Have You Seen This Man?

 

 

Name: Ryan Dempster. 6′ 2″, 215 lb. Reddish hair and beard, but has been known to wear bizarre wigs. Native Canadian. All-star.

Last seen in Milwaukee on July 30, raising victory total to 12 and lowering ERA to 2.90, raising strikeout total to 126 and lowering BAA to .207. Unfortunately, national fascination with recently ineffective duo of Sabathia and Sheets has allowed Dempster to slip away unnoticed.

REWARD if found.

Definitely Not Hot: Unfortunate Facial Hair

We interrupt your regularly scheduled gloating (Brewers suck! Ha ha! [/Nelson]) for some less appealing news.

Am I the only one who’s noticed that Ryan Theriot’s petit French pornstache is looking less petit these days? He’s still running neck-and-neck with Reed Johnson for second most attractive Cub, with Reed having apparently recovered from his own recent facial hair malady.

I myself am partial to facial hair, but if these gentlemen want to do it right, then they should look at the one Cub currently lapping them in the attractiveness derby: Mark DeRosa. Mmmm…nice!

One Down, Three to Go

I’ll take a win, but I’d take a less stressful win too, should that be in the cards for tonight.

One cause for hope: I think the pitching match-ups progressively fall more and more in our favor. Sabathia vs. Lilly: clear edge to Milwaukee. Sheets vs. Zambrano: push. Dempster vs. Parra: edge to the Cubs. Harden vs. Bush: clear edge to the Cubs. This gets easier as we go on. Particularly if we win tonight and keep building momentum, I like our chances to snowball the Brewers.

I also like that Reed Johnson, having already proven he has no concern for his own body (HBP galore and headfirst dives), now proves he has no concern for the bodies of his opponents, namely middle infielders trying to turn double plays who obviously need their legs taken right out from under them. Reed Johnson for president!

I also like that Lou Piniella left Gaudin in rather than bringing in Cotts to play the lefty-lefty match-up. That was almost a serious step backwards in the love and admiration I’ve had for Lou of late.

I do not like that we keep trotting Bob Howry out there in important situations. I realize we’re feeling thin in the ‘pen with no Kerry Wood and with Marmol still on somewhat shaky ground (though I think he looked almost 90% back to normal last night). Ladies and gentlemen, the Jeff Samardzija bandwagon is now leaving the station. Good seats still available, but going fast. Only requirements for membership: you have to be willing to forgive him for going to Notre Dame, and you have to learn to spell his last name properly.

Furthermore, on a generally unrelated note, I find it hilarious that a man as generous in girth as Prince Fielder can no longer lay claim to being the fattest tubby on his own team.

Let’s All Hold Out Together

Devin Hester has, at least for now, ended his holdout and reported to training camp. Traditionally, players who hold out don’t get much sympathy from the fans. First of all, it’s hard for a middle class schlub to swallow the notion that anyone making an athlete’s salary, even the lowest of athlete’s salaries, is underpaid. Second of all, it seems selfish. Third of all, there’s the “you made your bed, now lie in it” philosophy that says if you signed your name to a contract, you need to honor your word. No fair going back on it just because you changed your mind.

I am in the camp that thinks that millionaires should stop whining, that it seems selfish because it is, and that your word is your bond. However, notice that nearly all holdouts are in football. Most other sports don’t really have a vocabulary for it, other than the opt-out clauses built into certain contracts, such as the one that A-Rod infamously exercised a little while back.

And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why holdouts run rampant in the NFL while being almost unheard of in other leagues. NFL contracts are not guaranteed. If you sign an MLB contract and then accidentally stab yourself in the hand while trying to put the cap back on the pen and as a result never play another inning, the team will have a hell of a time getting out of even one penny of that contract. But other than signing bonus money, nothing in the NFL is guaranteed.

An MLB contract offers shared risk. The player is giving up the possibility of more money on the open market for the security of a guaranteed payday. In the name of acquiring or keeping a productive player, the team is accepting the possibility that he may underperform, get injured, or otherwise fail to live up to the expectations of the deal. And so Barry Zito makes more than $120 million for serving up meatballs.

However, an NFL contract offers mostly one-sided risk. If a player outperforms his deal in the NFL, he has no recourse. But if he underperforms, the team does have recourse. They simply pull a Heidi Klum and auf wiedersehen! And since the NFL carries perhaps the greatest physical risk of any of the major sports…well, I still can’t condone a holdout, but I can see why they exist.

I don’t claim to know everything about collective bargaining agreements. I do know that the NFL has probably the strictest salary cap in professional sports. I do know that they have a salary floor as well. This prevents the spectacle that we have in the MLB, where the Yankees outspend the Marlins by about a 10:1 ratio, and where revenue sharing can line an owner’s pockets without the benefits ever being passed onto the players themselves. The result is that the NFL is a much more competitive league, and ultimately competition benefits the players when it comes to to commanding a salary on the open market (should they ever get there) and when it comes to winning championships—which is what most all players ultimately claim to be about. In other words, no league is perfect.

Personally, I’d prefer guaranteed contracts. To me, that’s the essence of a contract: both parties binding themselves. If a team can ix-nay a player for underperforming, it seems like a player should have some method of being compensated for overperforming, without alienating fans and teammates by acting like a selfish jerk.

And the league that tries hardest to have it both ways, the NBA, has only done so by building a structure so convoluted that it winds up turning the whole thing into a game of who can best manipulate the system. But, in my opinion, that’s not so bad. If you’re smart enough to master a complicated system AND figure out how to use that system to your best advantage, I say bully for you. Why should you not reap the benefits of that? The downside is that the fans can’t keep up, but few fans care about the economics anyway. NBA fans don’t have to put up with their favorite player holding out, nor do they have to put up with their team getting outspent by some arrogant arseholes from New York. The only downside is that you might have to put up with losing a key role player because all your team could offer was a “mid-level exception,” whatever the bloody heck that means.

All leagues have their systems that can be exploited. Figure out how to build talent in your farm system, and you can succeed on the cheap in the MLB. Figure out how to trade one oft injured, overpaid pitcher for a potential star under your control, and you can succeed in the MLB (nice job, Kenny Williams). Figure out how to lock up the league’s most explosive return man for less than $500K a year, and you can…go 7-9 just one year after making the Superbowl. Good show, Jerry!

Sluggish (Re)Start

Since the break, the Cubs have been less than inspiring.  If they can hold on tonight, they will be 2-4 on the road since they returned from vacation, NYC, honeymoons or the hospital with newborns, depending on what players had scheduled for their time off. 

However, this isn’t that different from the sluggish start we saw at the very beginning of the season.  The first week in April, the Cubs were 2-3, with two losses at home.  Since I know what happened over the next 3 months, I’m not ready to rachet up the CPI (Cubs Panic Index) just yet, although TheWittyOne may disagree with me. 

 Yes, the past few games have not been easy to watch.  But the starting pitching is solid — often impressive – and I believe that the offense will get rolling behind those arms and will soon be swinging freely.  The presence of Soriano in the order may be just enough to spark some hits.  Yes, the Brewers gained ground this week, but we’ve got a good couple weeks to get things turned around before the situation becomes really serious.  (Or maybe I’m just giddy because Lilly stole a base earlier in the game, and Johnson just hit a grand slam…)

Go Cubbies!

Jerome Holtzman: An Appreciation

Baseball writing great Jerome Holtzman has passed away.

I remember reading Holtzman’s columns when he was still a regular writer for the Chicago Tribune. It’s one of the good things about being a precocious grade-schooler. I can still see the place on the page where his writings always appeared.

While I was reading, I was being spoiled without knowing it. I was unconsciously absorbing the belief that encyclopedic knowledge and insightful analysis were traits to be expected, not rare gifts in a world that too often rewards hacks.

Farewell, Jerome. You will be missed.

Surprisingly Hot: Ian Kinsler

Ian Kinsler is widely considered baseball’s best kept secret. So far this season, he’s hit .337, stole 23 bases while being caught just once, and pounded out 14 HRs and 58 RBIs. Could you do all that and remain anonymous? Yeah, didn’t think so. (That said, we’ve got to do something about those 16 errors.)

Furthermore, Kinsler’s potential hotness factor has also remained a well kept secret. We may perhaps blame both of these on Josh Hamilton, whose feel good story has dominated the Rangers’ headlines this year. And we can’t help but notice that Hamilton isn’t too hard to look at either.

Nonetheless, this is suprisingly hot, not everyone knows about me because I got off drugs then hit a billion HRs in the derby hot. So back to Kinsler. Though a mere babe at 26, he shows signs of evolving into a full-fledged hottie while concurrently evolving into a full-fledged MVP candidate.

Call me in two or three years, Ian.

Brett Favre Has Lost His Mind

Again. But this time it’s serious.

I actually kind of feel bad for him. I think he’s having something of an existential crisis, and it’s completely understandable. He doesn’t need an agent to help him negotiate a release from the Packers. He needs someone to help him negotiate this rather difficult time in his evolution as a human being. Perhaps I’m wrong, but he really gives the appearance of someone who is just confused about life, as a whole, right now.

First, he claims that he felt rushed into a decision on retirement. It’s probably a bad move for the Packers to make one of the all-time greats feel like he’s being shown the door, but Favre did bring this on himself with the way he turned the last stage of his career into a needlessly extended retirement drama, each year representing its own needlessly extended act. If the Packers weren’t up for another round of Guess When I’m Going to Retire, I can’t say I blame them.

Favre also says he was never 100% sure about retirement. But if he was waiting until he felt 100% sure, he’d probably still be playing at the age of 80. For an athlete of his caliber, I doubt the desire and drive ever completely go away.

Furthermore, we’re fast approaching training camp. Favre’s mind and body have been trained by years of this rhythm. Yes, now is exactly the point in time when his mind and body are probably saying, “Wooo! Football time is here again! Time to start getting geared up! Yay, we’re going to…oh, wait. What?” Now is exactly the point in time when he probably feels a little lost and floundering. But hang on, sweetie. It will pass. A new rhythm of life will take over. This is the transition time, and change is never easy. Don’t do anything dumb like, say, demand your release from the team that made you who you are, shaking the dust off your feet on the way out of town.

Favre needs to be realistic. He wants to go to a contender, for understandable reasons. However, as we are often reminded, quarterback is arguably the most vital position in all of sports. It’s rather difficult to find a team who is ready to contend while also being deficient at this, the most crucial of positions. Those teams do exist. Even in Favre’s own division, one might say that the Bears, Version 2006 represented just such a team. And one might say that the Vikings currently represent such a team. But they are few in number.

In addition, that team must have the resources and salary cap room to sign Favre. And they must be willing to forestall or perhaps even forego development of younger players to put all their eggs into this year’s basket. In a sport where parity reigns and injuries (among other things) cause constant turnover, it seems to make sense to seize the chance to win now. But if the Vikings, for example, are intent upon having Adrian Peterson and Tavaris Jackson grow old together, I guess that’s their prerogative.

The best case scenario for Favre is that he comes back to Green Bay, is welcomed with open arms, and gets to finish off the surprising resurgence that he began last year by winning it all one last time. Well, that ship done sailed. Green Bay has already moved on, without Favre. The worst case scenario is that he alienates the fans and the organization that supported him for so many years by going to a new team, but learning a new system falls under the old dog/new tricks category, and/or he discovers that a team unsettled at quarterback probably isn’t as close to winning as they or he might like to think. A disappointing, energy-draining, legacy-tarnishing, interception-riddled season ensues.

Chances are the outcome will lie somewhere in the middle of those two scenarios, but right now the latter is looking a lot more plausible.

I don’t think Favre knew exactly what retirement would feel like. That’s fine. I don’t see how he could be expected to know in advance all the repercussions of that sort of life-altering event. So homeboy is making all kinds of rash decisions and hard-to-take-back statements, probably because he feels adrift and purposeless without football. But I don’t think the solution is to go back to football. That same disequlibrating feeling will still be there next time he decides to retire. I think the solution is to forge ahead with the next phase of his life, realizing that this too shall pass.

So ends your therapy session, Brett. That will be $300.

Take a Break

After all, the Cubs need one.  Blisters, broken hands, shattered confidence, shaky swings.  A myriad of minor and major issues have plagued the Cubs lately.  They need a break.  So the All-Star break should be a good thing. 

It brings all the noteriety of 7 players named to the team, with 3 voted to start.  But Soriano’s broken hand and Wood’s blister will keep them from playing.  Not a bad thing, given their tendancies toward injury.  Let’s get them healthy and do our best to keep them that way.  I’m sure it’s disappointing to be unavailable after receiving the honor, but we have quite a few games before September, and, hopefully, October. 

And there are many others who need the break.  Fukedome is in a hitting slump, although he continues to do the fundamentals well.  Marmol needs to pull himself together.  Everytime he seems to be on the verge of a breakthrough, he gives up a single or a walk that starts a rapid downward spiral.  If you would have told me even a month ago that Marmol could give up 5 runs in the 9th, I would have laughed.  And although Reed and Edmonds are playing well, rest will certainly be a good thing.

But despite these issues, the first half of the season has been something to treasure.  20 games over .500 more than once.  A ridiculuous home record.  A winning record in extra innings and 1-run games (not something we had last year).  A solid starting rotation backed by a deep bullpen.  Discipline at the plate to get guys on base and then bring them home.  Enough power hitting to keep games exciting — and within reach.  Proof they can come back from deep deficits and recover from giving up big leads.  Success without key pieces to the lineup.  Promising glimpses of players from the farm system. 

All this gives us plenty to look forward to over the next couple months.  But first, let’s take a break.

Dazzling(?) Debuts and Pro Players

Nice, Rich, very nice.  Welcome to Wrigley Field. 5 1/3 innings. 10 strikeouts to 3 walks.  No runs on 4 hits.  Based on the ovation you recieved, you certainly made an impression on the fans.  You made Jim Hendry look really good today, even if you do drag down the batting average for our starting rotation.

And although Chad Gaudin gave up a home run in his debut Thursday, so did just about everyone else who took the mound for the Cubs.  He’s still got great potential to help the Cubs out this season.  For the record, Sean Gallagher and Matt Murton looked really good in their Oakland debut yesterday, as well.  So at first glance, the trade looks pretty good from both sides.  And, those debuts are more impressive than top pick Derrick Rose’s in summer league against second pick, but that’s old news by now.

What really struck me about Rich Harden’s debut was acutally the Cubs pre-game show interview with Giants broadcaster Mike somebody-or-other.  When asked about Harden’s health and durability, Mike made a comment that reminded me why I choose college over pro sports.  Mike said getting traded is good for players, it makes them “mercenaries” rather than “hometown boys” that may get babied a little.  A trade, according to this gut, makes real pros. 

So, is Lee a mercenary, or a Cub?  Especially compared to those who came up through the farm system, like Wood or Theriot?  Based on Lee’s clubhouse leadership and commitment to sticking with managment’s line, I would say he’s a Cub.  And DeRosa?  He seems to have embraced his team…

But of course I want to see things that way, because I don’t want to cheer for a bunch of mercenaries.  I want to cheer for guys who love the game and their team and their city and their fans.  Take Kerry Wood, who comes across as just thankful to be healthy and playing for the Cubs, even though he is no longer in the starting rotation.  According to his wife, he wouldn’t be sastisfied anywhere else.  Compare that to Jim Edmonds, who seems to have gelled with his new team, but still draws Cardinal fans in Edmonds jerseys to Cubs games.  I appreciate what he’s done for us this season, but it is a bit harder to cheer for him.

Because I want to cheer for passionate players who love where they are at, I tend to gravitate toward college sports.  The kids are more likely to have chosen where they want to play, and although they get an education, they aren’t (in theory) getting paid.  And certainly not the millions that many pros make.  Plus, there are way fewer agonizing situations like the whole Farve thing…but that’s a topic for another day…

Welcome, Rich.  Please stay healthy and embrace your new team.  Please don’t take on a mercenary mentality — you’ve been heartily welcomed by the fans, so just be a Cub.