One last thing about that game. This struck me from Jesse Sanchez’s account of the final play.

Backpedaling and seemingly confused, the ball hit Aybar’s head and rolled away.

How good does Hank have to be to make a ball backpedal and seem confused? Now that is talent, my friends.

I think it’s time we all broke into our piggy banks and geared up for the World Baseball Classic with one of these bad boys:

It’s only $249.99 at the MLB.com Shop. Get them while they’re fresh!

Over at Cubs.com, where you think they’d be going nutty over one of their own being an international hero today, they are advertising an online chat with new Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter, and soliciting dopes to plunk down $160 for a brick that my brother will take the flaming screwdriver to.

I’ve got a question for Bruce Sutter.

HankWhiteFan24: Bruce, I know the trade that sent you to the Cardinals for Leon Durham and Ken Reitz was a travesty, but don’t you think it became partly worth it when Reitz became the author of this great quote? The worst thing about being traded by the Cubs is that they make you keep your season tickets? I’ll sit down and wait for my answer.

As for the brick. I’ll buy one if they let me put what I really want on it.

Which would be this:

YOU ARE
F#$%ING
KILLING ME

Spring training opens officially next week, which should give us all a heavy dose of optimism. It’s counterbalanced nicely by the thought of having to actually watch the Cubs play this year.

Honestly, I go back and forth on this. OK, mostly back.

Outsiders seem to think that the Cubs did some good things over the winter.

I can’t argue that adding Juan Pierre will help. It might not help as much as simply getting rid of Corey Patterson will, but it will help regardless.

The bullpen killed the Cubs last year, and they dumped big piles of cash on two guys who pitched very well out of somebody else’s bullpens last year.

If we can keep Mark Prior away from dwarfish second basemen and line drives off his elbow, the Cubs will have better starting pitching, too.

The Cardinals are following their familiar pattern. They are adept at dumping guys after they have inexplicable career years. They did it with Tony Womack last year and Mark Grudzielanek this year. But they added Braden Looper…on purpose, and replaced what was left of Larry Walker and Reggie Sanders with Larry Bigbie and I guess, 37 year old second year player John Rodriguez.

The Astros are for the most part unchanged, which makes sense, considering they went to the World Series last year, but they won’t have Fat Roger for at least the first month of the year and they’re trying to push Jeff Bagwell and his mushy right shoulder into retirement with the elegance of trying to cram a doberman into a cat carrier.

The Brewers are getting better (long term), but they’re likely to backslide this year, with the continued decrepitation of Geoff Jenkins, the injury struggles of Ben Sheets and sophomore years from Rickie Weeks and Prince Fielder that figure to be more JJ Hardy than Jason Bay.

Pissburgh and Cincinnati are still on the hamster wheel to nowhere.

So what, that means the Cubs are better as much because of the lack of improvement of their division brethren?

Yay?

Even if that were true (and I’m not so sure it is) the goal should be to win a pennant (at least), so just looking around your division (even a division that includes teams who’ve made six of the last ight NLCS appearances) to see how you measure up, isn’t enough.

If optimism is leaving your self open to the idea that your team can still get better, then I’m optimistic.

If optimism is thinking that great things can happen to the team they have on the field, then I’m not even close to that.

Teddy G. on Bonnie Bernstein’s departure from CBS Sports. Rumors are flying all over the place about why she really jumped (if she did, one of the rumors is that she was canned, another says CBS was worried about her alleged love tryst with an NFL coach). Deadspin provided a link to a TV message board that supposedly discussed those rumors, but that thread seems to be missing now. I’m pretty sure that if she was doing a little horizontal sideline analysis that it would be with either Philly sexpot Andy Reid or the always adorable Wade Phillips. Either way, could you blame her?

Excellent news from the Monday Night Football front. I was among the millions who was horrified that ESPN’s original choice for a crew was Al Michaels and Joe Theismann. Thankfully, Michaels is off to NBC to rejoin John Madden (and by the way, those two are awful together, but you knew that, they were in your living room for four hours on Sunday). So the new ESPN Monday Night Football crew is Thiesmann (guy), Mike Tirico (good, but will be better when his testes and his voice drop) and Tony Kornheiser. To be honest, back in the day before ESPN picked up his radio show, I hated Tony Kornheiser. This was in the days before the Internet allowed to you read out of town columnists like him every day if you wanted. The only time I ever saw or heard him was on the Sports Reporters and I couldn’t get past the fact that he looked just like Terry Boers. Then I finally got his radio show (brilliance), read his columns (always funny, even the Dave Barry style section ripoffs) and of course then a couple years ago PTI arrived on the scene. Maybe he won’t mix well with Tirico and Theismann. I have a feeling he and Tirico will be fine and that Theismann won’t understand why they’re laughing…ever. But for ESPN, a network that has beaten us over the head with crap like Dream Job, whatever that stupid cross-country game show was, Stu Scott, the buffoonish cartoon that is Chris Berman, Screamin’ A. Smith, John Kruk, Harold Reynolds, the Anti-Christ and on and on, this is one small step in the right direction.

Even better news for the 37 remaning NBA fans is that Mike Breen will take Al Michaels’ spot as the lead NBA voice. Breen’s good, and surprisingly good with Hubie Brown. Michaels was never a good basketball announcer, so this is an improvement immediately.

One thing to fear, however is that Fox isn’t so sure they’re going to go after a renewal of their contract with Major League Baseball, and NBC is expected to jump back into the bidding, along with an ABC/ESPN bid.

If NBC got it right now, your two teams of announcers would be Bob Costas-Joe Morgan and Al Michaels-Tim McCarver. Oh, shoot me dead right now.

If ABC gets it, your two top teams aren’t any better: Jon Miller-Joe Morgan and Chris Berman-Rick Sutcliffe.

I know that the current Joe Buck-Tim McCarver and tHom Brennaman-Steve Lyons pairings are abysmal, but we can’t even hope for an improvement, no matter where the damn playoff package goes. Guh.

Here’s how bad it’s been for Notre Dame’s basketball team lately. When I saw Illinois blow a 14 point second half lead, at home, to unranked (and ungood) Penn State, only to lose in the end because Rich McBride’s three pointer was about two tenths of a second too late, I thought to myself…eh, big deal, this happens to Notre Dame EVERY GAME.

The Bulls, right now, are as good as they can possibly be with this roster. Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich are playing lights out as the starting backcourt, Tyson Chandler finally got his asthma and free throw issues worked out and he’s playing as well as he can (he’ll never play up to $10 mil a year for six years, but it’s something). The Bulls still can’t win. Sure, they coughed up the OT loss in Utah in ludicrous fashion the other night (I knew it was going to happen with Red Kerr yelled out “dagger!” when Andres Nocioni made a three with about two minutes left in OT. Even when Red was coherent he always was premature with the “dagger” references. Now Jim Durham (who, by the way, made up the “dagger” call) is and never has been wrong. But when my man, Luol Deng coughed up the game when he crapped his pants under the Jazz basket and a) didn’t want to get fouled with a one point lead and ten second left and b) didn’t think to call timeout, instead throwing an outlet pass of death that was intercepted, tossed around the horn and ended up in Mehmet Okur’s hands…it’s time to get ready to make two lottery picks (ours and the Knicks’–thanks Isiah!), because it’s not happening until this team can add some skilled height, and get a scorer who couldn’t play in the 6’3 and under league at the local Y.

By the way, as I watched the Bulls’ game Monday night, I started thinking about how awful the Bulls’ announcers are. It’s no secret that Tom Dore stinks on ice and always has, or that Red has lost what minimal talent he ever had, but even on radio, Bill Wennington is a trainwreck and Neil Funk is the only competent one in the bunch.

But maybe it’s not the Bulls, maybe it’s Jerry Reinsdorf. If you ranked the play-by-play guys of Chicago’s sports teams (which Chuck actually did last month) Reinsdorf’s hires are the worst.

My bottom five would be (from worst to almost worst):
5. Jeff Joniak
4. Hawk Harrelson
3. Tom Dore
2. Bill Wennington
1. Red Kerr

Hey, in Reinsdorf’s defense, he only hired four of them.

Greggie says he’s not planning to retire anytime soon. He’s going back to the Braves next year, isn’t he?

ESPN has the link screwed up on their home page, but the code’s not too hard to crack (you just change the “date” in the URL). Sports Guy breaks down every team’s shot at the NBA title.

Kelly Dwyer on just how good Chris Paul is (very), and hey, two in one day!
Kelly Dwyer on just how dumb Isiah Thomas is (very).

Here’s what I don’t get about the Jalen Rose trade. First, the Knicks need defense…badly, Jalen plays none. Second, they’re having problems getting Stephon Marbury to share the ball with…anybody, and they bring a guy with the same problems and half the talent. Then, there’s the fact that Jalen and Isiah HATED each other when Isiah coached him in Indiana. Then there’s the Larry Brown-Jalen history and you know…none of this makes any sense. It’s almost like Isiah was trying to get other news about himself off the front pages in New York for a while. Gee, could that be possible?

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