The Cubs are being documentized

March 12th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Think quick, sports fans: what team is the most tormented, the most woebegone, but also the most celebrated, the most beloved in all the land? Ding, ding ding! The Chicago Cubs is correct! So wouldn’t this make perfect documentary theater? Encapsulating the highs and lows of the Cubbies within the city’s undying love for them in what is now 100 years removed from their last World Championship?

The dude that made “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” (ohhhhh yooooooko) thinks so. Emphasis mine:

A documentary on the ‘08 Cubs with the working title “We Believe” has begun production, and the Oscar buzz is unmistakable. According to Mark DeRosa, all the Cubs need is to write a happy ending, like, say, end the 100-year drought.

“If we win the World Series this year, it’ll probably win an Oscar,” DeRosa said. “I’ll get to walk the red carpet. We’re going to Sundance!”

[ … ]

Scheinfeld, who grew up in Highland Park and attended Northwestern, said he had wanted to do something on his hometown team for years.

“I’d just done a documentary on John Lennon, I’ve done one on God and heaven (’In the Name of Heaven’), and it was like, ‘Now what do I do?’ ” Scheinfeld said Tuesday at HoHoKam Park. “[It’s] about the love affair between a great city and its team.

“We’ll have a little bit of the history of the Cubs, and of Chicago, but mostly it’s: ‘How does this thing come together, and what is this tapestry all about?’ ”

The usual suspects will be mentioned in the documentary — the black cat, the Billy Goat curse and, of course, the Bartman episode.

And then if the Cubs don’t win the World Series this year, they can add in a bonus section on the DVD version entitled “the documentary curse.” Because clearly, without the black cat, Billy Goat and Steve Bartman the Cubs would be three championships richer by now. Riiiight. But hey just keep believing that. It makes for a great documentary story, right?

Len Kasper rules

February 28th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

Baseball announcers are a fact of life. For example, if you’re a White Sox fan, and you really really want to watch the White Sox every night, you’re stuck with Hawk Harrelson. You might like Hawk. You might despise Hawk. But for better or worse, if you want to enjoy the crack of the bat and all the other sounds of baseball, you have to listen to Hawk’s twang and Darrin Jackson’s mumbles to do so.

So it goes for the Cubs. Fortunately, the Cubs have one of the cooler, hipper, more listenable, not-a-dinosaur baseball men in the business, one Len Kasper. A day after Sam Zell threatened to destroy all that is good and holy about free Wrigley Gum advertising space, it’s refreshing to be reminded of something the Cubs are doing right. Kasper is all of the following: a self-confessed “fringe sabermetrician,” a guitarist, and an indie rock enthusiast:

Beyond baseball, Kasper and Brenly discovered another mutual love: music. They’ve met up at Lollapalooza. The two would make mix tapes for each other. Kasper introduced Brenly to the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Son Volt; Brenly got Kasper into Ryan Adams, The Black Keys and Cold War Kids.

“You’ve got 2 1/2 hours of airtime and a lot of games during the course of a season,” Brenly said. “We both appreciate it can’t be baseball all the time.”

And now, the two have taken their music appreciation on stage. For the last two years, The Len & Bob Band has performed at the House of Blues for charity. Clips of the show circulate on YouTube, including a punk version of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” and “Love Stinks” by the J. Geils Band.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “E, I don’t give a shit if this guy likes The Black Keys. Can he broadcast?” And the answer is yes, he can. But in a world where Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver are considered by most average fans to be the foremost authorities on baseball talk, isn’t it refreshing to have someone who’s even tangentially down with the kids? Even if his voice is nasally from time to time?

I say yes. If you disagree, go listen to the Hawkmeister. He’s got this great Conway Twitty album he’s been meaning to suggest to you …

Wrigley Fields only 17 years away from suicide

September 24th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

As we gear up for what should — repeat, knocking on wood: should — be a Cubs playoff berth, it’s time to brace for the legendary bandwagon Cubs fan, the one who just sort of started paying attention last week but who is totally ready to go buy a Marmol jersey if, you know, they do well in the NLDS or something, bro. These are the same people who likely snatched up all the tickets yesterday, rendering me ticketless for Game 1, and these will be the same people that, should the Cubs win — which isn’t going to happen — will be thanking God for ending their lifetime of misery as if they invested anything in the first place.

These people deserve to be hated. So, crazy as it is, there’s something to be said for fans so hardcore, so eager to demonstrate their love, they’re willing to indirectly push their son to suicide by the time he’s 16.

That’s right: some idiots named their kid Wrigley Fields:

His parents say he can go by his middle name when he’s old enough to decide.

For now, the newborn will be known by his first name: Wrigley.

And his last name: Fields.

His parents are Paul and Teri Fields of Michigan City, Ind. They are — no surprise — fans of the Cubs, who have played at Wrigley Field since 1916. The Fields planned the name for years before their son’s birth.

Cubs spokeswoman Katelyn Thrall said the name may be a first. The team has no record of other children named Wrigley, although there have been some children names Zambrano and Ryne after Cubs stars Carlos Zambrano and Ryne Sandberg.

Hey, nothing says welcome to Earth, babies like selfishness! Giving your son a unique name is cool; chances are, one day, he’ll get past the schoolyard crap and grow to love the fact that he’s not named Michael or Jake or Steve or whatever else. Giving your son a name inspired by your favorite baseball team’s stadium is a terrible, terrible thing to do. But at least no one can call the Fields bandwagon fans ever again, and that’s what’s most important, right?

{HT: SbB}

Bill Murray filled in for Harry Caray and it was awesome

September 4th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

Our site is running absolutely terrible again today, so this could be the last post you see for a while (24 hours?) as I actually switch servers like I said I’d do like a month ago. (It’s sort of an involved process, OK? And yes, it is dumb to do it at the start of the week. But, you do what you got to do.)

Anyways, via Fark (which I’m poaching all my content from today) here’s Bill Murray filling in For Harry Caray during a Cubs broadcast in April of 1987. Above is the pregame-chroma-key banter in all it’s brilliance. If you want to see the other four parts which highlight various stages of the game head to my FanHouse post on this.

Goodbye for now. Hopefully, we’ll be back and running in full force by tomorrow afternoon. Say a prayer for surfer boy, wherever he is.

The Cubs will protect you

August 24th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

There are those who think baseball is a boring game and never bother to watch it on TV. Fair enough. I can see their qualms, although I don’t entirely agree. There are those who watch the game casually, flipping around channels and peering in for the score here and there.

And then there are people who stay up later than usual to watch the Cubs take on a West Coast foe and it damn near saves their lives.

Instead, Wednesday’s late game had Ben Von Bruenchenhein up and in the living room of his Arlington Heights apartment about 10:15 p.m., watching Cubs star Aramis Ramirez smash a game-tying double.

That was also when a bullet ripped through his 15th floor apartment, slicing through the wall just above his bedroom pillow.

Von Bruenchenhein has little doubt what saved his life — the Cubs.

“If it wasn’t a West Coast game, I would be asleep or reading a book in bed,” said Von Bruenchenhein, 36, who is currently reading Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen.

“The shot went between my bed and my light and my alarm clock.”

Whoa. As E told you over at FanHouse earlier today, it was not Diddy who fired the shot, but the guy’s 82-year-old neighbor who forgot his gun was loaded and pulled the trigger when he was moving it. (An 82-year-old man should not be moving a gun. He should keep it in one place always and use it when someone is trying to kill him or whatever. Or maybe he just shouldn’t have one at all. )

Anyways let this be a lesson to you out there: watching the Cubs lose to the Giants could save your life. Although, watching them not win a World Series title the last 100 years might also kill your heart and soul. OH SNAP!

{Also see: Out of Right Field.}

Case of the Mondays: LeBron saved the playoffs

June 4th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

OK, so Saturday’s effort will never be the one people remember. That will always be Thursday’s legendary performance, the numbers (29 of the last 30! The last 25!) ringing out in playoff tapes and marketing visions for years to come. But Saturday cemented the best thing LeBron has done for us so far in his career: salvaging these lackluster 2007 Playoffs.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I dislike the Spurs, or lack an appreciation for their methodical style of play. It’s just that the NBA as a whole needs something different. It needed the Suns to run and pass their way to an NBA Championship; it needed something to follow up on the Warriors’ dismantling of the Mavericks; it needed an Eastern team with any sort of redeemable aesthetic qualities, our Bulls notwithstanding.

The Cavaliers are largely boring and unimaginative, but LeBron changes all of that. On Thursday, he changed the way we watch the playoffs by turning potential into action. His brilliance is no longer a threat; it is a very real possibility, one that must be bargained for every time he is on television.

The Spurs will likely still win the title, and that’s fine. They deserve it. But LeBron has made the Finals far more worthy of our attention than the Pistons could have. That’s his greatest accomplishment yet.

(Well, besides Thursday’s game. That’s probably greater.)

MLB: I don’t get what it is. Something about the Cubs’ uniforms — or maybe the chemicals used to curate the Wrigley ivy — causes mass hysteria and uncontrollable anger … or at least insanity.

One example among many was Dusty Baker’s retarded claim last year that “walks clog up the bases.” (I really still can’t get over that, by the way. I mean, are you freaking kidding me?) The latest installment came this week, when the Cubs proceeded to brawl in the dugout, lose their sixth game in a row and ninth out of their last ten, and then have their manager get suspended for getting too frisky with the umpires. What’s next? I’m not even going to offer up a sarcastic example here. I’m genuinely curious. What the hell could go wrong next?

Knocked Up: Not to ruin anything for those of you who waited out the inevitable first-weekend madness, but this movie is incredible. It’s no less funny than the 40 Year Old Virgin — perhaps the best comedy of the past five years — but with a bit more heart, just a little bit, and a realistic picture of what it’s like to live in a relationship in postmodern America. Oh, and readers here, presuming you’re sports fans, will love the fantasy baseball bit. That’s all I’ll say for now.

Case of the Mondays: I love interleague play

May 21st, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

(Before he begins, PostmanE would like to apologize for being so late to the punch today. He went for a brief swim in the backyard pool with a cinderblock tied to his ankle, and has since been dealing with his disappointed father. Back now, though.)

Ah, yes, Monday morning. The morning after a three-day stint of drinking and watching baseball and taunting friends. That is what interleague play is all about: Cubs and Sox fans packed into a Wrigleyville bar shoulder to shoulder, alternating chants, downing expensive Old Styles and stumbling home in the middle of the day. (And then napping and then getting back out there, of course.)

Sorry, but I can’t get with the purists who decry interleague play as a violation of tradition. It is, above all things, fun. I know it’s fun for the fans, I get the impression it is fun for the managers, and even the players, or most of them, seem to enjoy it. Without interleague play, who gets bragging rights? Who gets to call himself the best manager in the city? (This weekend in Chicago, with his sneaky little Derrek Lee pinch-hit, that was clearly Lou Piniella.) Without interleague play, how can you switch from radio station to radio station, just to see the different ways the team’s announcers are calling the game? It’s fun, damnit. Isn’t that baseball’s oldest, and finest, tradition?

NBA: Sorry, but with the travel and the weekend-long focus on baseball, the NBA went quietly by. That might have to do with the fact that the Spurs had such a quick turnaround from the series with the Suns, but all the same, they had no problem dispensing with the Jazz in typically efficient fashion. If Deron Williams is going to be the Jazz’ leading scorer all series, that will no go well for the Fightin’ Mormons. Also, the return of Big Shot Rob and his evil calm feels like some sort of Darth Vader re-entrance. (”They complained … like I can get in their heads and play Nintendo with their minds and bodies and get them to walk out onto the court,” Horry said [of Stoudamire and Diaw’s suspensions].) Poor Jazz.

Preakness: Some horse other than Street Sense won, which continues to prove just how hard it is to win a Triple Crown. It also proves how hard it is to win money at horse-racing. Stupid off-track betting; I could have had ten more Old Styles!

Case of the Mondays: Grand opening, grand closing

April 2nd, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

In terms of sports days, it doesn’t get much better than this, does it?

With apologies to the Cardinals and the Mets (actually, screw the Cardinals), today is the real Opening Day, the one day before the Cubs start losing and my early-to-mid summer depression really begins setting in. Minus Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, all is well in Cubdom, a content feeling that will surely pass as soon as the balls are dumped on the field today. Still, today is the day to enjoy, and from now until about June is the childhood of the baseball season. The potential is limitless.

And of course, tonight also marks the closing of college basketball season. After the disappointment of the Final Four - in which the Amazing Disappearing Jeff Green ruined my bracket chances - it seems a little presumptive to assume this National Championship game will be historic in any way. Still, there’s an historic ending by default with Florida here, and if Ohio State wins, Greg Oden and Mike Conley will get their well-deserved coronation. We’ll see if the Buckeyes can keep Oden out of foul trouble and causing problems for Florida’s interior … or if the Gators will shoot OSU off the floor, as they’ve done in nearly every other tourney game this year.

I’ll be back later to talk in more detail about the National Title game and whatever else tickles me, but I’ll also be over at my other home for most of the afternoon. Make sure to stop over, and a very Happy Greatest Sports Day Of The Year Besides The Super Bowl to you and yours.

This E.M. Swift dude has me captivated

November 22nd, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

I’ll try to make this as quick as possible, as it’s late, I want to sleep and I know you don’t pay attention for longer than 10 seconds anyway. But this feels worthy of your noble attention, if not of a full-on analysis.

There’s actually nothing to analyze here - just E.M. Swift saddening me by telling me the God’s honest truth:

I say this with authority, since I grew up in Chicago and since most of my childhood friends are stupidly loyal Cubs fans. They blindly cheer the team down every dark alley it leads them. They don’t boycott the Cubs. They don’t boycott WGN. They don’t boycott the Chicago Tribune, despite having a perfectly decent alternative in the Chicago Sun-Times. They don’t switch allegiance to the White Sox, who won the 2005 World Series and were in the hunt in 2006 until the final week. Cubs fans are enablers. They show up, win or lose, shell out their dollars, and enable the team to be bad and the Tribune Company to be a bad caretaker of their dreams.

OK, one more:

Here are my predictions. Cubs fans will again buy more than three million tickets in 2007. The Tribune Company will sell itself, which will mean a new owner for the Chicago Cubs and a real reason for Cubs fans to hope. Soriano will not stick in center field. And the team, struggling to break .500, will make it 99 years without a World Series championship.

I am a Cubs fan, and I agree with all of this. I thought I didn’t for a few minutes there … and then it sank in. This is all absolutely correct. The Cubs are a bad team, spending like crazy on the wrong areas, owned by a borderline-evil parent company so driven by the bottom line it’s willing to sacrifice quality journalism AND quality baseball until a sale is just around the corner. That’s all completely true, and there’s nothing I can (tangibly) do about it, except to stop supporting a baseball team I love.

So don’t mind me: I’m going to go down some Prozac, write some emo poetry about Jim Hendry, and paint my fingernails black. It’s getting awfully depressing in here.

Good thing I’m not the jealous type

October 31st, 2006 | Posted by PostmanE

Otherwise, a new realization would really be tearing me up inside. It would be affecting the way I work, distracting me to the point of insanity.

The realization is this: how bad have the past four years been for Cubs fans?

The argumentation is pretty self-evident, once you broach the subject. For the sake of detail, however:

1. 2003 - Bartman. Moises. NLCS. A-Gon. Marlins in the World Series; Marlins beat the Yankees
2. 2004 - Red Sox. End of Curse. Second-longest streak over. Mutual solidarity wiped away.
3. 2005 - White Sox. Ozzie. South side. Redemption. Chicago’s “new” team.
4. 2006 - Cardinals. LaRussa. Eckstein. Pujols. Weak national league; weaker World Series champs

I mean, god damn. Not only do the Cubs choke in the NLCS - to the team that eventually won the World Series - the next three champs are the visceral equal of salt in Cubs fans’ eyes. The Red Sox…fine. They deserved one as much as anyone. But the White Sox? You had to do that to us, didn’t you. And the Cardinals? Seriously, the Cardinals?

It’s as if the last three World Series champs have won just to remind the Cubs of what was lost in 2003. It’s like the baseball gods wanted to make it especially clear that the Cubs royally screwed their last possible opportunity. Somewhere, someone (or some thing) is laughing about this.

So am I. Because, you know, it’s not really my style to get all worked up about these sorts of things. Not even a minor distraction, this is.

(THIS IS WHERE I SWEAR LOUDLY TO MYSELF)

Ahem. Nope, not distracting me at all.