Category: Baseball

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Baseball Sports

Be Careful What You Wish For

Of all the things that have happened in 2021, what I’m about to bitch about is by far the least important crisis, if one can even call it that.

With legal access to abortion dying overnight in Texas, the flooding decimating the East Coast from a not-hurricane or even a tropical fucking depression (coupled with the death of an infrastructure bill that could have alleviated some of those issues thanks to a Great Value anime cosplayer and a West Virginian dinosaur), the horrifying conclusion to 20 years of an imperialism-fueled quagmire now resulting in the foremost humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the continuing shitshow that is the COVID-19 Pandemic thanks to motherfuckers in states like my very own Georgia, the topic of this rant which I’m about to vomit out onto this blog pales significantly in comparison. But thanks to said pandemic and the moral inability of me to venture out into COVIDia like a brainless halfwit zombie à la Walking Dead, I have dedicated far too much of my time to lamenting the end of an era that I truly did not cherish enough when it was happening in real time.

A few months back (this might as well have been years at this point), I wrote the following words after my beloved Chicago Cubs were ousted from the 2020 “playoffs”:

The club’s two biggest sparkplugs, Javier Baez and Willson Contreras, at times seemed unfit to play Double-A let alone the show. Their combined postseason output of 2-for-12, one walk, a HBP and 5 strikeouts (all Baez with the last one being a called third following a Heyward leadoff double in the 9th inning) suggests that perhaps they need new approaches at the plate or new jerseys in a different organization…

Never in my wildest dreams did I actually think the Cubs would literally back up the truck in 2021 – and at one point, it truly looked like this team would compete in spite of Jed Hoyer’s designed chaos.

When they traded Yu Darvish for a collection of teenagers and the world’s most useless Zach, Hoyer condemned this team to a slow, painful death. The rotation was a sieve without a worthwhile ace captaining the proverbial ship, and thanks to a series of lowball offers to the three most important remaining members of the 2016 squad, it was inevitable that the Cubs were going to lose some combination of Javier Baez, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo.

They limped out of April with a repulsive record and awful offensive numbers heading into May before becoming the hottest team in baseball. They were hitting. They were scoring runs. The starters were doing just well enough to win thanks in most part to the lights-out bullpen trio of Andrew Chafin, Ryan Tepera, and the resurgent Craig Kimbrel.

And then June came around and……..they died.

The team fucking died.

A back-breaking 11-game losing streak sunk the team’s fleeting playoff hopes, and the entirety of July was one slow death march to deadline day.

It happened in stages. First came Joc Pederson. The former Dodger slugger signed a one-year deal with his hometown club before being unceremoniously dumped onto the laps of the Atlanta Braves (Cobb County to be technical, but you get the picture). Next came Chafin, sent packing to the A’s for a couple of…let’s just say he was traded. Then Tepera was sent across town to the White Sox in a rare crosstown deal that wouldn’t be the last.

And then, on an unassuming afternoon in the middle of a conversation with my mother on the couch, I got a text message from my dad that shattered my world.

Anthony Rizzo to the Yankees.

In that moment, I was absolutely stunned. Yes, the impasse he reached with the front office was nothing to ignore, but would they REALLY send the face of the team since 2012 out of town with all the pomp and circumstance of an Irish goodbye?

Well, yeah, pretty much.

The next day, I went shopping for a pair of shoes when the Bryant and Baez trades went down. Kimbrel was dealt to the South Side, and in one fell swoop, the greatest era of Cubs baseball died a pitiful and worthless death.

The pit in my stomach grew over the next few hours as I turned 29.

While I was on the treadmill getting in my 10,000 steps for the day, I couldn’t help but be fucking infuriated with the way this all had gone down. Rizzo and Bryant didn’t even get one last game in front of the Wrigley crowd before being peaced out.

The prospects they got back are all, best-case scenario, five years away from the major league club. And while I was trying to find like-minded individuals who were as devastated and forlorn about the impending future futility we are already returning to in Wrigleyville, I was instead greeted with a bunch of dipshits participating in what can only be described as the world’s largest circle jerk.

Since the deadline, Cubs fans online have done nothing but fawn over the newcomers. They’re celebrating the organization fielding a top-10 farm system like they did in the halcyon days of the 2012 Theo Epstein rebuild. They excitedly ring the bells of a bunch of nameless teenagers I don’t care to learn about nor study other than what’s regurgitated by the excited minor league pundits on Bleed Cubbie Blue and Bleacher Nation. Apparently, they’ve been bored by the lack of talent in the minors for the past five years that now it’s just great for them to be watching fresh new faces with glowing scouting reports once you get past the fact that all are either too young to legally get a fucking drink or are currently nursing a dead shoulder or some other “minor setbacks” like being unable to fucking hit a breaking ball.

I guess competitive MLB competition became such a bore for these people that they needed something NEW and EXCITING.

Nick Madrigal, considered the pièce de résistance of the Kimbrel deal, tore his hamstring in June, and won’t be playing with the Cubs until G-d knows when because he TORE his FUCKING HAMSTRING (the White Sox said he’d be ready by Spring Training). Bear in mind that one of Madrigal’s greatest assets is his speed, and before he was injured, he was considered a “fine, not great” infielder with concerns about his ability at the major league level. Also bear in mind that when that phrase is thrown at any infield prospect, it usually applies to an up-and-coming shortstop, the more difficult of the middle infield positions. They were saying this about Madrigal as a second baseman. And as a former (barely amateur) second baseman myself, I can personally proclaim that you must have to suck an exorbitant amount of dick defensively for baseball-knowers to look at you as a second baseman and think, “Meh, he’s not very good”.

Admittedly, even if my knuckle-dragging take on Madrigal, a highly-regarded prospect since he was drafted fourth overall in 2018, turns out to be completely off-base, let’s not forget that it was a torn hamstring that plagued Ken Griffey Jr. for the remainder of his illustrious career. Thankfully for Nick, he’s just 24 whereas Junior was 31 when he suffered the first of two hamstring tears that literally hamstrung him till the very end. And if history serves as a guide for what can happen in the future, well, it’s not great.

Don’t tell that to Cubs fans already clamoring amongst themselves that this won’t be a five-year rebuild like before.

Why, just ask Tom Ricketts! The man who personally stopped spending money on this team after 2018 sent out a long bullshit letter to the season-ticket holders assuring them that a good, competitive team would soon be coming back to Wrigley Field.

Never mind that officials around Ricketts have reportedly blabbed to Phil Rogers that not only is that bullshit, but that he intends to ride out the next three years with this collection of retreads and fringe AAA doofuses that weren’t good enough to be in professional baseball but will almost certainly make it to Chicago because Tommy Nebraska won’t put any actual investment into the team.

Like any good Republican leader, Ricketts has decided that in order to improve the situation, he will not spend any money until the team pulls itself up by the bootstraps and turns the tide of suck.

In other words, this is it.

This is the plan.

Let 29-year-old “rookies” who weren’t good enough to crack their respective previous organizations populate the Cubs roster and then watch them beat up on the Tigers, Reds, Twins, Pirates, and the phony-ass Milwaukee Brewers and then watch as one fucking nobody inexplicably wins NL Rookie of the Month and then bequeath him the cute nickname of Frank The Tank.

And then let the fanbase do the rest.

While Javy is currently getting ostracized by vengeful and miserable New York fans known for their shall we say acerbic attitudes towards anyone who isn’t a bonafide star for their team, delirious Cubs fans can’t wait to fellate this new band of little engines who couldn’t as they hit the ball slightly better than the three guys who, you know, won a fucking World Series for this carcass of a franchise just five years ago.

Gone are those selfish prima donnas who dared to ask for a raise even though their GQP-loving owner all but demanded they take insulting “offers” which amounted to unrealistic hometown discounts even by greedy sports owner standards. And in their place are a collection of never-wases getting the chance to be real boys!

And Cubs fans couldn’t be happier.

So while I rail against this group of nobodies like an insane person for apparently having grown accustomed to watching a not-shitty ballclub try to win championships, Cubs fans were apparently just waiting so long to be loveable losers once more.

And try as I have to ignore this team, it doesn’t help when you live with a true believer. No, Dad’s not happy with the team. He won’t even go to Wrigley until our shithead owner decides he doesn’t want to be a shithead owner anymore (which is pretty much never gonna be the case at this point). But even as he advocates for a Blackhawks-esque boycott, he still watches this fucking team.

And sadly, he’s not alone. The only difference between my father, a smart man, and every other Cubs fan with Stockholm Syndrome is they are joyfully watching a dead team in a dead season win meaningless games with utterly useless “baseball players”. Thus, this collection of shit-eating yokels, hicks and nimrods will be the single reason that Ricketts will get away with conning this idiotic fanbase into giving his fuckhole organization unearned attention.

Yes, I am a joyless piece of shit for ragging on underdogs like Frank Schwindel and Rafael Ortega finally getting their chances.

But I don’t care.

I don’t care about a bunch of fleeting September streakers who will be DFA’d before next April when they prove they cannot hit against top-tier pitchers and real major leaguers.

Against my better judgement, I’ve willfully watched these motherfuckers for the better part of 29 years. I have wasted my youth and my energy on this deadbeat baseball team that takes 108 years between winning World Series because the owner spends money on the park but not on the roster. I have at this point chosen to actively NOT WATCH this team while simultaneously trolling the comments section to rag on people who choose to spend their time watching this colostomy bag when the season will be over in a few weeks. In my fairness though, I like reading about that particular website’s coverage of the Bears and Bulls, two other hapless franchises whom I’ll more than likely be bitching about (again) in a couple weeks’ time. At this point, it’s my choice and I probably should not let them piss me off this much. Certainly my dog would appreciate it if I’d stop blowing up every time I see those cocksuckers on TV the very few times my father, currently battling a literal fucking kidney stone, DARES to watch his favorite team IN HIS OWN HOUSE!

I don’t have to ask Reddit if I’m the asshole, because I readily acknowledge that yes, I AM THE ASSHOLE HERE!

With that all being said, I’m allowed.

I’m allowed to be blindingly enraged with my all-time favorite sports team for taking the one champion I’ve ever seen in 29 years, mismanage the shit out of it with dipshit trades and inexplicably awful free agency signings, refuse to fix the actual problems plaguing this team, and then scrapping it like a fucking dilapidated warship.

But as I’ve already pointed out about 20 paragraphs ago, I asked for this.

When I wrote that piece in October, I LITERALLY wrote this fucking phrase:

The Cubs need to shed so much of this roster while also adding just the right number of contact-first hitters, fire-balling pitchers all while balancing the budget to re-sign the right guys. And as of this moment, I couldn’t tell you who those people even are.

As armchair GM, that’s way above my pay grade.

So, my message to any Cubs fan that just so happens upon this blog is the same thing I’m telling myself now as I look into the mirror 11 months after the fact:

“Be careful what you wish for.”

You may be tempted to be thrilled about this team’s chances in 2023 with Pete Crow-Armstrong’s one good arm and Alex Canario’s .247 batting average in Single-A, and drool over the prospect of a bunch of high schoolers one day growing up to be the nExt GrEaT cUbS RoStEr, a phrase that I once actually read and immediately made me want to drink bleach.

Before you even dare give that piece of shit a dollar again, just consider that maybe Tommy and Fam should pull themselves up by their five-billion-dollar golden parachute and make this team competitive.

Because if they aren’t willing to invest in the on-field product, don’t be surprised if you die before the next great Cubs roster is assembled.

Categories
Baseball

Backup The Truck

The last pitch of the 2020 season fittingly sails by the flailing bat of long-past-prime Jason Kipnis’s bat, ending the strangest yet most predictable season in recent Cubs memory.

A team that squandered scoring chances with regularity swept at home by a franchise that hadn’t seen playoff baseball since the year American Idiot saturated the airwaves, Saddam Hussein had just been deposed, and the Cubs hadn’t won a pennant in 58 years.

Fast-forward to the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, a disease currently – and quite literally – plaguing the sitting President of the United States, has left over 210,000 Americans dead, and four years since the Cubs’ greatest franchise moment, and Brandon Fucking Kintzler strikes out the side to end the last season the 2016 core will likely stay intact.

Where they go from here is anyone’s guess. 2016 NL MVP Kris Bryant wants to get paid but has struggled with injuries and consistent hitting. Kyle Schwarber, the folk hero of the team who’d come back from an ACL tear in April to DH for the Cubs on the road in Cleveland, finished the year hitting 11 HR’s in 60 games………..but hitting .188 with 66 strikeouts, or roughly one K per game.

Jon Lester looked over the hill for the majority of his season, struggling to a 5.16 ERA in 12 starts. He’s a free agent, 36, and not worth even a one-year deal.

Yu Darvish should win the Cy Young award this year but won’t because racism.

Kyle Hendricks LOOKED like he was gonna have a Cy Young season until he began serving up homers with reliable regularity.

Jeremy Jeffress already far surpassed anyone’s expectations having wresting away the closer role from Craig Kimbrel (though that wasn’t much of a struggle for JJ).

Kimbrel, meanwhile, finally just started to look like a semblance of his former dominant self. But is his contract worth keeping on the books? Also, if it isn’t, who the hell would take him?

The club’s two biggest sparkplugs, Javier Baez and Willson Contreras, at times seemed unfit to play Double-A let alone the show. Their combined postseason output of 2-for-12, one walk, a HBP and 5 strikeouts (all Baez with the last one being a called third following a Heyward leadoff double in the 9th inning) suggests that perhaps they need new approaches at the plate or new jerseys in a different organization. I personally love both Willy and Javy, but their fucking mishaps in the box and this past season in the field are tiresome and frankly intolerable.

Adbert Alzolay should be in the rotation if not perhaps the back-end of the bullpen, and the team ought to find some pitchers who can throw 100+. But with Theo Epstein now being a free agent, who on Earth knows what direction things will go.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ve no patience. A team that walked away with the pennant and eked out one of the most exhilarating come-from-behind World Series triumphs in the game’s history is now just that – history.

The Cubs need to shed so much of this roster while also adding just the right number of contact-first hitters, fire-balling pitchers all while balancing the budget to re-sign the right guys. And as of this moment, I couldn’t tell you who those people even are.

As armchair GM, that’s way above my pay grade.

Play that lonesome loser’s tune.

Categories
Baseball Blogs Sports

2020 Chicago Cubs Preview: Will They Or Won’t They (Suck)?

HOLY SHIT, it’s NOT POLITICS!
AND, a Marquee that WORKS!

Are the Cubs going to be good this year?

Honestly, I’m asking all six of you, dear readers. I’m perplexed as to where the floor and ceiling sits for this 2020 iteration.

If you’d told me that the Ricketts were gonna cry living-on-the-street poor exactly one year after doing literally the same goddamn thing the previous winter, I’d have naively told you “Nuh-uh, these guys?! They’re a bit cheap lately, but they’re not Tribune cheap AND stupid!”

That statement would have aged so well – like a fine wine in a rotten cask surrounded by cow shit in the middle of an Indiana landfill.

Where was I? Ah, right, does this team suck or not?

Welp, let’s look at the “moves” they made this offseason.

Gone are Pedro Strop, Brandon Kintzler, Steve Cishek, Cole Hamels, five weeks of Derek Holland, two minutes of David Phelps, a literal cup of tea with Tony Barnette, Ben Zobrist’s reanimated corpse, and a wife-beating bag of stale toenail clippings in Addison Russell, whom the Cubs inexplicably paid $3.4 million for a grand total of 82 games, a whopping .237/.308/.391 line, 9 home runs, and 23 RBI. Oh, but at least he had a .995 fielding percentage in 63 games at second base. Useful!

Did I mention that they also let Nick Castellanos, their best trade-deadline pickup since arguably Aramis Ramirez, sign with a division rival despite said pickup dragging out his free agency in the hopes that the team would magically clear enough payroll to re-sign him? Because that happened, too.

How did the Cubs combat these significant losses in the lineup and bullpen, you ask?

They didn’t.

Their most noteworthy additions of the offseason were a cadre of camp invitations for mostly minor league fodder. Included in this group are an over-the-hill and so far uninspiring Jason Kipnis, and Brandon Morrow – the team’s former closer who has battled seemingly every ailment but the coronavirus.

Their official acquisitions this year include free agent signees the likes of formerly-reliable-Brewers-reliever-turned-walking-fucksplosion Jeremy Jeffress, a formerly well-established light-hitting backup outfielder who sat out all of 2019 recovering from a catastrophic knee injury in Steven Souza Jr., a career meh guy consigned to the Canadian dustbin of forgotten baseball in Ryan Tepera, and the 2019 Braves’ worst reliever with a minimum of 25 appearances, Dan Winkler.

While the Yankees snagged Gerrit Cole, the Angels landed Anthony Rendon, and the Dodgers acquired Mookie Betts, the Cubs traded for a guy who hasn’t pitched in the Majors for three years.

The main storyline for the Cubs this offseason concerned their apparently fractured relationship with former MVP Kris Bryant, inspiring numerous think pieces about the Cubs’ wish to shed his contract before attempting to negotiate with his agent, part-time player rep and full-time hijacker of free agency Scott Boras. Also, the team was allegedly looking to ship out Willson Contreras for reasons probably involving some analytical bullshit about pitch framing or G-d knows what.

Add first-time manager, 2016 folk hero, and former Dancing With The Stars’ contestant David Ross to the mix, paired with the team’s shiny brandy-dandy new specially-dedicated and unviewable TV network, and voila!
*chef kisses*

If I had to summarize my thoughts in one GIF, it’d be this;

After a season in which the team failed to make the playoffs for the first time in 5 years due to injuries and inconsistency from veterans and rookies alike, culminating in an insultingly atrocious, fate-sealing 9-game losing streak in the final week of play, you’d like to see a little bit more effort out of the front office than just some failed trade negotiations, confused shrugs, and a bunch of show-me deals to guys with next to no proven track record of being anything useful for a playoff-caliber team.

For all the confidence the Cubs are exuding with their “core” of guys from 2016 (some of whom haven’t performed at acceptable standards since that magical season), the physical makeup of this group elicits more panicked reservation than joyful spring-time optimism.

Call me fairweather, but this team ceased being enjoyable when Joe Maddon began mailing in each season starting in the first half of 2017. In the meantime, we’ve watched the Dodgers own/waste the NL Pennant two years in a row, and our former bench coach outfox the trashcan-banging scoundrels from Houston for DC’s first world title in 95 years and whatever the fuck this was:

“A WHOLE NEW WORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLD” (Sorry, politics, I know but seriously, da fuq Kurt Suzuki?)

And yet, the team is in great spirits and on a “Yes We Can” kick that admittedly has me feeling somewhat…confident? Maybe confident isn’t the word. Upbeat-ish, fanciful, eager even…?

I can’t at all explain why on Earth I have anything but a semblance of utterly ball-breaking pessimism. Perhaps it’s Rossy’s confidence in his guys. Maybe it’s Yu Darvish looking like the dude we shelled out $126 million for two years ago. I haven’t the faintest idea why I want to see this team after the past three clusterfucks of lost seasons.

If I’m being honest, maybe it’s my love of this stupid old game. Brushing aside the insufferable legion of REAL AMURICANS tersely enforcing their unwritten rules and purist proclivities upon young, mostly non-white players for allegedly “disrespecting the game”, baseball remains my sun, moon, and stars.

I’ve been hooked since the home run derby of 1998. The Steroid Era was a blast (ba-dum tssssss), and I frankly believe McGwire, Clemens, and my all-time favorite Cub Sammy Sosa deserve enshrinement in Cooperstown. But thanks to the standard-bearers of the BBWAA, only the most deserving men of conviction can be graced with a plaque at the museum in a town no-one would otherwise remember.

And though the current out-of-touch corporate attorney running MLB continues treating the sport, its fans, and players like simpletons oblivious to the grander scheme of Making Baseball Great Again or whatever the hell, I remain firmly invested, ready to drudge through the full marathon of the regular season.

Plus, I’m ultra-competitive, obnoxiously clutching to the chip on my shoulder forged through years of futility and pure suckage. I’m watching this team no matter how frustrating and detestable the season.

If the 2020 Cubs have anything going for them, they sit in a division without a clear-cut frontrunner. Sure, the defending-champion Cardinals feature a mostly-returning group of talented young pitching and Paul Goldschmidt at first, but Yadier Molina is another year older, Paul DeJong remains somewhat of an unknown in terms of what to expect from him production-wise, and if not for an utter collapse from the Cubs, they may not have won the division at all. Meanwhile, the Brewers have virtually no starting rotation, not much of a bullpen to write home about, and a team that will heavily rely on the success and/or failure of Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, the latter of whom played most of 2019 on a bum knee and ankle. And the Pirates are…well, really bad.

The power vacuum atop the NL Central culls the field down to a team of upstarts in the Cincinnati Reds boasting a stacked lineup and interesting group of starters and relievers, and the 2016 World Champion Chicago Cubs.

Looking at both rosters, the Cubs look like the clear favorite. 9 players from that 2016 group remain key contributors, not to mention a Craig Kimbrel who will have a full spring training under his belt, a possibly improved Yu Darvish, and some young arms, like Rowan Wick and Kyle Ryan, whom made a decent impression on former skipper Joe Maddon last year to earn late-game appearances in set-up roles.

However, this is also the same Cubs team that self-destructed down the stretch. Plus, their dud of an offseason leaves them with little to no depth behind key positions in the event of injuries or subpar play.

Long story short, the Cubs could foreseeably win the division. Given recent history though, this team doesn’t look like it has what it takes to survive for 162 games and then push through the potential likes of Washington, Atlanta, or L.A. not to mention the wide-open American League.

As always, the future isn’t written. No evidence suggests that the Cubs face a cataclysmic season, but you won’t see me planning ticker-tape parades down Michigan Avenue anytime soon.

Categories
Baseball Blogs Politics

Cheater’s Proof

Former Astros’ Manager A.J. Hinch, likely saying how much his team is TOTALLY not cheating right now…

Reading Bernie Twitter is like trying to pass a kidney stone simultaneously through your dick and asshole. It’s the equivalent of being diagnosed with lung cancer, liver cancer, anal cancer, and brain cancer all at once.

It’s the lone reason I will not vote for Bernie Sanders unless I am compelled to do so in the general election.

The Democratic debates have been annoying to watch, but not for the reasons the pundits will tell you, things along the lines of “tHeY dOnT HaVe A mEsSaGe” or “ThEy CaNt cOnNeCt wItH tHe PeOpLe” or whatever bullshit double-standard nonsense they’ll say about the people who are acknowledging reality right now.

It’s because literally every question asked is a GOP talking point designed seemingly to make every answer disappointing, out-of-touch, or trivial. I mean, they literally asked Bernie how he could carry out his Medicare For All plan “without bankrupting America”.

AS IF THE CURRENT $23,169,812,958,839 NATIONAL DEBT ISN’T BANKRUPTING AMERICA RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

If you ask some folks, this is the face of evil.
A former Republican, turned into a progressive after actually, you know, reading insurance cases. PURE EVIL.

It’s this type of questioning that discredits every word a Democrat can say. While Orange Hitler is braying about flushing toilets and discussing light bulbs for some reason to his mouth-breathing fan base at his Nazi Cosplay Rallies, the media is holding Dems to the fire as if they’re the REAL arsonists. They’re treating the Democrats like they were the fucks who spent us into the recession, gutted our social services, and took a fat shit on the working class of this country. Because, you know, Democrats had soooo much control over State legislatures over the past 10 years. It’s not like the 2018 election was historic for the amount of State houses the Dems flipped or whatever derrrr MEDICARE FOR ALL IS SOCIALISMSISMS YOU FUCKIN SNOWFLAKE COMMIE FUX!!!

It’s this type of serious line of questioning for the sake of “being responsible” that makes Trump able to do whatever he fucking wants.

These moderators on these tone-deaf networks refuse to flat out call the piece of shit out on his shitbaggery, and thus make the Dems look like hapless children tripping all over their own feet.

Meanwhile, the Senate is holding a trial over whether Donald Trump withheld congressionally-approved military aid from a key ally in exchange for alleged proof of crimes committed by his “likely” opponent, Joe Biden. Something that has been confirmed by the unending amount of evidence piling up by the day.

None of this actually matters in our current society, of course. The Republicans dearly want to hang on to their power in the Senate and White House so that they can continue to litter the judicial system with pro-corporation, pro-worker suppression, pro-life, gay-hating sycophants with lifetime appointments and ruin people’s lives long after these pre-historic mudfuckers finally shit out their last breaths. They will tell you that this is all to help save America from the liberals, but it’s really to just kill off those who would use their voting rights to send these craven, corrupt vultures packing.

Behold, what really happens when a turtle interacts with toxic waste.
Cowabunga, dudes.

Conservatism once used to allegedly mean more than just propping up the status quo and sucking the life out of the many to sustain the vampiric few. But those days are ancient history. We now live in a world where human beings can inflict maximum carnage on the most amount of people without even using a lethal weapon. They just need to purge voting rolls, pass a couple poison pills disguised as legislation, and cut every welfare program humanly possible, and an entire generation gets pummeled out of existence.

No accountability, no repercussions, no problem.

This is unless you happen to be a GM or manager connected to the Houston Astros right now.

Ironically, Major League Baseball seems to have the moral high ground on our politicians (stop laughing it’s actually true). The league that has in the past tacitly approved of gambling, whoring around and the occasional performance-enhancing  drug (steroids and cocaine among a litany of others) dropped the sports equivalent of an atomic bomb on Houston for using surprisingly brilliant technologies to steal signs – mostly pitch calls – over the course of their 2017 World Series championship season and beyond. Everything from wearing buttons that would buzz if the opposing pitcher was throwing a fastball, etc, to using cameras to look at the catcher’s hands and then either whistle or bang on trash cans to communicate what pitch was coming.

Not bad for a bunch of dumbass jocks, if you ask me. But it’s also very much cheating and very much wrong. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter experts profess their outrage over the fact that baseball is punishing something allegedly everyone does, with one Philadelphia sports radio caller to go so far as to say we would all be speaking Japanese if we didn’t steal signs in WWII.

Because knowing if Yu Darvish is going slider or changeup is apparently as important as defeating fascism.

So, yes, that comment would likely draw the statement, “Then WHY do you care if they cheat?!”

I mean, I’d like to have my baseball be a little more than just one team figuring out stupidly complex ways of stealing another team’s signs and therefore knowing everything that’s coming. If the other team tips their signs, then fair play. And if you steal signs from say the opposing dugout or third-base coach, that’s literally what I tried to do with my rec league teams. That’s gamesmanship. That’s trying to gain an upper hand, but it’s definitely within the rules of engagement.

Covering your body in bandages with little buzzers or whatever the fuck requires no skill, no patience, and is proof that your guys are so insecure about their skills that they have to game the system just to know if Sonny Gray is throwing a goddamn two-seamer.

Does this make me a crotchety old man? I don’t honestly give a single fuck if it does. But if you can’t play ball without needing to go all 007 on everyone’s unsuspecting asses, forgive me if I’m not impressed.

The same goes for that monstrosity staining the Oval Office with Cheeto dust and chicken grease.

If you can’t win an election without literally breaking the fucking law, maybe you shouldn’t be President in the first place.

Categories
Baseball The Game of Life

Baseball Is Wasted On Idiots

UGA Baseball Game at Foley Field, April 2010

I can’t trust somebody who says Bull Durham is unrealistic.

At my undisclosed job in an undisclosed location in the South, I have a boss who fancies himself an amateur film critic. There are a couple of folks in the office who love discussing movies in rich detail beyond just the plot. They analyze the composition of films, the cinematography, the brilliance of Roger Deakins, among other topics – including how Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice turned the Caped Crusader into a meat-headed roided-out mass murderer while simultaneously rendering Batfleck unable to determine that the White Portuguese isn’t a goddamn alias but a ship docked in Gotham Harbor (this was a real conversation).

One day, my boss Siskel and another self-styled Ebert were talking about the 1988 classic starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins in their prime. The details aren’t important, but a few lines stood out.

“The Annie Savoy character is just obnoxious,” Roper-lite said. “And I don’t find the movie that realistic to how baseball actually is.”

“Yeah, I don’t get the sense that this is what baseball is actually like,” remarked Siskel, agreeing that the film didn’t capture the essence of the game we all love.

Now, I make these two out to be overly pompous and high-brow but in reality they’re quite smart men with dumbfounding opinions on one particular film that I (and the majority of actual baseball players) happen to adore, but whom I otherwise respect in terms of their baseball and movie fandom.

Then again, I did work in the minors for seven months.

I know enough to say with confidence that Bull Durham, while still Hollywood, isn’t too far off the mark.

During my stint in the minors deep in the heart of #MAGA Land, I lived the life of a poorly paid “assistant” which meant I was an intern with a monthly stipend. I barely made enough money to cover the rent on an apartment that was actually one elderly couple’s moldy basement with an infestation of crickets. Of all the insects in the world, I wish I had kept them in exchange for the current roach issues I deal with today.

But I digress.

My brief time in the league gave me an insight into the game that I had dreamed of gaining access to from the time I could start walking. And what I found was a lot of that same wonder I enjoyed while watching baseball with my father during my youth.

I also learned that the game I hold so dear is wasted on the saddest bunch of dullards one could possibly think of, and worse.

My boss was from west of the Mississippi, where he had worked before arriving to our club. He’d had experience working on the west coast, so ownership brought him in to run their newly-acquired team. He was a solid guy, generous with buying his employees drinks at company outings, and was (is) a generally decent man.

He was also a fucking jag-off of a manager.

Anytime I saw him at his desk, he’d be in the same position: feet up, chair leaned fully back, staring at his phone. Now, it’s safe to assume he was reading emails and important notes from meetings, phone calls, etc. Along with his tendency of swearing like a sailor, it just gave off the wrong vibe, a message of nonchalance that never sat well with me. I believe the main problem with Popeye was his brash swashbuckling style rubbing the locals the wrong way. These fans, if you could bestow upon them such a moniker, had an issue with getting rid of general admission seats in favor of new numbered assigned seating throughout the stadium. Despite being literally cheaper, they complained.

The team toyed with the idea of changing the name of the club ahead of a redesign. Merely flirting with re-branding nearly caused a…

Well, let’s face it, these “fans” were too fickle to care that much about the colors or the team for that matter. The Facebook comments on our post announcing the name-change poll were hilariously over-the-top, but it wasn’t like the office was getting inundated with a steady stream of death threats. And that’s precisely due to the fact that the city didn’t really like the team. Never mind that a local college was buying up acre after acre of the town to re-fashion in its own image. The people who went to the stadium bitched and whined and moaned about the change, claiming that it was all a cash grab, trying to rob them of their hard-earned money. The most venom we received was from a season ticket holder who was offended that our on-field MC had her hands folded behind her back during the National Anthem. She wasn’t even kneeling, but this woman would have you believe our colleague was Che Guevara. This was the type of unimportant shit that riled up the natives.

I concussed myself running on the slick tarp at the end of a miserable rain-drenched week of rainout after rainout after rainout. I missed the entire weekend thanks to this poorly-timed (and incredibly mild) brain injury. But with an attorney in the family, I was advised to take worker’s comp for the lost days of work.

Popeye didn’t appreciate this.

“Are you SERIOUS?! Really? How much?”

To be clear, the team was insured. This wasn’t coming out of his pockets, and even if it did, it wasn’t more than a thousand dollars. On the whole, I didn’t even cost $7,300, worker’s comp included. I was paid a fixed income of $750 a month, no minimum wage or overtime during the 8-12 hour days on homestands or the regular 9-5s when the team was on the road. I was but a drop in the bucket for this small-town club with brand-new bigwig owners of multiple minor league franchises across several leagues and sports. What I cost was never in 1 million years going to sink the team.

Yet, as I live and breathe, I’m convinced that Popeye never forgave me for this.

I didn’t do myself any favors, I’ll be the first to admit. I often hid away in the press box fixing the comedically-horrendous WinAmps music library that hadn’t been organized during its possible 8-10 years of use. I was relegated to such duty though thanks to the concussion. So, in the end, I was damned if I did or damned if I didn’t. Physical labor made me a liability. The lack of physical labor made me expendable.

I had a shit attitude after months of this dragging on, working long days and getting nothing but the opportunity to look at a beautiful mountain range in the distance every day at work. I’d also inhale the stale musty stench of our offices with tones of wasted dreams mixed with sweat and a je ne sais quoi not all that dissimilar to the at times bumpkin-y backwoods feel of Bull Durham.

I don’t portend to be the smartest guy in the room, nor do I think that I have an otherworldly in-depth knowledge of the game and how it works. Then again, I have an adequate grasp of basic math.

When I started that season, our office had a secretary, two salesmen, a groundskeeper, the general manager, promotions director, concessions manager, and a ticket office manager/assistant GM, the latter two of whom crossed paths with Popeye before. We also had one broadcaster, and one clubhouse manager with Popeye as team president. Along with the full-time staff, we had seven interns (myself included) and our aforementioned Communist of an on-field MC/team reporter.

Before the first game of the season, the secretary was fired (Ms. Guevara became her successor), and the groundskeeper resigned.

Mid-season, both salesmen left for greener pastures, and were replaced by two new guys.

All but two interns returned for the following season.

As of this writing, only Popeye, one accounting intern, and one of the mid-season sales team replacements remain. The rest, long gone and replaced (in some cases twice) by new successors.

I don’t blame Popeye alone for the state of that team. It’s not like he could magically wave a wand and make Minor League Baseball affordable for its employees – players included. But the fact that the entire office was purged in less than five years proves my point.

Baseball is wasted on idiots.

Crash Davis knew this.

Nuke LaLoosh is a young buck with a “million-dollar arm and five cent head,” as noted by Robert Wuhl’s character, Larry. Having caught the pitcher throughout the season, a frustrated Crash tells Nuke that he doesn’t respect himself or the game. “You got a gift,” he laments. “When you were a baby, the gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you’re pissing it away.”

The brash LaLoosh shoots back, “I ain’t pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already.”

Too often in this game, people look for the Porsche when they need the wherewithal to understand the Honda Civic they’re driving in the first place. That’s pretty much the current state of baseball.

Over the past month, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred as rattled his sabers, threatening to shut down 42 Minor League clubs, and even to spurn the entirety of MiLB altogether. Keep in mind that as of now, teams can call up prospects from the minors by selecting and purchasing their contracts at affordable rates. They don’t have to deal with posting fees as seen with Japanese players looking to cash into baseball’s dominion in the States. They seldom get much push-back from agents or other interested parties. They make the call, the kid comes up from Iowa, and he suits up for however long the team needs him. They send him down, and until he runs out of options, the team can do so freely as often as they want.

There is no telling the damage Manfred’s myopic power grab would do to this process. Sure, the current guys in the league would mostly be fine. But when it’s time to usher in young players who’ve paid their dues, how much will it cost the big club to call them up? At what cost does baseball consolidate power for the ease of ownership? In what universe does rattling the cages of these small-town clubs in flyover country benefit anyone but Manfred and his cronies? It seems like a whole lot of fuss over something that works well enough.

Why nuke it all?

Towards the end of the film as Crash comes back to Durham after finishing his season elsewhere, Annie narrates that the world, baseball being implied, “…is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.”

I read this to mean that fools and blowhards seem to have their pick of the litter in life. Baseball is life – it’s unpredictability, the ups and downs of a nine-inning contest or even the months-long slog of the season, the constant reminder that what comes up must come down. And in life, it’s as though the folks who take their existence for granted are propped up by the labor of those who care.

Perhaps baseball isn’t my calling. Maybe I’m too self-aware for my own good.

But if Bull Durham isn’t realistic, than reality is Hollywood fantasy.

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