Dodger-hating

Ah. I can't help it. There are just certain sports franchises I love to hate. The Los Angeles Lakers. The San Francisco 49ers. And the New York Yankees—to name three.

Then there are the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yeah, I'm still holding a grudge from the 2008 play-offs, where the Cubs inexplicably lost two straight at home to a team with a 36 - 45 road record and just 84 wins overall. The Cubs never recovered, scoring just six runs in the series before going down 3 – 1 in game number three in L.A.

But there's more to it than that. It's their preening. Their presumptive arrogance by virtue of being the city's favored baseball team.

I was praying for a Dodgers-free World Series, even if watching them stumble on baseball's biggest stage has its benefits. But like Clayton Kershaw, the post-season seems to be the Atlanta Braves' kryptonite.

(I should note that 2020 did mark a breakthrough of sorts for the Braves, who won a post-season series for the first time since 2001 after nine straight first-round exits, and ten in eleven visits.)

Ratcheting up my Dodger-contempt is the fawning adoration on the part of our star-struck media conglomerates.

Sunday night, I thought the Fox network crew was going to bust out of the press box and plant wet kisses all over Cody Bellinger after his seventh-inning home run. And if the first dozen replays weren't enough, the pretty boy shot of Bellinger trying to look like a male centerfold was.

Jesus.

Enough!

But I'm happy to acknowledge the Dodgers' supremacy in one area—cute first names. Let's see, we have a Cody, a Kenley, a Mookie, a Corey and a Clayton. I mean, is this a baseball team or a casting call for a reconstituted version of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch?

Christ!

While Major League Baseball weeps with relief that at least one major-market team made it to the World Series, I'm all-in on the team they didn't want.

This team is the outsider that Sir Lies A Lot claims himself to be. The third-lowest payroll in the game, a half-interested fan base and a Q-rating that could barely fire the bulb in your kitchen's night light.

Like the candidates in this year's presidential election, the contrast between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn't be more vivid. Like Paul Sullivan wrote in this morning's Tribune, this is Team Hollywood versus Team Walmart.

I love the movies, but I'm rooting for Tampa Bay all the way. Even if they weren't playing the #$!%@* Dodgers.

Here Are Your 2019 Chicago Cubs!

In the wake of perhaps the most disappointing 95-win season in baseball history, the Chicago Cubs begin another season today. Even with the ascendant Bears garnering disproportionate amounts of media attention, the Cubs remain the topic on everyone's lips.

Why didn't they pursue Bryce Harper? Why didn't they pursue Manny Machado? Why didn't they sign a front-line reliever? Why didn't they extend Joe Maddon's contract? Why didn't they can Joe Maddon? How are they going to compete by standing still?

Cubulous Nervosa generates many, many questions. The only known cure is to take a deep breath and slowly exhale.

Yes, last season was one of the most perplexing and aggravating on record. An offense that would vanish like a magician's prop. The disastrous signings of not one, but two, free-agent pitchers. A profound early-season slump by the usually reliable Anthony Rizzo and an injury-plagued, below-par year from Kris Bryant.

Not to mention late-season injuries to Brandon Morrow and Pedro Strop.

And yet the Cubs still won 95 games. Contended for the division flag until the last day of the season against the surging Milwaukee Brewers. A run here and a run there and that irksome wild card game against the Colorado Rockies never would have happened.

If Maddon didn't prove his worth and the Cubs their mettle last season, I don't know when they have.

Alas, we live in a microwave culture. Expectations rise like the temperature inside a parked car. 2016 might as well be 1908. 

And when these new expectations aren't met, the people take to social media and howl.

As your friendly, web-based contrarian, I'm going to suggest that 2018 was an aberration, not the beginning of a trend. I'm going to suggest that we should be praising Theo Epstein for resisting the public mania for brand name free-agents.

Not that Epstein is without fault. I'm not crazy about his public calling-out of Maddon. But as Maddon himself would admit, it's the manager's lot to take the blame for whatever perceived failure his team accrues.

Not winning the 2018 World Series doesn't constitute heresy in my book. And I'm not sure not winning the 2019 edition qualifies, either. I think the Cub nation needs to take a deep breath and consider where it is.

It has evolved from wondering if haplessness is a permanent condition to demanding world championships every year. It must remember the quantum leap the objects of its affection have made.

My two-cents says that if fans can't quit obsessing whenever the Cubs don't pitch a no-hitter every time out and if certain quarters of the media don't stop turning every molehill into a tabloid-worthy mountain, all assembled might have seen their last World Series trophy.

I'll say it again: the Cubs have scaled heights unseen at Wrigley Field since the Great Depression, and ones unimaginable as recently as 2013. You remember 2013, don't you?

But they need a little breathing room. They need a little less scrutiny. It's okay if Hendricks occasionally goes four innings or if Bryant is hitless in four at bats. It's not the end of the world.

Counter to Mr. Epstein's appraisal, consistently winning two out of three would be wildly and exuberantly splendiferous. My therapist assures me 108 wins would give the Cubs the NL Central title and home field for as long as they want it.

Last year was just.....weird. It's not going to happen again. And with the season-long presence of a fully rehabilitated Yu Darvish, the Cubs effectively have a new free-agent signee. Not to mention one of the best managers in the biz.

But Theo, we (that's you) need to let him be. Excepting Jussie Smollett, I've never seen anyone perform well with a noose around their neck.

Go Cubs!

Greetings from Brigadoon

If this were a nineteen-forties movie instead of a blog, it'd open with a black and white shot of a printing press, furiously running off newspapers. Crisp, buoyant music would accompany the scene.

Papers at every stage of their creation would be shown, right up to the point where they're bundled up and tossed on delivery trucks by thickly-muscled guys chewing cigar butts and wearing ivy caps.

From the center of the frame a tiny front page emerges. It is spinning. It stops only when it dominates the screen. Cubs Win Series! Fans Dancing in Streets!

Alas, this is a blog. Not a movie.

Cue to a sleepy older guy in a worn Cubs t-shirt and sweat pants bathed in the bluish white light of a computer monitor. There are no printing presses or delivery trucks. Only a hasty mea culpa being banged out on a fifteen-year-old keyboard.

Remember that scene in Moonstruck when Cher tells her mom she's going to get married? Freshly wakened, mom asks “Do you love him?”

Cher: “No.”

Mom: “Good. When you love them, they drive you crazy.”

See, that's how it is with the Cubs and me. I love them. And in the aftermath of their game 4 loss, I was crazy. Convinced it was over. Kaput. Fini. If they didn't feel confident and comfortable in Wrigley Field, where would they?

My previous post, Blind Until I See, was my inner Cub fan doing what all Cubs fans do. Dialing up the defense mechanisms and steeling myself for yet another dose of soul-shredding agony. How was I to know that freed of the pressure cooker Wrigley Field had become, they would spread their wings and play like the 2016 Cubs?

I have never been more delighted to be wrong.

Being a bad prognosticator means never having to go hungry, because when all else fails you'll always have your words to eat.

Blind Until I See

At least one more game remains to be played. But it is over. Over in the same sense that a body has expired by the time it is interred.

They have surrendered in everything but fact.

All the right words were said. This was a generation either ignorant or immune to history.

But like a diver descending to uncharted depths, the further one goes the greater the pressure. It is paralyzing. It crushes interlopers.

What team could shoulder the weight of generational expectations? Ignore the foreboding and all-too-familiar signs of imminent collapse? Resist facts as insistent as they are abundant that this cannot happen?

Must not happen.

Will not happen.

The cult lives on. Baseball's take on Deadheads have been hardened by another layer of failure. Rain will not douse the candle of their faith. 

Contrary to popular belief, hope is not a poison.

Cub fans celebrate New Year's Day in Autumn.

Have a happy 2017.

A Tale of Two Cities

No one in St. Louis expected to be celebrating the Cardinals so soon after the free-agent departure of Albert Pujols. The loss of the Lou Gehrig clone was expected to impact the team for years, especially combined with the retirement of manager slash savant Tony LaRussa.

But in the two years since, all the Cardinals have done is located another brilliant manager (Mike Matheny), successfully replaced perhaps the most dominant player of the oughts and won.

In their first PP (post-Pujols) season, the Cardinals won a very respectable 88 games. Using a modest wild card slot as a launching pad, they took the eventual-champion San Francisco Giants all the way to a seventh game in the 2012 NLCS. (This after defeating the team with the best record in major league baseball in the second round.)

They took no chances this year, winning more games (97) than any team in the National League and tying the surprising Boston Red Sox for the major-league lead. After dispatching the Pittsburgh Pirates, they stand just one victory away from their fourth World Series in ten years.

In the meantime, the once-invincible Pujols looks decidedly human in an Angels uniform, having hit just .275 over the past two seasons with a .485 slugging percentage. By comparison, his eleven seasons in St. Louis netted a batting average of .328 and a slugging percentage of .617.

Worse, the Angels are stuck with Pujols through 2021 (when he turns 41), at a cost of $240 million. Given these two very different outcomes, you could be forgiven for thinking the most popular joke in St. Louis goes like this:

Moe: Knock knock.

Joe: Who’s there?

Moe: Albert.

Joe: Albert who?