Take a step back from the ledge. Pour out your Drano cocktail. A pitcher with a sore leg after the first week of spring training is not exactly front page news.
Unless he’s The Franchise, and then it IS front page news.
The Cubs announced yesterday that Mark Prior will miss the all-important first week of Spring Training games because he has suffered a reoccurrence of the Achilles’ tendonitis that plagued him last September.
You remember last September right? It was the culmination of him going 10-1 with a 1.54 ERA to finish the season.
How can the rest of the staff get a little Achilles’ tendonitis?
It’s the curse of Cubs’ fans (and really, Chicago sports fans period) that we worry about things well before we need to. Some of you no doubt had trouble gagging down your Cocoa Pebbles this morning because you were fretting over Mark Prior’s lower leg.
You know when I’m going to worry about it? I’m going to worry about it if it ruptures and winds up like a window shade on his enormous calf. Until then? Pardon me if I’m underwhelmed.
Monty Stratton pitched on one leg fer chrissakes! I would think The Franchise could go out there in a wheelchair and three hit the Mets. Life’s too short to worry about stuff until it actually happens.
Snap out of it!
—
According to “federal investigators” in information that’s been leaked to the press, Barry Bonds received steroids and Human Growth Hormone from Balco. The investigators also claim that Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield were given steroids, too.
Somewhere, Skip Bayless just needed to towel off his pants.
I’m going to take an unpopular slant on this whole thing. If they find that Bonds or Giambi or Sheffield or Augie Ojeda or anybody did steroids prior to it being specifically outlawed by Major League Baseball, I could give a rat’s ass.
If you want to argue that it was illegal all along, then guys like Sammy Sosa and Maggs Ordonez and Vlad Guerrero who live in other countries during the winter could “legally” have loaded up on the ‘roids during the offseason and not violated anything.
If Barry Bonds wanted to shoot himself up with something that would make his testes shrivel up like raisins, that’s up to him.
I don’t care.
Check out some of the other luminairies mentioned in the report. Current KC catcher Benny Santiago, Sox outfielder Marvin Benard and former A’s infielder Randy Velarde.
Anyway, it’s still more fun to make fun of the budding romance between Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, anyway.
—
The Bears released both Kordell Stewart and Phillip Daniels yesterday. This is where I’m supposed to make the “What was your favorite part of the Kordell Stewart era?” joke. But we all remember what the best part of Kordell’s stay with the Bears was? Yesterday, when the Bears cut him.
I was talking with some guys who went to the Bears Fan Convention over the weekend and they were yukking it up about how both Terry Shea and Lovie Smith could bring the place to laughter by just mentioning “two yard slant passes.”
This from a pair of guys who think bringing Thomas Jones in to play running back is a good idea?
Look, I’m sure the “new” Bears offense will be much better than that piece of crap we watched for the past…well…20 years, but until you actually convert a third and anything, keep the funny stuff to yourself.
—
The BCS is going to add a fifth bowl to the Bowl Championship “Series.” First off, it’s never been a series. Every team plays one game and goes home. Secondly, this won’t fix the problem we had last year when we ended up with two national championships. Basically, all this does is give the BCS wonks another excuse to have people write big checks to them.
Nice work if you can get it.
—
EA Sports used to put out a title called Triple Play Baseball and the first couple of editions of it were pretty good, but then it became a cartoonish home run derby. So last year they scrapped it, and completely started over with a new game called MVP Baseball. It was just a huge improvement. But like any first year title it had some problems. The 2004 edition of the game comes out next Tuesday, and those of us who like the game have a dilemma.
Albert Pujols is on the box. Granted, being on any EA Sports box is a bad thing (the Madden curse is well documented). But here’s what I plan to do. I’m going to go buy the game, and at the checkout line I’m going to open the package, slip the cover art out of the PS2 case and rip the cover off of the instruction manual and leave both pictures of Albert crumpled up on the counter.
Seems pretty mature to me.
Among the improvements in this year’s game are:
– You’ll actually be able to tag guys out on close plays this year (the animation would take over last year and anything close ended up being safe)
– They added the minor leagues to the game. You’ll actually be able to play as any AAA or AA team in their real stadiums. This includes famous teams like the Durham Bulls, Iowa Cubs, Toledo Mud Hens, Buffalo Bisons, Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers.
Yeah, that was a long way to go for that joke, huh?
Oh, well.
—
So long, Phil Daniels. Good bye, Kordell. We won’t miss either one of you. Has anybody else noticed that Bryan Robinson keeps his job every year by taking a pay cut? At this rate, in 2007 he’s going to have the pay the Bears to play for them.
Mark Prior says his Achilles’ is no big deal. Tell that to the panicked Cubs fans.
There are only about 400,000 tickets left for the 81 home games on the Cubs schedule. Yikes.
Groucho is a big fan of Carlos Boozer. Oh, big whup.
See, those of in the know, know how great Kirk Hinrich is, and we’d never, ever trade him.
Jay Williams is walking without crutches and he can jump up and touch the net. That’s great! I can do both of those, too!
An extra game in the BCS is good for Notre Dame. Now, if they’ll just guarantee Notre Dame a spot in the game if they finish 3-8 or better.
If the Illini win their last two games, Bruce Weber will most likely be the coach of the year in the Big Ten. Skip Myslenski says that Bruce is doing a better job than Roy Williams or Bill Self’s hairpiece because he has the Illini in the hunt in the Big Ten while the Heels and Jayhawks are out of it in the ACC and Big XII. Skip kindly leaves out the fact that the Big Ten blows this year while the ACC and Big XII have seldom been better.
Illinois can win the Big Ten title on Sunday on CBS at Ohio State. Provided they win at Mackey Arena on Wednesday night.
Mike Kiley says the Cubs aren’t worried.
How obvious is it that Mariotti wrote this column before last night’s game and then had to put down the doughnut to rewrite part of it and not look like more of a tool than he already is?
The Cubs like Julian Martinez. At least they say they do.
Marvin Benard defended Barry yesterday. Looks a little less benevolent today.
The Wizard of Roz says nobody cares about steroids. He’s right.
We’ve known for a long time that Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Terrence Moore doesn’t know squat about baseball, and he seems hell bent on re-proving that. Today he writes that the Braves should trade for Junior Griffey and move Andruw Jones to right field. That’s brilliant, considering Jones might be the best defensive center fielder of all-time and Junior’s always hurt. Oh, and the Braves are broke, and if traded all of Junior’s deferred money kicks in immediately meaning he’s a $19 million a year player instead of a $10 million one. Other than that, this is genius!
Alfonso Soriano doesn’t want to play for the Mets. Me either.
The Brewers are closing in on a $32 million deal for Geoff Jenkins. I don’t want to point out why the Brewers suck, but Geoff will make the same amount of money Kerry Wood does. Wait, I guess I just did.
Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback looks at the top NFL free agents, and two of them are former NIU Huskies Justin McCareins and Ryan Diem.
I kept waiting for Charlize Theron to say “and I want to thank mom for blowing dad away” but she never did.
America’s finest news source with a columnist who says that if Al-Qaeda had a hockey team we’d “kick its ass!”
Ugh, Mike Murphy was in rare form this morning. He spent most of the time weeping over the Prior injury, and also did a bad segment where they classified players as "old school" or "new school". Murph concluded that Kerry Wood is a mixture of both becase he’s from Texas (old school) and because he wears his hat backwards sometimes (new). He went on to explain that Wood wearing his hat backwards puts him in touch with the hip-hop culture. Uh, I wore my hat backwards when I was in high school, but I never felt that it put me in touch with hip-hop culture. Maybe I’m just not as in touch with the kids as Murph.
Took me about nine seconds this morning to realize that Murph broke it down this way:
Old school – white
New school – black
Now there was some insightful radio.
Also, the 5 people who listened to Julie Swieca’s radio show and liked all wrote letters to Robert Feder today.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/feder/cst-fin-feder02.html
Man, the Spring Training games haven’t even started and the media wonks are trying to ruin this season for the Cubs and their fans. This hand-wringing over Prior’s "inflammation" is stupid. I’m waiting to hear that he is in danger of having his lower leg amputated.
Speaking of Cub fans, there are a lot of them who will be needing maps to find Wrigley this summer since it appears a bunch of bandwagon-jumpers (and scalpers_ have snapped up almost all the single game seats this year. Go on their website and try to find a decent pair of tickets to ANY remaining game. Ridiculous.
I would have written more letters to Rob Feder, but I couldn’t think of any more fake names.
I got 4 behind home plate for the second Cubs trip to Milwaukee. Better act fast.
Where’s my shoe deal at? According to the radio, I’m old school white
Hopefully this will remind Dusty that all his pitchers are indeed human.
But I’m with the rest of you, tell me if he pulled an ACL or broke his leg or something. Not an injury that is as minor as this seems to be.
Curious thing,
More people than ever have been calling and e-mailing me, wanting to know if I would be interested in taking any xtra tickets if they come up.
Moral: normal fans have been hoarding. In other years, if I wanted to go to 3 games, I would buy three sets of tix. This year, these same people are buying five sets, just in case.
And they say the economy sux….
Sloth,
Mike Murphy knows the truth. The reason tickets are selling so fast is because the Tribune is just pulling tickets to every game and saving them for their ticket brokerage.
It has nothing to do with the Cubs being popular.
Geoff’s deal is done:
http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/7136045
Hey, I’m in the Hall of Fame!
Actually, tickets are selling faster because more urban teens are getting interested in baseball. This is mainly due to me wearing my hat backwards.
Awww Crap! I’m outta time.
Happy Large Marge is Dead Day!
Who hoo!!
Just for the hell of it:
Martina Hingis!
I predicted this over the winter when an old girlfriend switched her allegiance from the Braves to the Cubs (she’s a FORMER girlfriend and a whacko). I hate fair-weather fans. Now guys like MC and me (true fans who wore blue in Busch stadium and were nearly assaulted by "knowledgeable baseball fans") can barely get tickets because of dipshit bandwagon North Side yuppies and The Trib. Fucked again by supply-and-demand. Story of my life.
On this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of road in a dense fog just like this. I saw the worst accident I ever seen. There was this sound, like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building… And when they pulled the driver’s body from the twisted, burning wreck. It looked like this…
Those are not my ‘roids, but I am on the ‘roids.
I think my wiring is all messed up…. Martina Hingis, has a fivehead the size of the Green Monster and she’s got bigger teeth than John Elway….But she’s still kinda hot.
I’d do Hingis.
Welcome to hell Marge! I thought some of your ideas were good too!
Hi Marge.
Sorry my brother Adolph introduced himself first, but I was busy being mouth-raped by a thorn-cocked devil.
Plus, I’m sure I have man-hands…
You’re welcome.
I used to date Sergio Garcia, but he didn’t like it when I put my man hands on his putter.
Plus, he has to shake his club like 40 times before he’s ready to put it to use.
Who has that kind of time?
I think Martina’s head is sexy. So is Tyra Banks’, Helen Hunt’s, and Uma Thurman’s too!
I enjoyed the Swiss Open, if you know what I mean.
But her balls were bigger than mine.
and hairy.
Poets…though liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions. by free online poker
– – – = = = H i ! _ G a y s _ T h a n k _ y o u _ f o r _ s u c h _ a n _ i n f o r m a t i v e _ w e b s i t e . . V e r i _ i n t e r e s t i n _ a n _ e a y _ t o _ c o m p r e h e n d – T h a n x ! – – = = A l l , N i c e _ s i t e , _ I _h a v e _ b e e n _ s e e i n g _ s o m e _ r e a l l y i n t e r e s t i n g _ c o m m e n t s . . . _ g o i n g _ t o _ t e l l _ m e _ f r i e n d _ l o u i s e _ a b o u t _ t h i s _ s i t e ! ! = = = – – –