Brillance from Mariotti

[Phuck the Cubs]

The concept of firing Dusty Baker has become a daily redundancy, the biggest duhhh in baseball. Even by Cubdom's lowly standards, his team is playing like dog poo, the way a club performs just before a manager usually is ziggied -- no fire, no soul, no purpose, hitters swinging at first pitches, pitchers not covering first base, etc. To say the Rev. Johnnie B. should be axed is like saying beer is consumed in Wrigleyville.

 

The Cubs might be better off with no manager than continuing to trot out Baker every day. I'd send him on his way and eventually target Lou Piniella, who has thrown himself into broadcasting this season and ultimately would be the perfect North Side counterpart to Ozzie Guillen and ideal butt-kicking successor to the current Dead Manager Walking. Isn't my solution too obvious?

 

Unfortunately, when dealing with the Tribune Co. baseball operation, a simple way out becomes impossible. Not only will the Cubs avoid Piniella -- seems he wouldn't be Andy MacPhail's cup of tea, not that MacPhail knows what he's doing these days -- but they aren't going to fire Baker because the man who hired him, general manager Jim Hendry, never will admit his error and still wants to give His Guy Dusty [egads!] a contract extension. Of course, Hendry never should have received a two-year extension himself but did because his boss, MacPhail, thinks Hendry is doing a great job. Of course, MacPhail should have been fired years ago but wasn't because his boss, Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons, cares more about the club's profit margin within the company's wobbly financial foundation and loves how MacPhail milks the cash cow, which must be related in some way to the billy goat.

 

So instead of doing something, anything, to change a culture that has been sleepy and underachieving for a third straight season, the Cubs will keep Baker out of spite. Never mind that the fans are angry and might burn the ivy if they have to sit through 125 more games of Dusty Ball. Never mind that Baker is the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong point in time, looking alternately helpless and clueless in a dugout begging for leadership and life. ''I've already talked and talked and talked. I've had more meetings than I care to have. Guys got to get together and reach back and find that pride and get this thing rolling before it's too late,'' he said Sunday, when the Cubs responded to Baker by managing two hits against someone named Clay Hensley and lost to San Diego 9-0, their 14th loss in 16 games.

 

Never mind that the Cubs are dying one season after the White Sox won the World Series. A manager who must go is staying anyway.

 

Some fans are planning a protest rally against Tribune Co. One problem: After you're all done screaming, cussing and burning some nameless, faceless executive in effigy, you'll walk inside beautiful Wrigley Field and drop a hundred bucks at a ballgame. The romance of the shrine is irresistible, which enables the Tribsters to perpetuate the longest-running futility streak in American sports history.

 

They know how to sell bricks and ivy, Pat and Ron, sunshine and beer. They have no idea how to run a baseball shop. Never have, never will.

 

Selling would be a good idea

 

Which makes this the optimum time to sell the team. They could fetch maybe $600 million for the franchise and ballpark, which could help offset the $1 billion judgment against the conglomerate in U.S. Tax Court. And from an image perspective, unloading the Cubs now would let the Tribsters avoid a potentially gloomy period ahead. The only thing worse than owning the Cubs in the heyday of the White Sox is owning the Cubs when they stink in the heyday of the White Sox. And, oh, do the Cubs stink under the Three Stooges leadership of MacPhail, Hendry and Baker, providing no reason to think a South Side championship will be duplicated at Wrigley in the foreseeable future.

 

Despite having its hands in numerous publishing and broadcasting entities, many of which are performing like Juan Pierre and Glendon Rusch, the Tribune is best known for running the Cubs. In sporting circles, the Tribsters are known as clumsy owners who've yet to participate in a World Series and have missed the playoffs 21 times in a quarter-century of ownership. A baseball team in a major market can make lots of money AND win championships, as the Yankees and Red Sox have exhibited. But the Cubs aren't run like those clubs, which are owned and operated by smart businessmen and baseball people who understand the importance of trying their damnedest to win every year and earning their fans' ongoing trust.

 

No, the Cubs are run by MacPhail, who is the real problem at Wrigley. At least in the 1980s, the club won division titles twice with solid baseball men like Dallas Green and Jim Frey exerting influence. Since MacPhail took over in 1994, hailed as the golden boy with Hall of Fame bloodlines and two World Series titles in small-market Minnesota, he has won one division title in 11 years and reached the playoffs twice. Yet because he and his colleagues have maximized the Wrigley experience and turned it into one of the sport's thriving cash cows, he is a hero in the corporate boardrooms.

 

The fans, once known for their patience and unconditional love at Wrigley, are tired of MacPhail, Hendry, Baker -- the entire mess. It was absurd all along to think the Cubs could complete a drought-breaking triad after the triumphs of the White Sox and Red Sox, and now that a 98th consecutive season without a parade is being recorded in infamy, the mood is turning ugly at the Unfriendly Confines.

 

Fans who aren't booing players or shouting at Baker are doing the unthinkable and becoming Sox fans, which is disgusting. If it's only May, imagine the scene in September if the Cubs are 20 games behind the Cardinals while the Sox are gunning for another World Series. Cubdom doesn't want to hear excuses about Derrek Lee's injury -- not when Hendry built a house of cards that didn't include a Plan B and not when plenty of teams, including the Yankees at the moment, have to deal with serious injuries. Nor does Cubdom want to get excited about the return of Kerry Wood, especially when Hendry was foolish enough to plan his season around a healthy Wood and Mark Prior when everyone else has backburnered both as unreliable heartbreakers.

 

Luck has nothing to do with it

 

And please, Dusty, stop the talk about bad luck. When Mike Piazza beat closer Ryan Dempster with a three-run homer Saturday, Baker bemoaned how the weak-hitting Padres have beaten the Cubs three times in their final at-bat. ''That's what happens when you're going good,'' he said. ''I can't wait until it's our turn. If things even out, we have a lot of breaks coming.''

 

Breaks. For almost a century, the Cubs have waited for breaks. They aren't coming.

 

A good baseball franchise makes its own breaks. A good baseball franchise would recognize when the manager has gone stale and limp. The Cubs, as we've known for a seeming eternity, aren't a good baseball franchise.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/output/mariotti/cst-spt-jay15.html

[Balta1701]

Even a broken clock...

[greasywheels121]

You almost make me want to like the Cubs in spite.

[Wedge]

I can't believe they're going to extend Baker. Everytime I say it to myself, it sounds a little sillier.

 

EDIT: I meant Baker, not Hendry

Edited May 15, 2006 by Wedge

[southsideirish71]

Here is Kotex boy in a nutshell. He sprays s*** against the wall, some of it sticks.

 

 

Last year he was rooting for the sox to choke.

 

This is Kotex boys line over the years. When Cubs do good, Sox should model themselves after the cubs. JR doesnt know what he is doing, they should fire X manager. Now that the sox are doing good, The cubs should model themselves after the sox, the Trib doesnt know what they are doing, they should fire X manager.

[Milkman delivers]

You almost make me want to like the Cubs in spite.

 

^Honestly. This is way past pathetic now.

[Kalapse]

Did anyone really doubt what this topic was going to be about before they opened it?

[SnB]

does he just do this to piss everyone off now?

 

EDIT: And i'm not talking about mariotti

Edited May 15, 2006 by SnB

[G&T]

Even when Mariotti is right I don't have any respect for him. He doesn't think anything until everyone else says it first.

[Whitewashed in '05]

Six hundred and something useless posts. I don't ever say anything about anyone, but you gotta give this up. You are seriously annoying with your obsession with the cubs. Please I speak for everyone here, stop it.

[WCSox]

Even when Mariotti is right I don't have any respect for him. He doesn't think anything until everyone else says it first.

 

^^^

 

I didn't realize that the Trib Co. owes a billion in back taxes. What's the deal with that?

Edited May 15, 2006 by WCSox

[Kyyle23]

You almost make me want to like the Cubs in spite.

 

^Honestly. This is way past pathetic now.

 

Did anyone really doubt what this topic was going to be about before they opened it?

 

Six hundred and something useless posts. I don't ever say anything about anyone, but you gotta give this up. You are seriously annoying with your obsession with the cubs. Please I speak for everyone here, stop it.

 

does he just do this to piss everyone off now?

 

EDIT: And i'm not talking about mariotti

 

LMAO

 

Cuck the Fubs, you need a new hobby!

[Felix]

You almost make me want to like the Cubs in spite.

This is actually one of the reasons I don't hate the Cubs, and do root for them in the NL (another reason is that they are a Chicago team afterall, and I'd rather see Chicago do better than any other city out there). There are just some Sox fans who seem to care more about hating the Cubs than liking the Sox. I find it sad

Edited May 16, 2006 by Felix

[mr_genius]

haha, cuck the schlubs or whatever his name is = totally obsessed

 

the cubs suck and are a non-factor. who cares what they do? not me

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

haha, cuck the schlubs or whatever his name is = totally obsessed

 

the cubs suck and are a non-factor. who cares what they do? not me

 

 

I care what happens to them. Laughing at their misery is almost as much fun as watching our Sox inflict misery and force feed s*** to other teams.

 

 

[Phuck the Cubs]

I care what happens to them. Laughing at their misery is almost as much fun as watching our Sox inflict misery and force feed s*** to other teams.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Espically since their fans are insufferable s***s.

[Sox Machine]

One-trick ponies grow insufferable as well.

[Jordan4life_2007]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Espically since their fans are insufferable s***s.

 

This is why Cubs hating never gets old to me. Continue.

[Rex Kickass]

I want to know how getting to the playoffs twice in a fourteen year span is more successful than getting to the playoffs twice in an eleven year span.

[Kyyle23]

I want to know how getting to the playoffs twice in a fourteen year span is more successful than getting to the playoffs twice in an eleven year span.

 

How about twice in a 5 year span?

[Phuck the Cubs]

How about twice in a 5 year span?

Plus a World Series title.

[southsideirish71]

Nick (Mission, KS): Rob, do you know if there's a way to combine Kerry Wood and other materials to produce a pitcher that looks, sounds, and behaves like Wood, but doesn't break like Wood?

 

SportsNation Rob Neyer: (12:23 PM ET ) I don't think so. But the Red Sox are working on it.

 

From todays ESPN Neyer chat.

 

Here is the other piece thats obvious.

oel (Chicago): Rob, Jim Hendry said that he couldn't find a better hitter than Todd Walker at first to replace Derrek Lee, but isn't the problem that Neifi Perez (who's making $2.5 million this and next year, by the way) has replaced Lee in the lineup? Surely someone better can be found to play second.

 

SportsNation Rob Neyer: (12:34 PM ET ) Joel, you're missing a key piece of information . . . Dusty Baker has serious man-love for Neifi Perez. It's his single biggest identifiable weakness as a manager. And it's a big one.

Edited May 16, 2006 by southsideirish71

[Kalapse]

Wow, Rob Neyer callin out Dusty for the "Man-Love" that is humorous.

[Texsox]

I care what happens to them. Laughing at their misery is almost as much fun as watching our Sox inflict misery and force feed s*** to other teams.

 

 

 

Exactly. Except I care more about them losing when the Sox are losing. The "yeah we suck, but your guys suck even worse" moments are sometimes all we had. Now it's a nice sideline while the Sox are winning. Also very close to the years when the Packers and Bears would both win 5 or 6 games. As long as they won the series fans acted like they did something that year.