Lou Piniella is Who We Thought He Was

As you've probably already heard, Lou finally went overboard today. I didn't watch the ejection as it happened, but luckily for all of us the Cubs have a video of it up on their website.

As you can see in the video, Angel Pagan was thrown out at third base and Lou was not happy with that call. So he went through all the usual motions, throwing his hat to the ground, kicking dirt on the umpire's shoes, kicking more dirt on the umpire's shoes, screaming in his face while shaking his head back and forth in a silly way, more dirt, kicking the hat, more dirt, lather, rinse, repeat. It made it a lot funnier that the umpire was about half a foot shorter than he was.

But kicking dirt on an umpire's shoes is a very serious offense, as crew chief Bruce Froemming pointed out:

"He made physical contact with the third-base umpire," Froemming told a pool reporter. "He made physical contact with his foot, and he kicked dirt on [Wegner] several times, and the rest was show-and-tell.

"The whole world saw what he did," Froemming said. "It was a terrible display of disrespect and [the MLB office in] New York will be called immediately, and we'll take it from there."

*gasp*. Go ahead and call New York then. People in NY understand the difference between kicking an umpire and kicking towards the umpire. If "physical contact" is all that needs to be made to get someone in trouble, then I am violating my couch right now. Go ahead and call New York about that, ya pansy.

Obviously Lou just needed to release some of his pent up rage about managing one of the most embarrassing teams in baseball. We've had much worse calls this year that he didn't even talk to the umpires for. He was just trying to show the team that he cares about winning as much as Big Z, hoping they would put together a decent effort. Not happening. Therefore I propose a plan. Piniella gets himself ejected every game until we win three games in a row. He gets some stress relief, the fans will love it, and the umpires can complain some more to get their names in the paper. Everybody wins!

It just keeps getting worse

6 in a row isn't bad...wait...yes it is.

Congrats to Lou on his first ejection as a Cub. Hopefully there's more where that came from.

Oh My Blanco!

Look what happens when Henry leaves. After Lou announced that Blanco was to be Big Z's personal catcher, the stud catcher used incredible foresight and got himself onto the 15-day DL before the altercation today.

It is clear that for Carlos' own safety, Henry the Wise chose to avoid an imminent confrontation with Zambrano, knowing full well that he would have beat the snot out of the ace pitcher had he been behind the plate for todays game.

Obviously, Henry Blanco is the glue that holds this team together, the fabric that weaves Cubs Nation into its glorious being. Let us all hope for his speedy recovery.

Barrett Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine

The one thing that has really irked me so far this year about the Cubs is that no one on the team seems to give a crap about how well we do. Lou Piniella is notorious for his managerial tirades, and so far he's hardly better than Dusty Baker in the showing emotion department. He even admits that the art of the ejection can be used effectively to prove a point. The point he needs to make now is that he's emotionally invested in this team, and I have yet to see that.

Enter Carlos Zambrano, one of the most emotional people in baseball. Things weren't going his way today, and he desperately needed to take out his rage on something. Most people would choose a punching bag. He chose Michael Barrett. I completely approve.

The ironic thing about all this is that the Cubs are trying their hardest to get everything together. A couple days ago they held a team meeting, that night they lost 9-0 to the Marlins. Today was Michael Barrett's first day back from a "mental health break", and he gets socked by Big Z. This probably happened because Barrett can't speak Spanish like Hank White, who's out with a herniated disk in his neck. Our team is doomed.

Oh and in the midst of all this, the Cubs lost 8-5 while giving up 20 hits. That's almost half as many as Michael Barrett has all year. I just hope that these rumbles in the dugout will make the season more exciting.

EDIT: Found a video over at Wrigleyville23.

You Don't Know What You Got 'Til It's Gone

Once upon a time, way back in 2005, the Cubs had Sergio Mitre. He wasn't very good, but he was a promising prospect. So of course before the 2006 season the Cubs traded him to the Marlins for a Juan Pierre. As things stand at the moment, the Cubs have neither Mitre nor Pierre, something that was painfully apparent last night when Mitre shredded the Cubs during 4 innings before leaving with cramps. But no matter who was pitching, the Cubs couldn't score anything en route to a 9-0 loss. I guess this just goes to show that meetings are a waste of time.

The Cubs have the day off today, which will hopefully give them time to find out where their talent and confidence is hiding. My guess is Larry Rothschild is sitting on it.

I guess it could be worse. Todd Wellemeyer could be your starting pitcher.

Friday's debacle starts at 1:20. See, I'm not even calling them games anymore, cause I know what they'll end up being. I'm psychic like that.

I've Almost Quit Caring

The Cubs lost their last two games to the Dodgers, 5-3 and 9-4. But you expected that to happen, and if you didn't, you need to wake up to reality. I keep thinking it's too early on to start declaring that the team is doomed, but then I realize that we just played our 50th game. That's almost a third of the way through the season people, and we're 5.5 behind the Brewers. Start worrying.

I don't feel like talking about the games, go read the summaries on ESPN if you really want to know what happened. But there are some other things that have caught my attention recently.

The first round of All-Star voting is in, and The $136 million man is in third place for outfield voting, proving that yes, it's just a glorified popularity contest. If you think Soriano is having a better year than Griffey, or Dunn, or even Geoff Jenkins, you are sadly mistaken. All Soriano has going for him right now is a .295 AVG. Then you add to that how Mets players have four of the positions locked up and there's some serious issues there. If you try to tell me with a straight face that David Wright is having a better year than Aramis Ramirez I will punch you right in the mouth. No joke.

Ever heard of Chuck Wasserstrom? What about Peter Chase? Me neither. Those two are the illustrious characters that the Cubs have chosen to be the faces of the organization for the First- Year Player Draft. Sending your Manager of Baseball Information doesn't seem like the best strategy, since that baseball information could be put to a better use teaching our bullpen how to throw strikes.

And in other breaking news, the Cubs need to work on their fundamentals. Wonder when they figured that out.

Tonight's game against the Marlins is at 7:05. Ted Lilly tries to continue his non-losing streak, which is apparently all our pitchers strive for now, against the suprisingly good Sergio Mitre. It seems like they always get better once they leave, doesn't it.

Consistency is Not Our Strongest Area

Rich Hill got the May monkey off his back and finally pitched a good game in this, the most dismal of months. He went 6 innings yesterday, giving up zero runs and returning to April form. But of course the Cubs relievers couldn't hold the Dodgers scoreless in their three innings of work, so a solo home run was given up in 8th inning to Andre Ethier after the Cubs scored a run of their own. This brought the game to the 11th inning, where we kept the Dodgers hitless, but gave up three walks and then beaned Juan Pierre in the leg. Great way to give away a ball game.

I just have a few questions.

• Why was Rich Hill taken out after 66 pitches Lou? I know he's not one of your ever so loved veterans, but come on! The kid finishes off the 6th inning with no runs and only 66 pitches, and the first thought that comes to your mind is 'Let's go to the bullpen'??
• Scott Eyre? He hasn't pitched since May 20th, and there's a good reason for that. So why do you put him in during a tie game? And Lou, why didn't you punch him in the face once he got back to the dugout?
• And finally, why do the Cubs always suck just enough to lose? Even Derrek Lee knows what I'm talking about.

"We need to be more consistent. It seems like every day, when we score eight runs, we give up nine, or when we score one, we give up two. We have to find a way to get over the hump. I don't have the answers. It's odd almost. We just come up short every day. We have to find a way to be the ones coming out on top."

My thoughts exactly Mr. Lee.

At the moment the Cubs are on their way to losing to the Florida Marlins, for whom it's been only about 3 years since they've completed dismantled and rebuilt their team. Here's some advice: completely forget the Cubs are even playing today, and go enjoy your Memorial Day. You'll thank me later.

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.

You Stay Classy, San Diego

San Diego is a pretty good team. Much better than we are at this point. This is why we dropped two out of three against them, which wasn't much of a surprise. On Wednesday night, Sean Marshall was absolutely stellar. Pitched 6 scoreless innings, and had one bad pitch in the 7th for a two run homer. Sadly, that was all the Padres needed as the Cubs decided that Marshall apparently doesn't deserve any run support. After all, that's the way it has always been, right? Len mentioned a statistic late in the game that I can't remember exactly, but I think it was that in Marshall's 10 major league losses, he has only received 10 runs of support from the offense. If he can hold the Padres to only two runs, we should win this game. No question.

Jason Marquis on Thursday gave up one run over 7 innings and still didn't get a win, though at least the Cubs did. This was due to a 9th inning rally that was started by DLee, and ended with the Cubs scoring 2 runs. Which is more than they scored all of the previous game. Sad. Howry was credited with the win in that one and Dempster received his 10th save of the season.

Tonight is a late late game, starting at 9:40 PM Central Time against the Dodgers. Ted Lilly is taking the mound for the Cubs, so we should have a decent shot at this. Just one question for everyone on the West Coast. Is it this bad for you when we have a 12:20 PM day game against a team like the Dodgers? Do you realize how hard it is to stay up until almost 1 in the AM to watch a baseball game. This one had better be exciting.

Rich Hill is Starting to Look Like, Well, Rich Hill

The Cubs are playing on the West Coast this week, meaning that their games will be ending somewhere in the vicinity of midnight, and I can do a write-up when I'm normally sitting at the computer anyways. Joy. Speaking of write-ups, there will be no more official Game Summary outline as their has been in the past. It was nice at first, but I got bored with it quickly and coming up with some of the items were a stretch. So I'm making an executive decision, the after game posts shall have no order at all. And I might even miss a few of them. Awesome.

So anyways, about the game. Rich Hill in May has posted a 5.87 ERA with a 1-3 record. In May of last year he had a 9.31 ERA with a 0-4 record. At least he's improving. As for tonight, he gave up 5 earned runs in 6 innings, including 4 homers. Not a pretty game. The Cubs played ugly baseball on the offensive side as well, as a Cliff Floyd RBI in the first was all they had in them.

On the upside though, Angel Guzman and Ryan Dempster both pitched, and neither gave up a run! Exciting! Even more so when you realize that Dempster is grooming Guzman to be his replacement. Dempster seems to think this will happen when he is moved to the rotation. I'm thinking it will be when Lou throws him out the door. We'll see who's right fairly soon I imagine.

Tomorrow is another late one at 9:05 PM, when Sean Marshall will make his 2007 debut. He shouldn't have too rough of a time, as the opposing pitcher is David Wells, who is but a shell of his former self. Marshall is the 7th starting pitcher the Cubs have used this year, compared to 8 they had used last year at this point. These uncanny similarities are not a good thing. Do us all a favor Sean, and keep the starting job this time around. And whatever you do, just keep Wade Miller away. Please.

The Sexiest Man in Baseball has Retired, and No One Gives a Crap

That's right people, I'm talking about Todd Walker. We here at RTWF annointed him the sexiest man in baseball way back when (meaning almost a full two months ago). The Shreveport Times of all places has announced that, at least for the moment, Mr. Walker has hung up the cleats. The Shreveport Times??!? I know this guy wasn't exactly a legend, but he was a good ballplayer and a huge star in college. And I know you don't have to be a Cubs fan who is comfortable with his sexuality to realize that he was, in fact, the greatest Man's Man to ever play the game. Just look at this 5 o'clock beard he was always sporting.

Apparently there was an article out about 10 days ago saying that Walker wouldn't accept a minor league assignment and would probably just give it up if cut by the A's. But why wasn't I told when it happened? I didn't even hear about it until I read something over at Ladies..., which with all due respect to them is not where I expect to hear about one of the greats retiring. It's a shame that this hasn't gotten more attention.

Todd Walker was batting .271 when this atrocity occurred. I think the Cubs could use him to replace that Mark DeRosa fella, who's sitting pretty at .239. Come on Hendry. A man like this is exactly what this team needs to add some spark.