Some of you younger fans might not know that for much of our existence of Cubs’ fandom we’ve had an annual July rite that we gleefully got to eschew from 2015 until this year. The annual picking of the spoiler team we had to root for through the rest of the season and the playoffs.
This was particularly necessary during the first decade and a half of the century when we needed somebody in the National League to make sure the Cardinals didn’t win a pennant or god forbid, a World Series. It worked often, but not enough.
This year the Cardinals are as ass as the Cubs are, but it’s the detestable Brewers we need to derail, and over in the other league, apparently the White Sox are having a successful, if injury plagued, season. I really wouldn’t know, I could give two shits about them. For a founding franchise of the American League their history is one of laughable mediocrity, and their well earned inferiority complex is as deserving of a flag flying above their middling ballpark as any of their whopping…five pennants in 121 years.
But with the Cubs giving up and trying to dump any player who dares to deserve a paycheck the only thing we the fans have to live for is the disappointment of Brewers and White Sox fans.
So it’s time to survey the landscape of the potential playoff teams in each league and decide who we can hold our noses and root for. The best thing about it is that at least we can bet on it, whether it’s in person in Illinois or online sports betting in Iowa. The Hawkeye State has geo location for all its online betting, which means fans can actively wager once they are within state lines of Iowa. If the Cubs are going to hell in a handbasket, we can at least try to figure out how to win some money in the process.
The no-chance in hells
New York Mets – Never. Fuck this franchise to eternity. It’s not enough that they lose, they need to be humiliated. I have a hand made Cristian Colon statue in front of my house.
Philadelphia Phillies – I’m normally agnostic about the Phillies, a franchise that’s even older and less accomplished than the White Sox–they’ve won two World Series in 139 years, and once had a stretch of 30 losing seasons in 31 years. So why are they in the “hell no” section? Because of this:
Depleted Phillies will a win but face continued competitive disadvantages because of COVID vaccine resistance
Many Phillies players have bristled at MLB’s protocols, but they are the same set of rules for every team. Team officials will not divulge how many players aren’t vaccinated. It is a meaningful number, to the point that months ago, the Phillies were certain they would never reach the 85 percent threshold. The clubhouse’s contentious relationship with the vaccine is driven by a handful of influential players who have voiced opposition to it. Some of them have already contracted COVID-19 and consider the antibodies as enough protection, although the CDC recommends people who’ve had the virus still be vaccinated. Other Phillies players have questioned whether injuries they’ve suffered were a result of vaccine side effects.
When Kintzler experienced neck pain, he attributed it to a Johnson & Johnson vaccine he received in the first week of the season. His body, he said, shut down and that forced him to compensate during an outing. Didi Gregorius has told teammates he thought the vaccine led to his pseudogout diagnosis. When asked last month if he had a theory about what caused his elbow issues, Gregorius said: “I have no clue. So, I’m not sure. Let’s go with that. Because if I start saying things, it’s going to turn into a whole thing.” Archie Bradley alluded to the vaccine when he injured his oblique in April.
It’s been a talking point inside the clubhouse, although the club’s medical staff has attempted to dispel those theories.
“I think everyone should recover for a week from that thing,” Kintzler said of the vaccine last month. “Archie strained his oblique after it. (Matt) Joyce had back problems. There has to be some science behind it.”
Brandon Kintzler is just really, really stupid. And he’s not the exception among baseball players.
Plus, you know this same thing is going to happen to the Cubs, but instead of costing them games (which at this point are meaningless) it’s going to imperil trades.
Houston Astros – It’s bad enough that they’re cheaters and completely unrepentant about it. Hell, four of their guys got named to the All-Star team and were too scared to go because they’d get booed, but they did “nothing wrong” of course. But then you add on to it that Dusty Baker is hanging on for dear life trying to finally win a World Series. It’s never going to happen Dusty. Thankfully.
Los Angeles Dodgers – Until this past offseason they had run their team the way we all wished the Cubs would. They are a big market franchise and they act like one. They spend on free agents, they develop their own players and then (gasp!) pay them to stay and they have enough in their farm system to use it to trade for and pay for a guy like Mookie Betts. The fact that they kept failing in the World Series was proof of how hard it is to win one and how we shouldn’t discount the accomplishment of the 2016 Cubs just because they never did it again. But then, they won a cheap, half-assed, knock off, neutral site version of a World Series in a 60 game season and then signed Trevor Bauer. We all knew Bauer was a pseudo-intellectual cyber bully, buffoon and male chauvinist, and now we know he’s a disgusting, violent monster on top of it.
A domestic violence restraining order filed against Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer and executed on June 28 includes multiple graphic images from the woman who filed the request. The woman, in the 67-page ex-parte document, said that Bauer assaulted her on two different occasions. Together, the woman said those two incidents included Bauer punching her in the face, vagina, and buttocks, sticking his fingers down her throat, and strangling her to the point where she lost consciousness multiple times.
The alleged assaults described by the woman, which are extremely graphic in nature, happened during what she said began as consensual sexual encounters between the two. According to the woman’s declaration attached to the request and obtained by The Athletic, she suffered injuries as a result of the second encounter, including two black eyes, a bloodied swollen lip, significant bruising and scratching to one side of her face. In the woman’s declaration, signed under penalty of perjury of California state laws, she said that her medical notes state that she had “significant head and facial trauma” and that there were signs of basilar skull fracture.
That the Dodgers didn’t immediately release him is completely inexcusable.
The “I can’t go there, dawgs”
Boston Red Sox – There was a time when the Cubs and Red Sox were constantly lumped together, they even had their balls smashed within about 24 hours of each other with tragic LCS losses in 2003, and then the whole Theo-thing made comparisons easy and constant. But the Red Sox have had much more prolonged success than the Cubs, and their fans are even more obnoxious and noxious than we are, and Bill Simmons is pretending to be watching baseball again this year, so no.
Atlanta Barves – Sure, we’d all like to see Joc Pederson win a World Series again, right? Oh yeah, we don’t care. The Barves used to come in handy in that they could beat the Cardinals in the playoffs for us, but for most of their existence they’ve been an underachieving bore. Kerry Wood kicking their ass twice in the 2003 NLCS was a lot of fun though. But they have lots of extra baggage this year with the Marcel Ozuna awfulness and the political shittery going on in Georgia, and the fact that they have yet to spend a day over .500 this season and they are trying to win with a pitching staff comprised solely of Max Fried.
Cincinnati Reds – It would be fine to see them run down the Brewers. We like Nick Castellanos, and…well, that’s about it. In fact, on Thursday’s Cubs’ pod I suggested a trade in which the Reds tell the Cubs that if they can somehow get Eric Sogard back on the Brewers this year that in the offseason as a thank you the Reds will just give Castellanos back to the Cubs. But if the Reds win, that’ll make Marty Brennaman happy and, I don’t like it when Franchester is happy.
Great apologies, young man. I only wish my son’s employers had been as forgiving as yours. Your words and sincerity were heartfelt. Keep up your good work.
— Marty Brennaman (@brennaman_marty) July 13, 2021
— jimmy. (@profarpants) July 14, 2021
San Diego Padres – I remember 1984 and I remember all of the bullshit in those three games at Jack Murphy Stadium and their bigamist first baseman hitting a walk-off in game four and fisting the sky and I’m never going to forgive those awful people. As much as I like Yu Darvish and am happy to see Fernando Tatis Jr. remind Sox fans every day of the worst trade in baseball history, I can’t root for a team in brown.
What we’re left with
Tampa Bay Rays – Nobody is better at winning on the cheap than Tampa, but why should fans give a shit what teams’ payrolls are? They’re owned by a billionaire just like all the other teams are and they choose to be cheap. And because they’re good at it it gives morons like The Garbage Family That Owns The Cubs™ the idea that they too, can do it. But, they do have fun players and Kevin Cash seems like a cool guy. So I can hold my nose and root for them when necessary.
Oakland A’s – Same shit, different coast. The A’s are very well run, but their financial constraints are also overstated and self-created. But again, fun players, cool uniforms and Joe Morgan will spin in his tiny little grave when Moneyball “author” Billy Beane wins a World Series, so that is totally worth it.
San Francisco Giants – There was a time when I would have lumped the Giants in with the Padres because while their NLCS win over the Cubs wasn’t as painful, it was very disappointing because it cost Mark Grace his deserved postseason legend status and they beat what was until 2015 my all-time favorite Cubs’ team. Those 1989 Cubs were a pure joy. But, the Giants also provided the first truly great moments of the 2016 title run with Javy’s game winner in game one, Travis Wood homering in game two while a befuddled Bob Costas blathered on about something else, Jake’s three run bomb off of the previously untouchable Madison Bumgarner, Kris Bryant’s game tying shot in the ninth of that same game three and then the ninth inning of game four in which the Cubs mounted the single biggest final inning rally in a clinching postseason game in baseball history and Aroldis struck out the side on nothing but 100 MPH pitches in the bottom. So, the Giants are off the hook (temporarily) and instead I can enjoy watching them play in their sweet assed ballpark, in a world class city, with cool uniforms (not the fog ones, though–woof), with the coolest TV broadcast team in the business (get well soon, Duane Kuiper) and inexplicably keep winning with a complete dope of a manager and an offense that somehow scores plenty of runs with no discernible talent beyond a 34-year old legitimate Hall of Fame catcher (unlike Yadi).
I’ll accept any of the final three winning this year, but I’m throwing my lot in with the Giants, though I believe that fight to be hopeless.