Random Acts of Cubness

Marlon Byrd and Victor Conte still having a working relationship should change people's impressions of Victor Conte.

Geovany Soto is going to get on base and hit the baseball hard.

Chicago Code isn't a very good show, but I'll probably still watch it forever.

And while I'm talking about it, the fictional White Sox fan cop called Cubs fan cop "Ron Santo" for saying he preferred 12-inch softball to 16-inch softball. But Ronnie played 16-inch softball. So I guess the White Sox cop fan's character is pretty realistic.

Why did the mother pig kick the three little pigs out to go build their own houses? They're little pigs.

I still miss Ron Santo.

Starlin Castro is going to be exciting to watch play baseball.

Also: errors shmerrors.

Tyler Colvin is probably better than I think.

Spring training still means nothing.

Randy Wells is in the starting rotation. He's in.

Carlos Silva has something to prove. I hope for his sake he's at least as good at proving things as Matt Damon was in Good Will Hunting.

Also, Carlos, if Andrew Cashner asks you if you like apples, don't answer.

Kerry Wood is a Chicago Cub.

Mark Prior is a New York Yankee. His stat line so far in spring training, which, I know, means nothing, says he wants to remain a New York Yankee.

ERA: 0.00, 3 G, 3.0 IP, 1 H, O R, 1 BB, 4 SO, WHIP 0.67

I'm pretty happy about Kerry and Mark.

This Cubs team is not going to surprise a lot of people because too many people are saying they're going to surprise a lot of people. You people suck at surprises.

Mike Quade is an interesting fellow.

April 1 can't get here soon enough.

2010 Random Season Wrap Up

I haven't done an end-of-season report card or award ceremony for 2010 yet because the season has been over for four months now. I've pretty much missed my chance.

Tom Ricketts is too nice.

The next tradition at Wrigley Field will be Todd Ricketts streaking across the outfield after the bottom of the fifth.

The next person to run a trade idea by me gets sent trough surfing.

Things might look bleak now, but in the next few years you're gonna like a lot of the new kids.

Last year, almost every move Hendry made backfired, and the Cubs had a winning season. This year, everything Jim Hendry touched (not named John Grabow) turned to gold, and the team sucked.

I have no idea if Jim Hendry actually touched John Grabow. Although it would explain why Grabow seemed so out of sorts this year.

Paying $60 to sit in the bleachers is like tipping the maître d' to let you wait longer.

Great pitching is the secret to winning in the postseason. Also good defense. And guys who hit well. And a decent manager. Luck, too. Oh, and the fans. Can't forget the fans.

And intensity.

Sometimes it's fun just to argue.

Carlos Zambrano should win comeback player of the year even though he has been here for years.

The next Cubs manager will be . . . disappointed before too long.

It's stupid to start a baseball game anywhere between 4:00 and 6:00 local time.

Baseball seems intent on simultaneously proving that they need to institute replay and that they will ignore that need like a steroid problem.

There were not enough highlights of the 2010 season to make a top ten list.

I could care less about the Chicago Cubs right now. I care about the White Sox less. I care about the Rockies less. I care about the political currents of Auckland, New Zealand less. If I cared about the Cubs as much as I care about those things, it would be less than the current state of caring. I could do it if I tried.

Most baseball fans don't want to have their opinions on talent critiqued by statisticians anymore than soap-opera fans want their favorite characters analyzed by psychologists.

Baseball needs to add another wildcard team like the Emmys need to add a category for Best New Show on The CW.

I really didn't think I'd be able to come up with this many things.

How is comeuppance even a word?

Obligatory Brett Favre Chilean miner joke.

Unless you're holding out hope that the Cubs will win a World Series at some point between now and next October, it's time to admit that the wait between titles is already 103 years.

Baseball is a metaphor for life. It is not life itself. People who can't make the distinction are metaphors for failure.

I could really use a strawberry lemonade Slurpee.

Happy Bartman Day.

The Shocking Truth: The Cubs Are Us

The Cubs are people! They're made out of PEOPLE!!!!  

The Cubs are people, and I don't mean they are a team comprised of human beings. They are that, but . . . no to the duh. I'm saying the Cubs consist of a litany of metaphors for people just like you or me or that guy who keeps sniffing his fingers on the train. It's like the Cubs assembled a motley cast of unremarkable human beings and, instead of putting them all in a house for a reality show, they processed, amalgamated, and packaged them into a baseball team.

The Cubs are people. The Cubs are you. If any of these statements don't apply to you, just look over your shoulder. Somewhere lurking behind you is the statement's intended recipient.

You don't like your job, and you dream of finding a better one. But you know tomorrow you'll be right back in that cubicle. You're the Cubs. The Cubs are  you.

You'd like a bigger house, but at the end of the day you know what's really important is the people that make life special. Achieving your wildest dreams would be nice, but enjoying life wherever you are is what counts. You're the Cubs. The Cubs are you.

You know that sometimes the only way to address your problems is to self-medicate, be the prescription alcohol, narcotics, or donuts. You're the Cubs. The Cubs are you.

I Don't Have a Topic. Cubs Stuff.

The Cubs have lost more one-run decisions than anyone else in the majors. I guess that means they're almost really good.

The Cubs are 13-28 (.317) in games decided by one run. They've come dangerously close to not losing 28 times.

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. If baseball were horseshoes, the Cubs would be the champions. If baseball were hand grenades, everyone  would be dead.

The Cubs are 3-9 (.250) against the Pirates. The Pirates are 39-74 (.345). So, if you're following, the Cubs against the Pirates < the Cubs in 1-run games < the Pirates in general.

Against teams not named the Cubs, the Pirates are 30-71 (.297). That's almost as bad as the Cubs are against the Pirates, but not quite.

The Cubs playing the Pirates is quite possibly the worst baseball you could ever see played at the Major League level. They should probably be playing hand grenades.

Roy Halladay has a 7.50 ERA against the Cubs this year. Tim Lincecum has a 13.50 ERA against the Cubs this year. Their respective ERAs overall are 2.34 and 3.41. That is weird.

Tony LaRussa will be suspended for two of the Cubs' upcoming games against the Cardinals. The St. Louis middle infielders will have to remember on their own to start back and charge in when there's a runner at third.

Darwin Barney's middle name should be comma.

When athletes who play sports that do not allow fighting get into fights, they should be arrested. When I beat up my coworkers, I'm never granted two days off. They always press charges.

A beer at Wrigley costs seven dollars. That's outrageous. If they used the same ROI ratio they use to price tickets, seven dollars would only get you a glass of trough juice.

That was gross. I'm sorry. But if this were Wrigley, you'd still owe me $14 for that joke.

Most of the Cubs roster now looks to Starlin Castro for his veteran wisdom.

The Cajun Connection is now split onto opposite sides of baseball's most heated West Coast rivalry. Their dueling hip-hop albums cannot be far behind.

I'm out of ideas. Now I know how Lou felt in mid-April.

Sometimes You Just Have to Laugh

The Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team. In the majors.

The best news for the Cubs on Friday was that Carlos Zambrano got hugged.

The best news for Cubs fans on Friday was that Jim Hendry knows they suck and has for quite some time.

The second best news for Cubs fans (and it was a hard-luck runner up) is that several teams (all of them in the NL West, for some reason) have interest in Ryan Theriot. Being on their team. I know, right?

The Cubs haven't won a World Series since the year the Baseball Writers Association of America was founded (1908). Think I'm jaded against the beat writers? Now you know why.

17-2.

Cubs Facts that Don't Make Me Angry

On any given day, the Cubs have a really solid chance of winning, even if it's against the Pirates.

Pat Hughes is the best radio play-by-play man I've ever listened to on a daily basis.

Watching the Cubs lose in a hopeless summer is still better than the hopeful baseball-free winters.

There are an awful lot of Cubs fans that I like an awful lot.

Alfonso Soriano is no longer painful to watch.

The next heartbreaking playoff loss appears to be quite a ways off.

Ticket prices are going down like . . . well, like the Cubs.

Starlin Castro is still in the majors.

Tyler Colvin can hit.

The pitching has been pretty good this year, and I've always felt that bad pitching is much more frustrating to watch than bad offense.

Whether Tom Ricketts wants to run this team as a fan or as a businessman, he's going to have to put a better product on the field to be happy.

I really like the calzones at Wrigley.

However awful the walk-up music is, I haven't heard any Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber yet.

Even if they did, a little "Party in the U.S.A." never hurt anybody.

Most people won't admit it, but Carlos Zambrano spoke for all of us.

I'm pretty sure I have a fear of success, and the Cubs have been very understanding in that regard.

The fire sale is inevitable. And who doesn't love a sale?

Day-Off Reflections: Stream of Cubbieness

I have a photographic memory, but my subconscious is well versed in Photoshop.

My earliest Cubs memory is staring at the screen and wondering why the Cubs had a player named Ivun DeJeezuss.

My next earliest Cubs memory was my mom telling me that Jimmy Piersall and Harry Caray were the worst broadcasting tandem she'd ever heard.

She found Harry Caray and Steve Stone much more tolerable.

It took a long time for me to watch the WGN Sports intro sequence without feeling pangs of disappointment that it would prevent me from watching Underdog.

Video production graphics in the mid-'80s were awesome. I can't find an image of  the one that flashed ZONK spelled out in asterisks while Keith Moreland touched 'em all, but I know what I saw.

My first visit to Wrigley Field was August 3, 1982. I remember almost nothing from the game except what was told to me as the game transpired. It took me the first six innings just to be sure where the infield was. They were not the best seats, and I was a very short seven year old. I just know that Larry Bowa lined into a triple play, Dave Kingman hit a fly ball to left that could have hit an airplane, and the Cubs beat the Mets 5-0.

1983 was completely forgettable.

1984 ruined me. It did. It pretty much determined the person I would be for the rest of my life, and the entire thing was built on lies, culminating in the 4th grade open house folder I made with the Chicago Cubs 1984 NL Champions logo I drew on its blue construction-paper body.

Game 5 turned me into a veritable puddle of tears, hiding under my otherwise rocking tiger comforter and Return of the Jedi sheets on the bottom bunk; not even all those layers of awesomeness could keep out the sadness.

Not even that infinite melancholy could keep me from clinging to hope in 1985, a season that turned to be nothing but a series of repeated scissor-jabs to the eyes.

Every year after has taught me two things: A) Hope springs eternal; B) Hope is an insolent slut.

In 1989 a fit of vindictive madness prompted me to predict an earthquake would interrupt the World Series, and I've carried that guilt with me ever since.

The stretch from 1990 to 1998 was a lesson in gullibility and stupid expectations. High school and college were wrapped up in there, too, but those were just minor branches off my primary field of doctorate-level idiocy.

In 1998 I got married and planned my wedding date, October 24, around the day I figured the Cubs would win it all. I blame my sister, who got married two years prior in New York on the night the Yankees finished off the Braves to end their World Series drought.

My wife loves the fall, and our wedding day wasn't marred with even a shred of disappointment.

My oldest son was born in 2003 into a world in which the Cubs win playoff series.

My next son was born in 2007, and again the Cubs made the playoffs. These kids have no idea of the chronic torture their futures hold.

I keep thinking each year that maybe the Cubs will win the World Series. If you could ask the one completely honest brain cell in my head what I really believed, it would tell you I still expect them to win this year. The remaining cells, prone to lending out misleading information as they may be, would respond in all honesty that I just don't learn.

If and when the Cubs do win it all, it will teach me and my children a horrible lesson: being incredibly naive and stubbornly stupid (a blend I like to call stupidité) pays off in the end.

I really hope it does.

Stream of Cubbie Consciousness

Carlos Zambrano belongs in the bullpen like Rod Blagojevich belongs on the Supreme Court.

Over the last week, the Cubs went 2-4 . . . and gained a game on the Cardinals.

The Toyota sign is a commercial, not a story.

Any team that doesn't pull out all the stops to grab every dollar they can scrounge will show the same lackluster interest in wins.

I can't stop watching 'Til Death. It is not funny.

The National League is pretty bad.

Next Sunday's Lost finale will leave us with a lot of unanswered questions. Most of them will start with "What the . . . "

The Cubs are a better team with Starlin Castro than with Chad Tracy.

Conan O'Brien's anti-cynical farewell speech was good advice.

The purists said the lights desecrated Wrigley Field. I was one of them. I was 13. Change is good.

If Lou didn't care, he would have quit a long time ago.

No. He didn't. Very funny.

Carlos Marmol found the cheat codes for his slider.

Space Giants was a great show.

No sport has been more revolutionized by the advent of HDTV than hockey. I can see the puck now.

Marlon Byrd.

Over 1/3 of one-pitch at-bats result in hits.

Coffee is the quaintest of addictions.

When the Cubs start hitting as a team (and they will . . . this year) they'll rack up a double-digit winning streak.

The Cubs don't need a mascot. We are the mascots.

Wrigley Field ambassadors won't stop fans in the bleachers from relieving themselves in empty beer cups, but they will hand out "not beer" labels.

I overhead a Wrigley bathroom attendant saying he had waited five years to get his current assignment. Heaven help the poor schmuck who inherited his 2005 gig.

Singing "the Cubs are gonna win today" after they win is . . . well, given the state of the bullpen, it's almost premature.

Random Observations, Some of Them Cubs Related

A Mike Fontenot pop fly may have punched Starlin Castro's ticket to the big leagues.

If you wonder what it would have been like if the Internet existed in the 1950s, consult MLB's online policies.

Chester Taylor didn't know he was supposed to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" until after the organ started playing. Santo asked him if he was ready to sing, and he just laughed. A lot. He genuinely thought they were putting him on.

I have every episode of Friends on DVR, some of them multiple times. Yet we keep on recording more for some reason.

At some point this year, the Cubs will score five runs in a game instead of 2 or 12.

Lou Piniella likes it when reporters talk strategy.

ESPN thinks you're an idiot.

Marlon Byrd.

The Blackhawks are the best team in Chicago. The rest of the top 10 are high school teams, including the Niles North Chess Club.

Turns out, Paula Abdul needed American Idol a bit more than Ellen did.

Wrigley Field isn't a bar. At bars, you can watch replays.

The next big name to be linked to PEDs will be a basketball player. A really big one.

It's only a matter of time before Lucas makes another Star Wars prequel trilogy. 200 million people will pay to rip it apart.

I'm debating writing a post comparing baseball to bowling. It's not the most interesting debate in the world.

I wonder if Red Sox fans got this mad when they moved their ace out of the starting rotation and then traded him for cash considerations to the Yankees.

Decisions, decision. The Evening Independent

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.

Random Cubs Facts, Opinions, Fabrications, and Outright Diversions

Firing Jim Hendry is a bad idea.

Jay Leno is not as unfunny as people give him discredit for. He's also not as funny as Conan.

1998 was the best year of my adult life. The home run race was a part (nowhere near all) of that. I wouldn't change a thing.

If the Cubs win the World Series this year by cheating, I will celebrate until I collapse in an unethical heap of exasperation.

If the Cubs win the World Series this year through methods of interrogative torture that cross lines even Jack Bauer wouldn't step over, I would have second thoughts.

I do not endorse cheating, torture, illegal steroid use, or the designated hitter.

Wrigley Field is unique and one of my favorite places in the world. So is the house I grew up in, but I'm glad my parents remodeled.

If Wrigley had a JumboTron that could replay controversial calls, they'd have to stop the game every other inning to rid the playing field of angrily discarded beer cups.

Everyone's at least a little racist.

Ryan Theriot isn't getting any better.

Put an @ before someone's user name to make sure they read your tweet. Use @@ to attack them with a giant 4-legged robot.

Going two-sies in the Wrigley troughs is a breach of etiquette.

The best Cubs-related movie of all time is Die Hard.

Dick Stockton will be the play-by-play guy for every Cubs 1st-round playoff game from now until the end of time.

I looked up the word curse in the dictionary, and I don't see a single definition that doesn't apply to the Cubs.

I love the Cubs, I hate the Cardinals, but to each his or her own.

Former players are entitled to their opinions about steroids, but I expect them to be no more objective than they were when they argued with umpires.

Parking at Wrigley has the exact same cost-to-pain ratio as getting a root canal.

Just once I'd like to catch a foul ball at Wrigley Field.

Alfonso Soriano will be great again.

Carlos Zambrano is the best Cubs pitcher, and he's worth every penny.

The Cubs will win it all in my lifetime.

I am not to be trusted.