Marlon Byrd Promises Cubs Will Combust

Guns don't kill people . . . but I'm
not arguing with Marlon's.

I'm not the one to turn to for a pep talk on the Cubs' chances in 20!! (double exclamation points to the contrary). If I start talking about the Cubs contending this year, it's because I'm blatantly choosing to ignore the information I have at my disposal. No amount of data can predict with absolute certainty what the Cubs will accomplish this season. But I think a postseason appearance in !! is entirely improbable. I won't begrudge anyone their loftier predictions, I just won't tend to agree with them on an intellectual level.

But if you want that pep talk, go to Marlon Byrd. If you can't set up a personal appointment, go to his blog. He believes the Cubs are going to explode.

I won't argue (although Carlos Zambrano promises he won't explode). I really hope he's right. I can't rule out that he's right. There's no harm in believing the Cubs will catch the world (or at least the NL Central) by surprise. I'm just not ready to invest the energy to preach that sermon.

I will say that Marlon Byrd is exactly the guy I want delivering that message. He is a man of enthusiasm. A man of positivity. A man with pretty freaking huge arms. I'm glad he's on the team, and I'm ready to start watching him play real baseball.

First spring training game is this Sunday. Marlon's pep talk has definitely worked on me to some extent:

The guys we have -- there's not excitement on MLB Network, there's not excitement on Baseball Tonight. That excitement is Greinke and Marcum with the Brewers and Berkman going to St. Louis and the Reds signing extensions to the young guys who are going to turn into big dogs. We're going to fly under the radar and keep that excitement bottled up and once April 1 comes, we're going to explode.

I share Marlon's excitement. Just not his optimism.

Cubs vs. les Petites Garces

Uhlman/AP

Comparisons to the Cubs always cause things to turn ugly.

Brandon Phillips is a poet. You can read his finest work . . . well, just about anywhere, but I like how it appears in this piece about why the St. Louis Post-Dispatch decided to quote Phillips verbatim. The article is more about journalism than sports, but I wish the Chicago sports columnists and beat writers would make more of an effort to explain why they report the way they do. (I suspect they don't because the method behind their madness is nothing to be proud of, but I'm just guessing.) It was refreshing to see another city's paper explain their reasoning professionally.

As for Phillips' reasons for making his public comments in the first place, most people seem to agree he was trying to pump up his teammates or intimidate the Cardinals or some combination of both. Opinion is divided as to how stupid it was of Phillips to call out the opposing team before such an important series. Marlon Byrd added some good player perspective on rivalries:

When you have competition against the same teams over and over again, you start to develop a hate. It’s not like you want to kill them, but you want to beat them. Every time you go out there, you want the 10-run rule. You want to shut them out. I just think that’s healthy competition.

But no one will classify the rant as the most brilliant competitive tactic in the history of baseball. The Cardinals swept the Reds, so there's no arguing its lousy effectiveness. There's also no arguing its pinpoint accuracy.

In all the critiques, reactions, responses, and mockeries offered up about Phillips' evaluation of the Cardinals as "little bitches," I haven't heard one shred of dissent about that comment. Hordes of people have said Phillips was stupid to say it, but I have yet to read a single sentence accusing him of being wrong.

So as the Cubs head into St. Louis for the first time all year (and it's absolutely nuts that it has taken this long), I hope the Cubs win them all. It won't redeem this season. It won't end the Cardinals' season. But it would feel good to see them do it. The Cubs would be happy. The Cardinals would be grumpy. And Brandon Phillips would rejoice in the success of his beloved Cubs. In his glorious words, "Let me make this clear: I hate the Cardinals."

Amen, Brandon. Amen.

Half Decent: Setting Expectations for the 2011 Cubs (pt. 1)

When I was in high school, one of the youth leaders at my church routinely discussed three topics more than any other: the unholy trilogy of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. It really didn't matter what biblical story or teaching we were covering, the focus was almost always redirected to the condemnation of one or more of those three vices.

I remember one lesson in particular in which we were told that physical attraction should be the least of our concerns when deciding who to date or court or arrange a marriage with. While anyone who has ever been in a relationship can attest that appearance isn't the most important attribute in a significant other, trying to tell a teenager to ignore it completely is like persuading a shark to eschew seafood.

After hearing variations on the diatribe for a few weeks, all the members of my youth group knew the answers we were supposed to be giving and that they directly conflicted with the protests of our hormones. So when our teacher asked us what qualities we would look for in a potential boyfriend or girlfriend, my fellow classmate Dwight Stowers attempted a compromise between the proffered high moral ground and his basic primal urges into a succinct summation of what he wanted in a woman:

"Half decent?"

As Cub fans, we find ourselves in a similar struggle between what we want and what the baseball gods are telling us we can have. While by no means immoral, it's looking pretty unrealistic that fans of baseball on Chicago's North Side will ever find ourselves in a long-term relationship with a 10—but is it too much to ask for a 6 or 7?

Congrats to all of the Cubs' All-Star

Way to go, Marlon Byrd! You deserve this. Click to enlarge.

Nothing to See Here. So Let's Do the Wave!

On Saturday, the wave broke out at Wrigley Field. This punky, spray-tanned castoff from the set of Swingers (not Vince Vaughn) served as cheerleader  drum major  douchemaster  moron-in-chief, eliciting a chorus of boos from dozens of onlookers . . . and, you know, the wave from tens of thousands of witless drones.

It's bad enough this happened at Wrigley. Fans do a lot of unforgivable things in Wrigley. They throw peanuts at fans of opposing teams, even if it's the team opposing the Blackhawks later that weekend. They stand on the ramps leading to the upper deck and toss food and water down onto the fans below. They hurl racial epithets at their favorite players. I guess they project quite a few things into the air, but usually they have the good sense not to include a successive parade of their butt-scratching hands in the mix. But here's what made it worse:

All this went down with one out in the eighth inning of a tie ball game with the potential (and eventually the actual) game-tying run at second base. The wave is supposed to be the designated pastime of fans who have become bored with the actual national pastime. But to interrupt the most critical turning point in the game by conjuring the demonic ritual of wavus stupidus maximus takes some serious juevos (and just an extraordinary surplus of dumb). You're telling me there was nothing else to grab the attention of these buffoons?

Allow me to offer up a photodump of evidence to the contrary:

Vince Vaughn set the tone by aiming for the upper deck with his ceremonial first pitch.

Cubs Facts that Go Without Saying (that I'll say anyway)

The Cubs won't go undefeated the rest of the season.

It is possible to put a Carlos Marmol pitch in play, after all.

Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez are not the two worst starting pitchers in baseball.

Ryan Theriot will never be mistaken for Rickey Henderson.

Jim Hendry will never be mistaken for Branch Rickey.

There is such a thing as too much beer.

Christie Brinkley has aged better than Chevy Chase.

Dead ivy isn't any more charming than separated shoulders and concussed outfielders.

Green ivy is more charming (but not all that more comforting) than dead ivy.

He's not on the team, but the spirit of Neifi Perez is waiting in the on-deck circle.

I don't care how good they are, the Cardinals suck.

Starlin Castro should keep a bag packed at all times.

Wrigley Field is not a church. You won't hear the organ playing at church.

No one cares about your fantasy team. Not even the people in your fantasy league.

"Obituary" is the nicest sounding word dedicated exclusively to the description of dead people.

The Cubs will not finish in last place.

Marlon Byrd is one smooth hombre.

It would be cool if the Cubs played the Yankees this year.

By 2015, advanced baseball metrics will be known as stats.

If the Cubs closed the Wrigley Field press box, there's a good chance the baseball IQ in Chicago would go up.

Ron Santo deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and to watch the Cubs win a World Series, and none of this "looking down from heaven" business. Let's get it done, people.

A Few Small Repairs

I've made a couple changes to the site. Not wholesale changes or even dramatic ones, just a few minor adjustments. And that's not because the site doesn't need work, it's just . . . well, what am I gonna do? I'm not exactly chiseling rough edges off the Michelangelo. Oh, and I'm not raising payroll, either. But you know, I think these relatively small additions to life at And Counting might just help out.

The situation here isn't all that different from where the Cubs are right now. Look, last offseason Jim Hendry made some moves that didn't work out. You could call them great moves that went bad, or foolish risks that were doomed from the start. Actually, it's really easy now to say that they were all ridiculously misinformed—but so is this blog, so who am I to judge?

This offseason, Hendry has subtracted just about all of last offseason's moves (the Mark DeRosa toothpaste can't be squeezed back into the tube). Bradley's gone. Gregg is gone. The Aarons both Heilman and Miles. We bid farewell to Rich Harden and Jake Fox, and we'll miss a little bit of Ted Lilly at the outset of the season. But when you look at the 2009 contributions of the dearly departed Cubs, is the absence of any of that really going to sting?

So I look at the additions, the small changes, the slightly altered logos and DISQUS comments of this 2010 Chicago Cubs team. Marlon Byrd. Xavier Nady. Clubhouse gallbladder infection, Carlos Silva. And let's not forget new guy, other new guy, and the dude we got for Jake Fox. None of these guys are going to reconfigure the Cubbie universe. They won't win Nobel Prizes. But the the Cubs don't need wholesale changes. They just need to tread water.

If you want to see the statistical projections, you can check them out at ACB. The Cubs aren't bad. They're not as good as the Cardinals (who suck, by the way). They're not as good on paper as last year's paper team. They might not even be as good on paper as last year's team was on the field.

But I like this team. I expect Soto to have better luck (let's hope his eyebrows weren't the source of his power). I expect Soriano to be healthier and better. I expect Zambrano to be worse and luckier. Marlon Byrd will be good. Someone I've never heard of will be good. The pitching staff will be the least of the Cubs' problems. I expect the sportswriters to fade into the dingy background of the press box. I expect to be wrong about oh so much. But in the end, or at least on the way to the end, I expect to enjoy the 2010 season.

Jon Heyman thinks the Cubs struck out. I think the Cubs took two steps forward and one and a half steps back. If they can just stay afloat until June, Jim Hendry might make a real move, and this team just might kick a little ass.

Hendry Should Brush up on French History

The Chicago sports media have been reporting ad nauseam that the Cubs can't make a free agent signing until they move Milton Bradley. Some say it's the money. Some say it's the uncertainty of the layout of the team. I say hogwash. We all know the Cubs have more money than you can shake Sam Waterston at. And it doesn't make a ton of sense for Jim Hendry to postpone free agent signings for fear of running out of holes on his roster. Right now, no one is offering the Cubs anyone for Milton Bradley, let alone any player worthy of occupying an everyday position.

The Cubs don't lack the funds or the foresight to sign the players they want—Mike Cameron and/or Marlon Byrd, Joel Piñiero, and Alfredo Amezaga are among the candidates—but somehow they seem intent on broadcasting to the world that they lack flexibility.

Ever since "Milton Bradley" and "must trade" became redundancies, Jim Hendry has looked like a trapped coyote without enough fortitude to gnaw himself free from the jaws of Milton Bradley's contract. No GM who sees him in that light will ever want to A) take home a Milton Bradley steel trap, or B) help Hendry salvage any of his $21 million leg. The metaphor's falling apart, so I'll move on.

It's time for a French lesson. I give to you, Jim Hendry, the legend of Carcassonne:

In 760, “Pepin the Short”*, King of the Franks, took most of the south of France back from the Saracens, except for Carcassonne. True to its reputation, it remained an impregnable fortress. After a long siege, the Franks had good reason to think that the inhabitants of Carcassonne would soon starve and surrender. But Dame Carcas, the widow of the Sarrasin lord of the castle, devised a plan to save the city. She had a pig fed with the last sacks of grain the inhabitants could find. When the pig was fat enough, it was thrown over the city’s ramparts. At the sight of such a well-fed fat animal, the astonished assailants concluded that the inhabitants still had enough food in stock to stave off famine and weren’t about to surrender any time soon. And so they gave up and quickly lifted the siege. Dame Carcas rang all the bells of the city all day long to celebrate the victory. Legend has it that Dame “Carcas sonne” (Dame “Carcas rings”) is where the name of the city came from.

If Hendry wants to change the way other teams view his situation, and if keeping Milton Bradley really is impossible, he needs to throw a big fat pig over the wall. Give a free agent way too much money. Make a trade for a guy you can't afford to sign to an extension. Do something no one not named Steinbrenner would be willing to do.

Hendry needs to show the rest of Major League Baseball that he has plenty of options, plenty of money, and no intentions of getting screwed over. A fat free-agent contract (something worth about 2 or 3 John Grabow's) would send a message that the Cubs can afford to keep Milton Bradley and they aren't preoccupied with moving him—even if the exact opposite is true.

Do that, and maybe then a GM who cares more about OPS than congeniality will extend his grubby little paws in the direction of Milton's death grip.



*Paul Sullivan shall heretofore be known on this site as Pepin le Bref.