We've Been Plagiarized!

In the short, sad history of this blog (almost two whole months!), there hasn't been too terribly much to get excited about. The team hasn't been playing very well, and it's hard to get your foot solidly in the door when you're writing about a team that has hundreds of already established fan blogs. By far, the most exciting moment has been the writing of the Wade Miller Petition and being linked to from Deadspin for it. Easiest way to receive 1,000 instant hits from actual sports fans. It was a good day.

Earlier today, I was looking through our visitor statistics, and found that someone had found there way here from the phrase 'will ohman sucks'. This inspired me to find out where we stood on other interesting phrases. None of these searches use quotes.

• will ohman sucks: 6th
• scott eyre sucks: 3rd
• bob howry sucks: 5th
• ryan dempster sucks: 10th
• michael wuertz sucks: 4th (though we have never said this was true)
• carlos zambrano sucks: 14th

From what I can tell, most of these results stem from my co-writer having the name right field sucks. You can search for the name of nearly anyone on the Cubs with sucks, and we'll show up there, mainly because more legitimate sports sites don't use the word sucks. We stick out our tongue and make farting noises at them. Let's look at some of the results that don't involve sucking.

• raise the w flag: 1st (obviously)
• chicago cubs blog: unknown (really low)
• wade miller petition: 68th...

What? This seems really low, so I tried to figure out why. First of all, there have been many petitions involving people named Wade, and/or Miller. Also, many of the sites in front of us are actually sites linking to our petition. But then I took a closer look at the first result, a profile from gametrailers.com.

Recognize any of that text? Hmmm, it looks exactly like what I wrote, but 5 hours after the fact. This date marks an exciting moment in my sports blogging career, the first date something I wrote was directly plagiarized! Nowhere in his "blog entry" does it mention my website, anything alluding to the fact that he didn't write it, and it doesn't even have the first letter of the first word. I don't know whether to feel honored or incensed.

What I find the most interesting in all of this is that he posted this before Deadspin actually linked to me, but after I emailed them with a link to it. This means either he is one of about 5 people who actually read this regularly, or he's actually Will Leitch going by a clever handle that includes neither Will nor Leitch. By the way, apparently his name is actually pronounced leech, like the blood sucking parasite. Anyways, I've told GameTrailers about this through their "Report" button, which required me to register and is now the reason that I will shortly be receiving spam from them. So hopefully it won't be up their much longer.

Ummm, most of that didn't have anything to do with baseball. Sorry about that. Go Cubs.

See? It's Not Just Us.

Much has been made of the repeated failures of the Cubs bullpen this year. Scott Eyre, Will Ohman, Bob Howry, and all the rest of them have been utter disappointments, with a few exceptions. But last night's game showed that we're not the only team with issues in that area, as the Dodgers bullpen gave up 7 runs in 7 innings. This allowed the Cubs to storm to a, 8-5 lead, which lasted for all of an inning. The Cubs would not be shown up, however, as the Howry-Ohman-Guzman trifecta handed the Dodgers 4 runs and the victory in the 9th. Howry and Ohman were responsible for all 4 of those runs will getting no outs. All those kids in AAA Iowa better start packing their bags for the bigs.

Today was a much better day. Carlos Zambrano decided to leave as little as possible to the bullpen, going 7 and 2/3's innings before Lou decided enough was enough. Ohman came in at that point and got the last out, leaving Dempster to pick up the easy save in the 9th. Cubs win 4-2. Also, Ramirez and DeRosa got the Cubs their first Back-to-Back Jacks of the season, which I'm sure made Ron Santo a happy man.

Tomorrow is the rubber game, with the struggling Rich Hill facing off against Randy Wolf, who would have an awesome and terrifying name if his first name wasn't Randy. That being said, I like our chances.

At a Loss for Words

So many things about this game made me furiously angry that I'm basically out of things to say at this point. With the rain delay, completely incompetent relief pitching, and awful FOX announcers, there is too much to fit in here. So I'll be brief.

The color commentator in this game, Tim McCarver, was completely terrible. Apparently he has won a couple of Emmys for being a sports analyst, but apparently whoever voted for the Emmys was on crack. In the 6th inning, Alfonso Soriano steals 2nd base. This is notable because Soriano has been much more conservative on the basepaths ever since he strained his hamstring. Shortly thereafter Derrek Lee hits a single to center field, and Soriano is waved around third base. As he is rounding third, you can see him grimace in pain and he is running very awkwardly, almost with a limp. He is thrown out easily. For the next five minutes, Mr. McCarver tries to contemplate why in the world Soriano would run slowly on that play. Did he not feel like scoring a run? Was he just being lazy? Never once does he mention Soriano's recent injury and the fact that he was obviously in pain rounding third. No, McCarver instead believes that for some reason he just didn't feel like running on that play. I wanted to throw the TV out the window and listen to less moronic announcers on WGN Radio. Tim McCarver, whether you didn't know about Soriano's injury or you're just too dimwitted to make the connection, you sir are an idiot. Please go hang your head in shame.

Game Summary for May 12th, 2007

• Score: Cubs lose to the Phillies, 11-7.
  
• Player of the Game: Derrek Lee. Went 4-for-5 with two runs scored, though for some reason he is still completely incapable of hitting home runs.
• Subject of Lou's Wrath: Bob Howry. Worst. Outing. Ever.
  
• Comments: Lou, what the heck are you doing? When we're tied or have a tiny lead, you insist on bringing in pitcher like Eyre, Ohman, and Howry. Where's Michael Wuertz in these situations? What about Neal Cotts, or Rocky Cherry? Any of those would be better choices than what you're using. This is the one biggest thing I cannot understand about Lou's managing style at the moment. Wuertz and Cotts have ERAs of 1.62 and 1.98, respectively. Why don't they see any time in this game? Anyways, the three relievers we did use combined to give up 7 runs in 3 whole innings. Phenomenal.
  
• Magic Number: 136. The team is skidding out of control, and I don't know if Lou has what it takes to get us back on track at the moment. I'm starting to lose faith.

Ted Lilly tries to prevent the sweep while pitching against former Cub Jon Lieber tomorrow. Failure is not an option here. Just get it done.