Hey, if there’s anyone out there willing to drag the Cubs through the mud when they deserve it, it’s me, my friend. Sometimes, fingers need to be pointed (or in the case of the Mets, flipped) and, now and then the Cubs deserve to be on the receiving end. Why? Cuz In my mind, it serves no one’s purpose to “Hillary Clinton” things whenever the Cubs start conducting business on a private server. When they do that, I call ’em on it. But HOLY FRIGGIN’ CRAP! … What the hell is up with you guys wantin’ to string Tommy La Stella up by his Draymond Green target area?! Especially Jesse Rogers, who follows the Cubs for ESPN. I mean, it’s easy for us yay-hoos to mouth off from the cheap seats, but a pro callin’ a kid out cuz he fertilizes the infield grass a couple of times seems a bit harsh.

Maybe I’d feel different if we’d lost. Probably. I’m pretty good at blamin’ a loss on a guy’s brain fart. In fact every time I hear the name, Bartman, I still break into a sweat, and it’s a good 45 minutes until the facial tic goes away. So I get it. La Stella has had better days. But it’s not like anyone is whinin’ about our pen (which does finally have some bulls in it this year, but today, and a fair number of other days this season, they’ve looked more like veil calves). What about their roll in today’s near collapse? My point is, it’s a friggin’ team … and no single guy is gonna win or lose a game all on his own, although that’s what it looks like sometimes. It really doesn’t help La Stella to settle down when he gets skewered in the Twittersphere cuz of one bad day at 3rd.

Besides, anyone who is a true baseball fan — and I don’t give a crap how young you are — knows the name, Brooks Robinson. If you don’t, you’re not a fan. Maybe you’re somewhat interested in the game. Maybe you like pin stripes. Maybe you were dropped on your head as a kid … I don’t know … but you’re not a real baseball fan unless you know the name Brooks Robinson and what it stands for; perfection. Without question, the best third baseman to ever step inside the chalk. Period. (You Phillies fans who are at this moment callin’ me names cuz you think Mike Schmidt was better … go get your shine box.) Brooksy had no equal. Never will. He was called “the human vacuum cleaner” and “Mr Impossible.” And his glove — that golden extension of his left arm — was like a black hole; a singularity with a gravitational pull so strong not even light could escape his grasp. It was a place where doubles down the line met a swift and early death. As a hitter, you stood a better chance of havin’ a threesome with Miss July and August than hittin’ a ball past Robinson.

If there is a God, he played 3rd base for Baltimore.

And you know what? Mr Robinson made 263 errors at the hot corner. I grant you, that was over a 23 year, Hall of Fame career, but that averages out to over 10 a year. In fact he booted 21 in a single season once. Still, he was — if you haven’t yet grasped this — the best. So, before all of you “fans” remove every last shred of flesh from Tommy La Stella’s carcass, consider the possibility that his glove could end up as golden as Robinson’s someday. Go ahead and dish it out when someone deserves it, by all means. I’ll be right there with you. But could you try to not be such Yankees fans? Please?

Joe

This play has been making the rounds on social media like Yasiel Puig just cured cancer and balanced the federal budget. On the same day. Most every comment I’ve read makes this throw — which, I admit, did nail the guy at third — into something other-worldly; like God himself breathed some sorta biblical power into Puig’s arm. My charitable side, if I had one, would assume these guys never saw Roberto Clemente, Fred Lynn or Reggie Jackson throw a ball from the wall — not 20 feet inside the warning track— to nail a guy at 3rd or home. Happened all the time, my friend, and I saw plenty of them myself. Even Chicago’s own hero-turned-juicer, Sammy Sosa, woulda made that throw better than Puig.

I saw Puig’s throw the night it happened. Who didn’t? ESPN and every other jock sniffer on the planet ran it to friggin’ death. Hell, Jennifer Aniston could walk down Michigan Avenue stark-friggin-naked and she wouldn’t get that kinda coverage. (By the way, if she ever does that, I’ll be checkin’ off number 3 on by bucket list.) But like I said, I can’t argue with the end result; Puig nailed the guy. It’s the way his throw was characterized — by sportswriters, no less — that’s chaffing my backside. It was called “a laser” to third. A laser? Look … I may be closer to a Christian Scientist than a rocket scientist, but I’ve seen enough Star Trek to know that lasers don’t come in “rainbow”, which is exactly what that throw was, pal. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought the game was in St Louis with that kinda arch.

Anyway, while we’re busy dipping Puig’s arm in bronze and adding a wing to Cooperstown to keep it in, let’s try not to crap all over the guys that perfected the art of the cannon shot from deep right center. Have a little respect for the game, and the guys that made it great by doing the impossible, not just flippin’ bats and shit.

Joe

Let me start by saying that I love ESPN. I’ve been an addict since way back, back, back, back, back when Chris Berman could still see his toes. Since before ESPN 2 and ESPN 3 and Deportes. Since before Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser started yelling at each other, and before Keith Olbermann became such a ginormous a-hole. My first words were “DaDaDa. DaDaDa.”

However…

I was pickin’ up an ice cold sixer of Old Style today, and while scanning the mags at the check out line (Hey, did you know the bitter marriage between Barack Obama and his wife Michelle continues to fall apart in the wake of the president’s womanizing?) when ESPN The Magazine’s cover grabbed my disbelieving eyeballs like a Fabricio Werdum guillotine.

There’s football on the cover! FOOTBALL!

I got a Prince Fielder sized problem with that, pal. First, there is the obvious fact that baseball kicks football’s ass. Second, it ain’t football season. It’s baseball season and hockey season and basketball season, but not football season. Third, and by far the one that’s stuck the furthest into the nether regions of my craw (whatever that is), is that the one team in sports history — not just baseball, but all sports — that has had the biggest, longest, ugliest, most painful dry spell known to man — the friggin’ Chicago Cubs — are on an 8-1 tear; one of the best starts in franchise history. They’re averaging over seven runs a game. Yeah, you read that right. And…AND…according to the Elias Sports Bureau, only two teams in the modern era have had a better run differential than the Cubs through nine games — the 1905 Giants and 1999 Indians. Both were plus-44. The Cubs are plus-43 through nine. And this doesn’t warrant an ESPN The Magazine cover? Really?

I realize it’s a long season, and we’re only heading into the third week. A lot can happen, I know. But it’s been a lot of nothing happening for over a hundred years, for the Cubs. So how is it that when the perennial door mat of the National League comes outta the gate like the friggin’ Tasmanian Devil, we get no nod from ESPN? You call that journalism? I call it pinheadism, my friend. I don’t give a crap that the NFL draft is around the corner. It happens every stinkin’ year. Like clock work. The Cubs going 8-1 outta the first 9? That hasn’t happened since Neil Armstrong made footprints on the moon. You wanna see a giant leap for mankind? Wait and see what happens if my Cubbies win the Series, my friend.

Hey, ESPN The Magazine…Bite me.

Joe