Tyler Kepner thinks fucking up is courageous. I think that's his way of making himself feel better about his own life.

So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to channel my inner “Fire Joe Morgan.”

Here is a quote from this morning’s NY TImes story on the blown perfect game by writer Tyler Kepner:

“The courageous call is the one Joyce made. It was so obviously wrong that Joyce, a major league umpire since 1989, clearly had no desire to help Galarraga make history. He simply called the play as he saw it. The problem, of course, is that Joyce’s decision is easily the most egregious blown call in baseball over the last 25 years.”

Wow.  Let me start off my retort by addressing Tyler Kepner.  Mr. Kepner, you just wrote the dumbest thing I’ve ever read about sports.  Seriously.  Making a blown call is courageous?  Are you sure you weren’t looking for “egregious” or “outrageous?”  No, you clearly really did mean that someone fucking something up is an act of courage.  The fact that it was wrong was an afterthought to you?  The most important thing, to you,  was that this guy had conviction while shitting on a piece of history.  If it was a close call, and Joyce had gotten it right, he should have been lauded for not bending the rules to cheapen such an achievement.  But the call wasn’t even close.  He was out by a whole step.  I feel bad for Joyce now that he admitted his huge mistake, but that doesn’t make him a fucking hero for standing up for what was obviously wrong, not just in hindsight, but at the time.  He’s not a martyr.  He’s not a hero.  He didn’t display valor while committing the job performance equivalent of shitting his pants in public.  He’s a fuck up.  And so are you.  Tyler Kepner showed courage in defending the indefensible.  If you would like to express your disgust with Mr. Keppinger, you can find him on street corners arguing with complete strangers in defense of OJ’s not guilty verdict, the Iraq war invasion and WMD claims, and BP saving money on safety measures at their oil wells.

Steve Phillips, seen here with the unattractive, mentally unstable ESPN production assistant that he had sex with in order to ruin his marriage in spectacular fashion.

Wow.  We’ve gone over how dumb Steve Phillips is, and then how, even while discussing how incredibly stupid he is, he blows you away with something even dumber.  Well, yesterday Steve Phillips decided to top even the most moronic things he’s ever said or done.  He really wanted to just set the record straight that NO ONE will out-dumb Steve Phillips.  What did he say that was so dumb?  He said that if he were the GM of the Nationals he would trade Stephen Strasburg for Roy Oswalt.

That’s right folks, you heard that correctly.  He would trade the best prospect of all time, a guy just shy of 22 who is dominating the minor leagues, is about a week away from being that club’s ace for the next dozen years, and has unlimited potential as a major league ace for a good 33 year old pitcher who only has a year and a half left on his contract.  And he defended his statement by saying he’s a “win now” type of guy.  Well you know who isn’t “win now?”  The Nationals.  That team is years away from even sniffing the playoffs.  Yet Steve Phillips thinks it’s a good idea to trade the future of the franchise to rent a player for a year and a half even though they’re already out of the race this year, and won’t have a dhot in hell next year either.  And it’s not like he could move them up in the standings, even.  Right now, Oswalt is 2-6 on the offensively-disabled Astros.  The Nats offense isn’t much better. So how does a guy who only plays 1 out of every 5 games turn them around when he can’t even manage a winning record on the days he does pitch for an equally inept team?

It’s like Steve Phillips is auditioning for never having a job again.  Not just a GM job, either.  If this is his idea of good sports analysis, I’m sure AOL Fanhouse will turn to other, less-incredibly-stupid options.

Ego tripping at its finest.

Last night, Hanley Ramirez was benched after he decided not to hustle in chasing after a ball he booted, even though doing so allowed two runs to score.  When asked why he didn’t run hard, Hanley said, “I’m Hanley Ramirez, bitch.”  He later told manager Freddy Gonzalez, “Fuck your bench, Freddy!  Fuck your bench!”  Ramirez then turned to teammates, saying, “You bitches can kiss my chain!” apparently in reference to the tasteful necklace the Marlins owner gave him to commemorate winning last year’s batting title.  Ramirez then lit a $100 bill on fire in front of reporters, took a shit in the team shower, and spit in the team’s Gatorade bucket while daring anyone to stop him.

Aramis needs to stop stroking his cock and start swinging some wood and knocking some balls around. There's a dick joke in there somewhere, I just can't find it. Also: penis. BTW, googling his name and finding pictures like this is why i heart the interwebz. Best, Series. Of. Tubes. Ever.

First, we need Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez to start hitting.  They are the ONLY weak link in our lineup, which sucks for us considering that they are supposed to be our two biggest run producers.  We have 6 guys in our lineup hitting over .300.  That’s literally every position player except D Lee, Aramis, and the pitchers’ spot.  People are getting on base, and they’re not getting driven in.  It’s a massive hole right in the middle of our lineup.  If you want to point a finger at why we’re a losing team, the only logical direction is at the two of them.  It’s the reason why our starters are getting no-decisions, it’s the reason why our bullpen has struggled under the expectations of holding slim leads, or keeping us only a few runs down with no chance for the offense to catch up if we’re behind more than a couple of runs.  It’s the reason Zambrano is in the bullpen.  It’s the reason we called up a 20 year old kid and asked him to carry more of the load than a 20 year old should (and yet he’s not buckling under the pressure, but more on that later).  It’s the reason Lou has had to juggle our lineup several times since the season began.  It’s the reason were already thinking about next year.

So what do we do?  This year, all we can do is hope that Lee and Ramirez turn it around in order to give us a shot at the division.  That’s not too far off for Lee, who is usually a slow starter.  In fact, he had a good week offensively and raised his average about 20 points.  Aramis is another story.  He doesn’t seem recovered from his injuries, and given the amount of time he’s spent on the DL in his career, he might be breaking down completely.  But another reason was hinted at by Len and Bob on the air a few weeks ago: he’s not listening to Rudy Jaramillo’s hitting instruction.  Rudy’s reputation as the best hitting coach in the game should be enough credentials, but if you needed more evidence of his ability to get the best out of hitters, you only need to look at what he’s done to bring back the old Soriano that he used to instruct in their days in Texas together.  If Aramis is ignoring his advice while trying to find his swing coming out of injury, than we should bench him until he either figures it out on his own or agrees to listen.  There’s no room on our roster for someone to be so stubborn while not producing.  We don’t have the luxury of allowing him the time it would take to find his groove without any help.  Right now his VORP (Value Over Replacement Player for the non-nerds) is -11.4.  What that means is, offensively he creates 11.4 less runs than the average replacement player.  Just to let you know how bad that is, there is only ONE PLAYER WORSE in all of MLB, Brandon Wood of the Angels.  So, as long as we replace Aramis with literally any other player in all of baseball, we will get better.  So what we need to do first, is bench Aramis and replace him with Chad Tracy until he figures it out (while sending Jeff Baker to the minors to make room).  Then, we use whoever is more effective out of those two until Josh Vitters is ready, which might actually be right now.

Ace's don't throw tantrums, they throw gems... often.

Next, we need to stop this stupid Zambrano-in-the-bullpen experiment.  The only reason we did it is because we had a gap between our middle relief and our closer which was constantly giving up runs.  But why Z?  What not Gorzelany?  And if we were scoring more runs with a decent middle of the order, would that even be that big of a problem?  On top of that, if no one on our current staff can get it done, than promote someone from our minor league system, like Cashner, who will do better.  If the veterans can’t do it, you might as well give the kids a shot.

But all of that is only a prescription to how to make us respectable this year, when we know the best this team can possibly do is win the division (that was proven in ‘07 and ‘08).  So how do we get better for the future?  Simple, we do nothing.  By that I mean, we build from our system, something the Cubs have never done in my lifetime.  This is the first Cubs era I have ever remembered that properly invested in our system, from proper Scouting Directors like Tim Wilken, who drafted all of those young, talented Rays who have been setting the league on fire for the last 3 years.  THose players he drafted are then taught how to excel as a professional by the likes of minor league manager Ryne Sandberg.  Then they are slowly brought along by our intelligent front office now headed by Jim Hendry (who deserves some criticism, but has easily been our best GM since the 1940s), and his Assistant GM Greg Maddux.

Our future Manger and GM. I can smell the nostalgia from here.

So once Lou moves on this year or next, he will be replaced by Sandberg.  And when Hendry moves on, he will be replaced by “Professor” Maddux.  And those two brilliant baseball minds, with the help of our stellar head scout, the best hitting coach on Earth, and a host of other major and minor league staff, will give us a winning team made up almost entirely of our own products.  It’s already started: Soto, Castro, Theriot, Marmol, Marshall, Wells, Colvin… and they will soon be joined by Vitters, Cashner, Chris Carpenter the Sequel, and who knows who else we have stashed in there waiting to be unleashed.  That will pretty much have us set for the next decade provided we make a few (vital) moves.

Which moves are those?  Well, first there’s the problem with our aging corner infielders.  Aramis will eventually give way to Josh Vitters.  So that covers 3B for the next dozen or so years.  Lee is trickier.  He hasn’t struggled as much as Aramis, and has been pretty steady in his production over the years.  He’s also got a Gold Glove at 1st, which is hard to replace.  My opinion is that we should try to sign him for less than he earns now for a 2 year contract.  I think Lee would take it given the market for aging hitters this past off-season (Jermaine Dye anyone?  Anyone?!?  Seriously!?  No one?!?  Wow.  Sorry Jermaine.)  Aside from that, Lee’s family have made a home in Chicago and are active members of the community, and he is universally revered by the Cubs faithful and his teammates.  I think at this point he would take a discount to stay at home with his family.  As for long-term solutions at 1B, we would either have to develope someone on the quick, or sign a free-agent.  My brother tried to convince me that we should go after Adrian Gonzalez, but I wouldn’t trade anyone on our farm system with the way we’ve been pumping out future stars.  We would probably need to sign a free agent, but I would rather keep Lee for a few years than sign any of the free agents next year, o whom Adam Dunn is easily the most appealing.

Cliff Lee doesn't care for catching pop-ups. He finds it to be vulgar, and thinks it is something commoners should do for him.

As for our pitching staff, we have a lot of live young arms coming up, but we would still be lacking something: an Ace.  We haven’t had one since Wood and Prior left Wrigley in matching ambulances.  Zambrano has served as our best pitcher, but he was never a stopper, never consistently dominant enough to match up against the other contenders’ best guy.  I thin kby now we have to admit that he just doesn’t have it in him to be better than a number 2 guy.  But, there is a readily available solution: Cliff Motherfucking Lee.  That’s right.  A guy who won a Cy Young, then DOMINATED THE YANKEES SINGLE-HANDEDLY in the World Series.  He’s a free agent after this year, and he and his agent have said that re-signing in Seattle isn’t in his plans.  The Rickett’s family would really be showing their commitment to winning by signing a proven ace to lead our staff and set the tone for our team.  We need it.  He’s available.  We should get him.  No reason not to make this happen.

Other than that, all we really have to do is let our kids grow up.  I’ve already covered how good Starlin Castro is going to be.  We’ve seen the resurgence of Soto.  We’ve seen glimpses from Colvin already.  We can do this with the talent we have.  We just need to be patient with them, and surround them with the occasional acquisition and we should be title contenders within the next three to five years.  Don’t worry Cubs fans, it’s gonna happen.  And I don’t think I’m asking too much when I ask you to be patient.  We should all be used to that by now.  Only this time, it’s not just blind hope.  We finally have several reasons to be optimistic.

Developing talent like this is now the rule, not the exception. Let's keep 'em coming.

MLB Commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig, seen here praying that this all goes away without having to take a side.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig finally responded to requests by the MLB Players Association and by a New York congressman, whose district includes Yankee Stadium, to remove the 2011 All-Star game from Phoenix due to the racist immigration laws recently passed in Arizona.  His response?  That the game shouldn’t be moved because baseball has such a great track record on racial issues.  What???  I get that baseball has been on the forefront of a lot of our country’s social change, and that significance should not be underestimated, but does that mean that they should be able to sit this one out and reflect on past accomplishments in racial harmony?

This wouldn’t even be the first time a sporting event had to be moved out of Arizona due to the state’s racial intolerance, either.  In 1991, the NFL removed the 1993 Superbowl from Sun Devil Stadium due to the Arizona governor’s repeal of Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday.  The NFL players union decided that since a large portion of their league was made up of African-Americans that it would be unconscionable to make them play in an environment which openly disrespected their fight for equal rights in this country.  So the Superbowl, the biggest single sporting event on the planet, was taken away from Arizona and moved to a place that would respect their players.

Now MLB is asking their players, 30% of whom are immigrants from Latin-American countries, to play the All-Star game in a state that requires their police officers to demand immigration papers from anyone who they might suspect of being an illegal immigrant.  Now, the bill specifically states that police officers should not use  racial profiling in enforcing this law.  Great, Arizona, we’re so glad you made that clear.  That law sounds just fine now that you said they shouldn’t racially profile.  But simply saying that it isn’t racial profiling for police to stop anyone who may look like an illegal immigrant and violating the Bill of Rights anytime they stop a citizen who has committed no crime other than being poor and brown-skinned is like a guy calling “no homo” right before engaging in anal sex.   Just because you say the opposite of what you’re doing while you do it doesn’t change the nature of the act itself.

Now, the MLB Players Association is easily the most powerful union in America, and if they vote that they won’t play in that All-Star game then it will either A) be enough to move the game elsewhere, or B) will put significant pressure on the state of Arizona, due to loss of tourism dollars, that they might repeal the law before it comes to that.  So there is a good chance of either of those scenarios happening.  On top of that, the Diamondback’s owner, whose team plays in that very stadium, has already come out against this law, and he’s now put in a very precarious position given his desire to host the game while openly opposing this bill.  And he’s left hanging on what can be done about it.

So even though the players, several managers, Arizona’s team owner, and fans across all of baseball want to take a stand against Arizona’s racist laws, the Commissioner thinks that the best approach is to ignore the problem and hope the whole thing blows over.  And he might get his wish.  By July of 2011 the law might already be abolished.  But by refusing to take a stand against these laws, for once Major League Baseball is lagging behind the rest of the country on a civil rights issue, and it’s being held back by a man who just two months ago was given a lifetime achievement award from the Jackie Robinson Foundation.  Baffling.

The future, the franchise, the futurechise.

Woo hoo!  The Cubs called up 20 year old prodigy shortstop Starlin Castro today.  He’s totally going to save our franchise and lead us to the promised land, where we’ll all live happily ever after.  I heard one time he slayed a giant, then feasted his on golden goose and magic beans before taking the world’s most powerful power nap and then crapped out unicorns.  I also heard that he’s possessed by the ghost of Honus Wagner and that on full moons he and his pet dragon surf on rainbows and collect fairy dust which he then sprinkles onto his bat made out of wood from that fucking mother tree from Avatar.

I think that’s a pretty good summary of how any sports fan feels when their big prospect/rookie debuts for their team.  The expectations are completely out of control.  And you know what?  I’m driving that fucking bandwagon.  After reading about Castro every day of spring training, I decided that he was our A-Rod, that he had literally every tool known to man except power, which would come as he grew up and filled out.  Now I’m trying to temper my expectations and be realistic.  The guy i currently batting .376 in AA ball, good enough to force Ryan Theriot, who is batting .341, to move to 2nd base.  So here are my tempered expectations: this guy is our Hanley Ramirez.  He’s going to do it all.  Hell, even if this guy fails and gets sent down, I will continue to make this claim for the next 5 years until it either becomes true or until he has unequivocally proven that it never will.  But until then, this guy’s the most exciting Cubs prospect since Sandberg and I’m hoping my enthusiasm about him never changes.

UPDATE:

Castro hit a three run homer to the opposite field off of a curveball in his first at bat, then hit a bases-clearing triple in his third at bat.  He ended the day with 6 RBI, which is the most by any player in their first game in the modern era.  Looks like I wasn’t exaggerating at all.

It was July, 2004.  A-Rod, like many who join the Yankees, was struggling to adjust to his new team and city, putting up some pretty sorry stats.  But one thing he picked up on quickly was the hatred between his team and the Red Sox.  It was an otherwise ordinary game when A-Rod came to bat against Bronson Arroyo.  The pitcher lost his grip and hit A-Rod with a curve ball, not the type of pitch you throw if you’re trying to hit someone.  Regardless, A-Rod took it as a slight and started jawing with Arroyo on his way to first base.  That’s when this story’s hero, Jason Varitek, stepped in.  He got in between A-Rod and Arroyo, thinking Rodriguez was going to charge the mound.  Then he uttered one simple statement: “We don’t throw at .260 hitters!”  Then he followed that up with the now-classic “glove meets face” and it was on.  A bench-clearing brawl ensued with punches thrown on both sides and ending in multiple ejections and suspensions.  So thanks, Jason Varitek, for providing an awesome dis, a hilarious picture, and an entertaining fight between 50 or so combatants.    Now that is some classic trash-talking.

Feel good?  I thought not.  So to cheer us all up, here are a bunch of hot girls wearing cubs gear.  Enjoy!