Don’t get me wrong, if the Cubs have to participate in this interleague play stuff, playing teams like Boston and the Yankees is preferred. But honestly, I just don’t quite understand why playing the Red Sox is really that big of a deal?
I suppose, had Nomar’s crotch remained in one piece it would be different. But with Nomar showing up to get his ring in some “secret location” by an “unindentified member of the Red Sox front office” and Matt Clement sitting on the bench clutching his inhaler, this becomes the long-awaited return of Mark Bellhorn? Ooh, pinch me.
The Cubs are throwing out the only thing they have that consistently resembles a starting staff with Greggie, Carlos and the G-Unit going to the mound in the series. They catch the Red Sox without Curt Schilling (which must make the rest of the Red Sox happy–you don’t need that assbag until October) and with no place for the great Kevin Millar to play. (Play him in left, let Manny sit this one out.)
If the Cubs and Red Sox were in the same division, they’d be separated by one half of a game, which tells you just how disappointing the Red Sox have been, because we’ve been chronicling the Cubs disappointment on a nearly daily basis since about April 5th.
I do have some very good news for the Cubs. Reed Johnson does not play for the Red Sox and likely won’t be acquired by them during this series. My God, has one team ever made a guy look that great in two series that were two years apart? I’m babbling now. What’s new?
What really is going to be tedious about this weekend is that because Saturday’s game is on Fox and Sunday’s on ESPN we’re going to get lots of the rehashed nonsense about the curses. You know my feeling about the curse of the Cubs.
It has been their curse to have been run by complete nincompoops who fielded teams full of players with inadequate baseball skills for almost 100 years. That’s the Cubs’ curse. I’d like to pistol whip Steve Bartman as much as the next guy, but I don’t blame him for losing the NLCS. I just think that anybody who can’t figure out when to interfere with a foul ball (like when your team is batting) needs a beating. I also have never liked goats, but it has nothing to do with the Cubs not letting one into the bleachers for the 1945 World Series. Would you really want to root for a team that lets livestock roam the grandstand?
Likewise, the Red Sox weren’t cursed. They just hired less nincompooped guys to run their teams over the years and those guys hired players who could always choke at just the right time to keep them from winning. That eventually ended when they hired a nine-year old to run their team.
I never liked the Red Sox, and that was before I was forced to plunk down money for two tickets to see Jimmy Fallon in “Fever Pitch.” I didn’t identify, as a Cubs fan, with their plight. So I didn’t feel a real sense of bonding with them when they won the World Series last year. I was glad they won because they were playing the Cardinals. I would root for Al-Qaeda if they played the Cardinals.
So I hope the Cubs sweep them because frankly, the Cubs could use the wins, especially with the Yankees stumbling into St. Louis this weekend. Oh, and I guess it’ll be nice to see Bill Mueller again, though he still can’t spell his own name, and I hope he bashes his knee into the bricks chasing a foul ball. Otherwise it’s just three more games against guys in unfamiliar laundry. Whoopee!
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Rick Telander apparently quit his radio show last night and nobody knew he was going to. He announced his resignation from the Score, so according to the latest ratings, the only people who heard him were co-hosts Mike Mulligan and Doug Buffone and station manager Mitch Rosen. And we’re not sure about Buffone, because he was very likely asleep. Mulligan was probably eating, come to think of it, so the chewing probably drowned out Telander’s announcement. That just left Rosen, who likely got so excited about being out from under Telander’s contract that he very nearly drove off the road.
Here was the thing about the Telander Show. It was boring. He’s boring. He’s always been boring. The only time he was remotely palatable on a broadcast medium was when he was on the old Sportswriters on TV show with Bill Jauss, Bill Gleason and Ben Bentley, and even then, Jauss and Gleason never let him finish a sentence.
Telander’s columns for the Sun-Times are boring. He’s a feature writer, and a damn good one. In fact some of his Sports Illustrated pieces during his tenure there as a full-time employee of the magazine are among the best ever written. He can tell other’s people’s stories. He just doesn’t have any of his own.
I will give him credit for one thing. Unlike the Hot Dog Boy and Mariotti, Telander didn’t just scream and yell. Well, except for the time last spring when he and Carol Slezak both crapped their pants in columns for about a week straight after the guy got shot near Wrigley.
But you can express your personality without yelling, or saying stupid and obviously wrong things just to get a reaction. The problem is, Telander will have to actually develop a personality before he can express one.
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Dee Brown’s mother is now saying that Dee and Bruce Weber never had a problem about Bruce’s alleged “lack of support” for Dee’s pipedream of entering this month’s NBA Draft. She says that now because Dee broke his foot and would likely not get drafted even if he still left his name in the mix. Suddenly, she’s OK with Weber’s position, both public and private on Dee’s desire to go pro. Funny how that works.
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With the Cubs off and very few games on the MLB slate last night there was no reason not to watch game one of the NBA Finals. Well, there was one. The game sucked.
Look, I can appreciate all styles of basketball. I know good defense when I see it and I know bad offense when I see it and last night was more the latter than the former. It didn’t help the cause that the local ABC affiliate never turned on the HD feed, either. I’m just glad I missed any (if there were any) Eva Longoria sightings because regular defintion does not do that woman justice. Hello!
The Spurs are clearly a better team than Detroit, and I know that Detroit needs to slow the game down and rough it up to have a chance. But can you really laud Larry Brown’s coaching effort when he can’t keep any kind of control over his own players? Ben Wallace’s headband tossing, hissy fit should have gotten him tossed out of the game. You expected to see Larry come over and tell Ben to calm down. Instead he stood there hurling profanities at the refs. Maybe Larry was hoping he could get tossed so he could sit in the locker room and watch an ER rerun. I don’t know. But the Pistons lost one game in the Eastern Conference Finals because they couldn’t keep their composure and last night was more of the same. It’s not like they have a history of this kind of thing. It’s not like the ugliest brawl in NBA history happened on their home court or anything…oh, wait. I’m not saying that Ben Wallace’s ‘T’ cost them the game. I just think it’s a poor strategy on Brown’s part to let his players go nutty on the court. They need to egg the Spurs on to behavior like that. They can’t afford to give up the free throws.
By the way, since Larry Brown looks just like Stan Roper, wouldn’t it be great if the guy they hire to coach the team next year looked just like Ralph Furley?
“‘Honey, we’re all scared to death. I guess that’s the price we pay for living in a world where we sell cemetery plots on billboards by the freeway and all the prices end in 99 cents. What you gotta do is just keep laughing.'”
Is it sad that I actually remember the episode this dialogue is from?
74/09/27
THE COUNTESS
T: Stephen J. Cannell [3]
S: John Thomas James [4]
D: Russ Mayberry [1]
After doing his best to discourage a socialite’s blackmailer, Rockford
finds himself the leading suspect when the extortionist is murdered.
(Becker, Beth, Diehl–first appearance)
My life is a sad one.
“This is a league where there’s very good pitching, different from the national league.” I will make up any exscuse for sucking, won’t I ? Cuz Prior, Z, Maddux, Hudson, Clemens, Oswalt, Pedro, Myers, Beckett, Burnett, Peavy, Eaton, Hernandez, Schmidt, etc… I could obviously handle better. Instead of thanking my lucky stars that if I work a count for once, I’ll see 2 hanging breaking balls, I’ll just continue to be a complete assbag.
Anybody got a cigarette ?
“I would root for Al-Qaeda if they played the Cardinals”…wait’ll that done drrn Patriot Act comes and gets you, feller. Have a nice time in Cuba with the rest of y’all Muslim assholes.
“I’m ghetto. I just go against the rules sometimes. Bottom line is, I’ma always be ghetto. As long as there’s a ghetto, I’ma be ghetto.â€Â
This series should be interesting between two teams that have a combined one World Series between them in the last (what seems like 200 years.)
It really sucks to see the likes of Clement, Bellhorn, and Mueller come back to Wrigley Field. Clement was suck pussy at the end of last season you just wished his mug was at a carnival in the form of a bunching bag. Then you have the two wastes of Bellhorn and Mueller who seem to be chopping wood at the plate when they were Cubs. These three guys personify what a former Cub is.
It would be nice to take 2 out of 3 from these Red Sox. With this lackluster Cub offense, the pitching staff will have to hold firm. I like our chances though, especially with the Z-Man and G-Unit. Maddux could be a factor too. He likes to pitch in high profile games that these. A sweep would be nice to get this team on a roll again.
GO CUBS!
Baker Basher
Fact is, Cardinal Fans, is that I’m a Cubs fan too. And after our military is done mopping up Iraq, we’re going to send them to beautify southwest Illinois and Missouri.
Fuck you, Basher! I was hitting .330 or something when I shattered my knee at the Urinal Cake in 2001. It took me awhile to get back to normal. The 2002 season was a waste of time anyway.
Even worse for me, the tortured fan: Ashcroft’s gotta be an StL (not a Royals) guy.
Besides, how many Cubs have won a batting title recently ? Basher, you’re a retard. My entire career, I was on teams where my job was basically to be a situational hitter, you know, get guys over, make productive outs, sac bunts, when I went to Boston, they let me rake away. I am a nice guy and a professional, but like Assface Schilling and Pansy Clement, you get tired of mr thanking Jebus for everything.
I meant “my” up there, sorry, I am from Mizzurah ya’ know…we’re…we’re not that bright down there.
Uh, Bill, it’s great that you won a batting title, but which one of these is not like the other?
.268
.295
.266
.326
.283
.271
And since when does .326 win the batting title in the American League? Did somebody kidnap Ichiro that year?
I’m tired of being Baker Basher’s bunching bag.
And for what? Was there any doubt that winning the series or sweeping would be nice? Or that Maddux may be a factor in the game that he pitches? Or that players who used to be on the Cubs personify what a former Cub is?
Where’s all the insight, such as the meaning of FDF?
I also forgot to link to this:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/sports/cst-spt-kiley10.html
Man, how obvious does something have to be that even Kiley figures it out.
I always assumed that FDF means F#$% Diabetes Forever.
Am I wrong?
I’ve never–even as a kid–been an autograph seeker, so maybe I’ve got an unusual take, here but that asswipe Blittstein whose angry little “View From a Fan” rant was somehow deemed worthy of being published by chicagosports.com is, simply put, a tool.
He can bitch and moan about how players have changed through the times, but so have autograph-seekers. Most kids don’t value the autograph as much as it’s monetary worth. It’s basically the same mindset as scalpers–the player provides all of the talent, and maybe the fan can piggyback on it for a few bucks. Even if that’s not his kid’s intention, the father should be ashamed of himself for placing so much emphasis on harassing a pro athlete to sign his friggin’ name on a David Berg hot dog wrapper..
I think Patterson’s grown into a punk-ass jerkoff for many reasons, but I hardly find fault with him not giving an autograph to some spoiled wuss of a kid and his asshat father.
Plus, isn’t it possible he simply forogt anyway?
Great dose BTW Andy. you’re spot on with Telander. He WAS awesome at SI and conversely horrible at the Sun-Times.
Go Cubs.
The issue with the “View from a whinner” isn’t the writer, it’s that the Trib is now starting to bash Korey.
You bunch of no-brained dorks! Don’t you think I’ve learned ANYTHING since I’ve been in pro ball. Believe me, man, I’ve learned from the best! I didn’t sign for that kid ‘cuz he’s white! Now fuck off, white boy!
Telander’s books are mighty fine. The bit in “Heaven Is a Playground,” about the kids riding around in a car after playing, knees and cartilige cracking every time they extended their legs … great stuff.
Telander hits the mark every so often at the Sun-Times, unfortunately it’s not often enough to make reading his columns a habit. I mean, the last column I can remember offhand liking from Rick (though I’m sure there have been some since then) was from 1997.
Didn’t Rick say he was worried about turning into me or something?
Seabiscuit’s Jockey was on The Score this morning and he said that scalpers were only getting face value or a little above for tickets at Wrigley today. Maybe the bastards will elarn and not block up the computers and pay homeless people to stand in lint next year. I hope the jagoffs take a bath on these tickets.
I don’t know about you Mitch, but Rick’s ham-handed, “woe-is-our-present-civilization” moralist crap had a lot of Chicagoans remembering my syrupy, phony shtick that I was able to make a fat living off of for 3 decades before I actually, you know, proved to be the type of creep that I had been wrining my hands about daily.
Death to the infidels. And by infidels we mean the Satanic Fowl and the BoSox.
Most days I ride my bike into work taking Clark Street all the way downtown. So naturally, I pass the ballpark whenever I ride (I also pass Chuck’s favorite hot dog stand at Wrightwood further down, but I digress)
Around 7:30 in the morning, the time I’m normally passing the park, there’s never anything unusual to notice, save for a few people (presumably out-of-towners) standing around, waiting for the box office to open to snag a ticket for that day’s game.
Today? At around 8:00, there was a line of people stretching from the ticket window, ALL THE WAY DOWN toward Sheffield. I couldn’t see exactly where the line ended but it was just madness. I’ve never seen anything close to it. I can’t imagine there would be many tickets available.
How many of us did you see, Mike D. ? We have a huge and annoying bandwagon now.
I was so stunned by the sheer quantity of people that I didn’t bother to notice if they were from Bahstun, although that was probably it.
Nice research by the glorified white trash of New England, if that’s who it was. Like you can just walk up and get a ticket. They’re about 71 blocks north of where they should be if that’s their mindset.
the line for tickets was about 25 when I left a nearby drinking establishment at around 2am. most of them were passed out in chairs.
sick of all the AL teams whining about not being able to use their designated non-fielder in NL parks?
And now we wanna hand it off to the Silkman, Dan Roan. Silkman…yes.
Mike D., et. al.  The folks in line were all covered by WGN morning news at 6 a.m. this morning. Andy likely didn’t see it because he didn’t bother to get “up” since Robin Baumgartner was on vacation. But, the majority of fans in line were [b]Cubs[/b] fans. Many slept out there since 10 p.m. Thursday night, hoping for SRO or turn-ins, I guess.
While I hate Boston fans as much as Cards and Yankees fans, it was the white trash of Cubville that populated the line, as evidenced by their Cub hats. Only one Boston fan was in evidence and he did get interviewed. Way to paint it with a broad brush of enemy fan hate.
I think that those of us who use the curse to explain 97 years of futility ought to explain to the rest of us how 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935 and 1938 came about? Since the Billy Goat didn’t try to “horn in” to Wrigley Field until the Series in 1945, were the Cubs suffering from the “Curse of Anticipation of the Billy Goat” in those futile years?
Silkman, have you seen my dettached retina?
If you find it, put it on the board…..YES!
Stew–
The Cubs hold the record with 7 consecutive WS LOSSES. They share it with the Dodgers-ahem, the BROOKLYN Dodgers–and the difference is the Cubs’ streak is CURRENT. The Dodgers snapped theirs in ’55.
Betcha your Jayson Starks and Peter Gammons and your merry little band of Chicago-area lazy hacks have no idea that once the Cubs–God forbid– ever do make it back the the WS, that they’ll have THAT particular piece of infamy–much darker than a 6-decade appearance drought– to deal with
Hey Waiting In Line–so I was painting with a broad brush. Guilty as charged. Oh well. It’s still the height of assclwonery to think you can be the 134th person and line and actually get an over-the-counter ticket to the game. When you get 3 million peopel to a park that seats 38,000, you’ll have plenty of embarssing fools. And they were standing at the back of that line this morning.
Agreed, Mike D. It’s ridiculous, especially since the line was populated with Cubs fans. Have they been drunk since February when the tickets were sold out in one day? I guess I don’t need an answer to that… If you weren’t in the first 10 in line, what’s the point? Like the first 10 aren’t going to buy the max amount, either in turned-in tickets or SRO’s. Fools.
Exist for just about every Cubs game on the schedule. If you call 773-404-CUBS or check the Internet, you can get decent seats that are either unused sponsor seats or VIP seats, or season-ticket holder tradeins.
I suck.
from KD today, we’re blessed (although none of them were nba related).
Must be procrastinating though, mate?
what the hell?
I thought this was the line to see Kung Fu Hustle!
I’m tired of being your bunching bag…