You had to be restrained the next day. He handed the lineup card to the same guy who blew it less than 15 hours before.

You have a lot to learn Milt.

A game of inches, or is it yards...

So a lot of you folks heard what happened yesterday-

http://detroit.tigers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100602&content_id=10727590&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=det

But let me tell you something, backaroo. You didn't miss perfection. You saw it. You saw it right here.


This is seconds after destiny told him to "piss off" and slammed the door in his face. Afterward, a FOX reporter told him he was robbed and the call was blown, and this guy just smiled and said, "I hope we keep going like that...I feel really good" Maybe it's denial. Maybe it hadn't set in. I don't know and I won't pretend to know. But it was perfection. It just doesn't go in a record book.

Reflections on F$^$%^$ Pittsburgh

Things we know -
- Lou doesn't
- If not for the Pirates, the Cubs would be above .500
- If not for the PIRATES, the Cubs would be above .500
- If not for the fact that the Cubs are playing like lost seahorses, they Cubs would be above .500

Things we suspect -
- Aramis is hurt
- Aramis is F%$^$%^$ HURT!
- Lou doesn't know
- The Pirates are going to make sweet ass love to us when the season is over.

Things Lou doesn't know -
- Apparently anything.

The Pirates continued their feeding frenzy on the Cubs rotting corpse over the last two days. Fortunately, dessert was called on account of rain. The Cubs will undoubtedly allow the Buc-heads to finish the sweep when they play their makeup game on Monday. Or they won't because at this point, it matter less and less. My personal expectations for this team have managed to drop even lower. I now expect nothing from this team, except 3 hours of frustration on a daily basis for the next 4 months. Anything more is a bonus, and anything less is not possible.

I don't....I just don't know...

Ok fine Lou, you don't know. You can't seem to figure out what everyone else has been telling you for the past month. Put Ramirez on the DL so he can get his thumb and his head on straight. Moving Lee and Ramirez to 4 and 5 is not a shakeup. Moving them to 7 and 8 is a shakeup. So basically, what you've been showing us of late is - you don't know.

Can you at least try to pretend you know? Can you give it some f*cking effort to give us the illusion that you in fact have all the opposing teams right where you want them? Can you not bring in MArmol in the 8th when you're down a run?

Benching Theriot, Lee, Ramirez and Soto was the right move. Why you played Fuk over Byrd - that's up for some debate. Byrd - a-f*cking-mazingly has been your most consistent hitter this season. Lee I firmly believe will start hitting within the next 2 weeks. The rest could all use a day off, except Ramirez. He needs 2 weeks off. Give it to him. Don't tell us you don't f*cking know.

P.S. This post will serve as a Reflections on St. Louis post too, so yeah.