Let’s hope tonight goes better

May 12th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

This is has been posted everywhere today, but I don’t give an eff. It’s been a stressful day, and all I can think about is an Old Style, my Fukudome jersey, and my well-worn seat four rows up in the center field bleachers, all of which I will be indulging in in approximate four hours. It’s a beautiful thing.

Less beautiful is Tony Romo’s edition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, which not only features some truly horrible singing — that would be entirely forgivable — but Romo’s apparent embarrassment at how bad he was. Any seasoned karaoke singer knows: No matter what, never betray weakness. If you fail to keep belting that horrible 80’s pop at the top of your cigarette-scorched lungs, the crowd will immediately turn on you. So it was with Romo.

I have no idea who’s singing tonight, and I don’t care. There’s no way it will be worse than Tony.

{Vid HT: Bugs and Cranks | Everywhere}

Boo Mike Downey! Um, yay Mike Downey!

May 1st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Not huge fans of Mike Downey in these parts. I can’t remember reading a Downey column that lent any particular insight into anything, but that might be a case more of me being too young to remember Downey’s glory days. He’s just always sort of been there, you know?

Anyway, I was getting ready to summon TEH ANGER over this Alfonso Soriano column, when Downey totally turned me around like four different times. Expecting him to rip Soriano a new one for being, I don’t know, too jumpy, Downey did this:

Quite a few grownups at Wrigley Field could use a good talking to, too.

You could start with those who feel Mark Cuban is exactly the new owner that the Cubs need, oblivious to the fact his NBA Dallas Mavericks continue to be one of the biggest packs of choking dogs in all of professional sports.

And then you could have a word or two with any stupendously stupid knucklehead who knocks Alfonso Soriano.

If you are a true-blue Cubs fan with half a brain under your cap, you should be overjoyed to have Soriano back in the lineup if he returns Thursday as expected.

Grr Mike Downey! Mark Cuban would be a great Cubs owner, or at least a preferable one!

And screw your for ripping Alfons — wha? You like Alfonso Soriano? You don’t think he’s a prima donna because he has that big poster next to the Sports Authority on La Salle? You don’t think his little hop is worthy of invective? You’re not convinced he’s the Antichrist?

Touche, Msr. Downey. Tou. Che.

Sports Illustrated gets proclaim-y with Fukudome cover

April 29th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

We don’t believe in curses, jinxes and the like here. And really, the Cubs have a damn complete team and a super-duper-amazing chance of making it deep in the playoffs once Lou Piniella realizes Kosuke Fukudome should lead off, Soriano should bat behind Ramirez and Lee and that Reed Johnson is the greatest Cub that ever lived and he should play everyday. (The latter here is my own personal preference — to be believed by no one but me.)

But even still, if I’m a Cubs fan — and that I am certainly not — this makes me cringe ever so slightly. It’s only April, must you torture us so?

{Via The Big Lead, who like, totally had the exclusive scoop on this.}

With racist apparel, Cubs fans actually are obnoxious

April 18th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

So Marty Brennaman goes all scorched Earth on Cubs fans, and I go all scorched Earth on Marty Brennaman. I thought it was just Brennaman that deserved it, but today the Sun-Times’ Gordon Wittenmeyer, who does a great job covering the Cubs, brings up something that my friends and I have been too-quietly discussing the whole season: racist “Japanese” merchandise at Wrigley Field.

The image of the drunken Cubs lout is one thing — adding a level of intolerance and ignorance to that image is another. And that’s what a small minority — but still a sizable portion — of Cubs fans have become this season. In “honor” of Kosuke Fukudome, they wear faux Japanese hachimaki and the above-linked t-shirts, which say “Horry Kow!” and picture a slant-eyed Cub with huge Harry Caray frames. Vendors walk around everywhere outside the stadium with the shirts and headbands, but it’s hard to just blame the vendors: clearly, there’s a market here. A very racist, stupid market.

If you needed any more convincing that the merchandise is stupid, if me calling you racist in the bleachers isn’t enough, then take it from Kosuke Fukudome:

”I don’t know what the creator of the shirt meant this to be, but they should make it right,” Fukudome said through his interpreter after being shown one of the shirts Thursday. ”Maybe the creator created it because he thought it was funny, or maybe he made it to condescend the race. I don’t know.”

See? Even the player you meant to honor thinks you’re a dumbass cracker. So take that shirt and headband off, burn them, and, if you want to pay homage to the Cubs’ most versatile new player, buy his jersey instead. Until then, Cubs fans will have no reason to complain about their image as drunken buffoons. They’ll deserve it, and more.

This dude wins

April 4th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Jersey of the year competition: officially over.

{Photo HT: Bleed Cubbie Blue}

Ernie Banks Update: They fixed the statue this morning!11!!

April 2nd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

I woke up this morning to a sunny day here in Chicago and my roommate telling me this: “I did a lap around Wrigley this morning on my run and there was a guy with some tools putting in an apostrophe on the statue.”

At first I thought he was effing with me, but he asked if I wanted to put money on it, so I went and checked it out myself. And lo and behold, there’s a damn apostrophe on there now. I know my earlier post had nothing to do with this; surely there were many people that noticed this gaffe. (For instance, Mary Schmich wrote about it this morning in the Trib.)

So yes: our long national nightmare is now over. The Cubs have fixed their error. All is right with the world.

{One more picture after the jump.}

CONTINUE READING THIS POST –>

Cubs forgot to copy edit new Ernie Banks statue

April 2nd, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

So the Cubs unveiled a new Ernie Banks statue just outside the Wrigley Field gates a bit north of Clark and Addison on Monday before the season opener against Milwaukee. And deservedly so: Banks is synonymous with the franchise. His nickname is “Mr. Cub,” after all.

But what seemed to be lost in all the pomp and circumstance during Banks’ presser was somewhat of a glaring typo: the south side of the statue is missing an apostrophe on “let’s,” as you can see in the above photo I snapped last night.

Whoopsies!

{A special thanks to friend of the Postmen, Broiler, for spotting this. Two more photos after the jump.}

CONTINUE READING THIS POST –>

Kosuke Fukudome is the god of my heart

March 31st, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

With the possible exception that he made me mad I decided to go in to work today (hey, I have tickets Sunday, no big deal right?) Kosuke Fukudome is the greatest human being on the planet in the history of the world and things.

Of course, the Cubs still lost. Of course. Cubs fan/friend/commenter Jason is telling me that Piniella made the wrong move not to bring Kerry Wood in as the actual closer — let’s hope Lou doesn’t make a habit of indecisiveness this year. That got really old really fast last year, and I don’t think it made the team any better. Worse, probably.

Still, this is really all I needed as confirmation: Kosuke Fukudome authentic, here I come.

{Vid HT: AA}

Thunder Matt continues to get crapped on

March 27th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Has there ever been a time in Matt Murton’s career that Jim Hendry wasn’t trying to trade him? Hendry tried to trade him during his rookie season, when Matt hit .321/.386/.521 in 140 AB’s. He tried to trade Murton the next year, when 455 AB’s saw him hit .297/.365/.444, confirming the kinds of numbers people expected. And here he is trying to trade Murton again this year, saying the Cubs don’t have a place for him on the five-man bench. Apparently, Mike Fontenot is preferable.

There are arguments about Murton’s “versatility,” and whether or not he can play in center field, and whether or not he should be confined to the fifth-outfielder’s role again this season. But God damnit, is there nowhere on the Cubs lineup for a developing power hitter with good speed on the basepaths? Is there nowhere for a guy who, even if he hits PECOTA’s 50th percentile projection this season, will OBP .360 and slug .460? Nowhere? You’d rather have Mike Fucking Fontenot?

The bright spot here is that Murton could, if given the time to prove himself a potentially elite power guy, draw decent value in trade. Since the Cubs suck at developing position player talent (and their pitching development hasn’t been so hot recently, either), trading Murton for a couple of young plus prospects sounds just dandy. But when you do everything but released the ginger one from your roster, you make it blatantly obvious that Murton has no value to you except in trade, which therein lowers his trade value. What. The. Fuck.

This normally would have been written over at FanHouse, but because this is so fucking ridiculous, and I want to fucking swear a whole fucking lot, I’m fucking writing it here. Shit.

The secret to Cubs’ 100 years of suffering? No fan club

March 26th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

When futility has been your modus operandi for the last 100 years, it’s easy to look outside the guys on the diamond for a reason why you haven’t won a World Series. We’ve all heard the curses involved with the Cubs. Silly stuff, for sure. But Ernie Banks has found another reason why the Cubs have sucked for so long: a fan club called the “West Side Rooters” was disbanded after their last World Series win in 1908.

And he’s aiming to bring it back. Via Fred Mitchell at the Trib:

Mr. Cub is eager to revive the West Side Rooters as the association’s 2008 chairman in hopes of inspiring that long-overdue World Series championship.

Grant DePorter, who runs Harry Caray’s Restaurant and has done extensive research on this century-old phenomenon, is the group’s president, and Dutchie Caray is the treasurer.

[ … ]

The 1908 members did “scientific rooting,” according to the newspaper accounts.

They would meet at People’s Theater, their headquarters near West Side Park, before games to discuss what cheers to do and what times to do them. The members acted as “hoodoo detectives” because the players were very superstitious. The rooters did their best to help protect the team from things involving the “evil omen” or “hoodoo.”

According to the reports, the group organized “tallyho” parties to the game. That is, they would parade or “tallyho” over as a group while offering Cubs cheers and playing any instrument or noisemaker in celebration of the Cubs. The fans would dress with Cubs badges, buttons, flags and banners, canes, megaphones and hats. Any Cub who would hit a home run or “three bagger” would receive a new hat from the group.

I doubt the “tallyho” traditions are going to be carried on, but these are Cubs fans so who knows. What’s so patently ridiculous about all this is that at some point — hell, maybe even this year — the Cubs are eventually going to win a World Series and fans and the organization are going to point to some silly new tradition or fan club or play or something as to why it happened.

Anything to make you believe, I suppose.