Still Hibernating

That napping polar bear picture below was posted over a year ago, and I haven't updated since. Quite frankly, I'm glad I made the decision to leave last season alone. And by made the decision I mean I'm glad I was too lazy to ever get around to writing things.

This year is going to be different. I'm not saying the Cubs are going to do anything spectacular, I know better than that by now. When I started this blog I was a young, optimistic fan in the middle of college. Then in the dreadful October of 2007 I had the opportunity to experience my first Cubs playoff game. I was only able to get one ticket so I went alone to the third and final game of our series against the Diamondbacks.

This is where I lost my innocence

We never stood a chance.

The highlights of the game had nothing to do with the game itself. I sat next to an old couple who were in their regular season ticket seats, and the gentleman next to me was kind enough to buy me a beer considering I was technically under the drinking age at that point. Technically. After the game I hung around Wrigley, walked over and stood behind the home dugout and watched Steve Stone give an on the field report of our great failure. That's when I took the above picture with my phone, it has served as the wallpaper on there since.

Fast forward to today. I am finishing up graduate school, I am much more knowledgeable of good beer and can even buy my own! (For the record, Old Style is a godawful excuse for beer, traditions be damned). The past few years have turned me into a more pessimistic and cynical fan, not exactly great character traits to have in life but hopefully they will translate into more interesting writing this season. You can look forward to less waxing poetic and more biting criticism of the Ricketts family and their attempt to modernize this team.

Above all, in the words of the late host of the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Conan O'Brien: "Let's have fun on television". And by television I mean the Internet. And by have fun, I mean tell all your friends to come here so I feel like less of a failure.

Thank you.

Did I Miss Anything?

So...I haven't posted anything or made any changes to this site in nearly a year. I guess you could say I was hibernating. Which works out great, since I didn't have to write about the horror that was the playoffs. But I feel like it's time to start this thing up again, cause it's winter and I've got shit else to do. I've decided to get rid of my lame pseudonym, I was never really happy with it but I just couldn't come up with anything else. So hello, my name is Ben. I'm going to write things here. I hope you enjoy reading them. There's not going to be anything substantial in this post, I'm just using it to try and get myself back into the swing of things.

In case anyone does actually read this, I'm trying to come up with a new name for the blog to go along with this fresh start. Suggestions would be appreciated. I would hold a naming contest or something but I don't have any actual readers so that would fail horribly.

A-Rod Wants to Own AND Play For Your Team

The Cubs just destroyed the Pirates, virtually locking up the Central Division. But that's not the big news of the day.

ESPN reports that not only is it possible that Alex Rodriguez could play for the team next year, but he may receive an ownership stake as well in the potential contract. Read the full report here, and try not to wet yourself with excitement.

Should the Cubs Be Sold to a Man Who's Not a Cubs Fan?

If you've been reading this blog for a while, and by a while I mean before I started writing about pitchers doing comedic routines and my traffic started spiking, you have probably heard our feelings on Mark Cuban. RFS feels that he would magically help us win a World Series. I disagree. And as it turns out, so does Mike Downey.

After all of this bull that the Cubs won't have the wherewithal to increase payroll for a serious run at the pennant, there they were Monday, making a midsummer pitch to a catcher who makes about $13 million a year.

And after all of this bull that they need Cuban to buy this team and show them how things should be done, the Cubs have added a high-priced star to a roster that already is being paid hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, that same Mark Cuban who once said it killed him to sing "root, root, root for the Cubbies" at Wrigley Field and wished he could sing "Pirates" instead. That's the guy you want to own this team?

He goes on to explain his thoughts even more, but that's not important. What really matters is that someone who spent four years in college learning how to write and actually makes a living watching sports and writing about them agrees with little old me. In fact, he feels so strongly about it that he's willing to use a dirty word like "bull" to make his point. Before you know it, he'll be moving on to "bull-poo".

Also: Barry Bonds is still a huge pansy.

Sam Zell Can Go Screw Himself

As we reported earlier today, the Cubs had finalized a deal with the Marlins allowing us to finally dump Jacque Jones off on another team. rfs found details on the nearly finished deal and posted them here. Well, it turns out that incoming Tribune owner Sam Zell wanted nothing to do with the trading of someone so disliked that he has not had a single at-bat in 6 days.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the deal was complete and signed off on by the commissioner's office, and was going as planned until Mr. Zell, who is also a part owner of the White Sox whom the Cubs just swept, stepped in and vetoed the cash transaction that was included as part of the deal.

According to a high-ranking baseball official with direct knowledge of the talks, they even had a commitment from the Cubs' front office to cover roughly $6.6 million of the $7.2 million remaining on Jones' contract through next season.

The deal collapsed, however, when incoming Cubs owner Sam Zell – who is in the process of purchasing a controlling interest in the Tribune Co., which publishes the Sun-Sentinel – vetoed the hefty cash exchange.

The Sun-Sentinel also mentions that it was Zell who personally decided that the talks for Zambrano's long term deal should be delayed until "a later date".

I'm assuming that Mr. Zell is making decisions solely based on profit margins, but I don't see how having Jacque Jones and not having Zambrano locked up could possibly increase the value of your team. Whichever person or company this team gets sold to, it needs to be one that won't interfere with doing what will help us win. And it definitely can't be a Sox fan.

STB: Yo no hablo inglés.

I've spent most of the past week solely writing game summaries for RTWF. While I think these are important and useful, especially for people who didn't have time to watch the game or don't feel like reading the boring game wrap-ups by the MLB reporters, they're becoming repetitive for me. I try to spice things up by adding in something before the summary, but that only does so much. So as a result of this I'm going to try and write more about whatever I feel like, the more posts the better right? For now I'm just going to throw together some stories I've found. I call this STB. (Shenanigans, Tomfoolery, and Ballyhoo).

• The Cubs have a new Spanish version of their website. Maybe we should have had that when Sammy was around, so he could understand why everyone ended up hating him.
• SportsBiz has a list of the top eight candidates to buy the Cubs. I'm pulling for Colangelo or Levin. Colangelo has led the D-Backs to a World Series and the Suns are due for a championship soon. The man knows how to win. Levin has built an AHL team that's more successful and exciting than the Blackhawks. And of course it would be great if Bill Murray got in on this action. It won't be Mark Cuban though, he's too radical for the tradition of this team. We don't need his circus antics to win.
• The Knicks are complaining that the Bulls were running up the score the other night. The Bulls say they were just trying to do something nice for the fans. I won a Big N' Tasty at a game a couple of years ago when the Bulls won 100-98. Was an extremely exciting game. Never underestimate the power of free McDonald's. Eddy Curry, I'm ashamed that you don't realize this.
• Apparently some people think that the crack-addict story is actually a feel-good kind of thing. Some are actually calling it a good comeback story. I don't know if I agree, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion. And Hamilton does look pretty BA with all those tattoos. Still a crack head though.
• In case you've been living under a rock for the past week or so, a new word has been added to the blogger's dictionary. Schrutebag. I think it's safe to say that most of the bloggers out there do not like this man.
• ESPN fails at fantasy baseball. If you're using ESPN instead of Yahoo, and paying for it, you fail at life. Period.
• One last thing. The NHL Playoffs have started. I'm cheering for the Nashville Predators, based solely on the name of the stadium that they play in. There is still hope for hockey in my mind.

Well that was interesting. This was all haphazardly thrown together, we'll see what it evolves into in the future.

Who the Hell is William Marovitz?

He used to be a state senator and now he's a real estate developer. He's loaded and he, along with some of his buddies, wants to buy the Cubs.

Most importantly, his wife is Christie Hefner. Yes, that Hefner. The one that is the Chief Executive Officer of Playboy and daughter of The Legend.

I just wanted to take a moment to speculate what his ownership could possibly mean for the team:

1) New Food Vendors. -- Think Hooters, but with popcorn, crackerjacks, and cotton candy.

2) 'Adults Only' sections at the winter Cubs Conventions. -- Take a picture with Alfonso Soriano your favorite centerfold.

3) Playboy photo shoots at Wrigley. -- Nothing is hotter than a babe wearing a Cubs shirt that was made for a toddler, nothing except for when that shirt comes off and she's suddenly tanning nude with two of her friends in the bleachers.

You get the idea.

I say if we can't have Mark Cuban, this Willaim Marovitz is our guy.

-rfs