Good teammate
To the surprise of no rational Cubs fan here or elsewhere, Alfonso Soriano is a good teammate.
During his time in Chicago, Theo Epstein has come to realize what a tremendous teammate Soriano is and how willing he is to help younger players. Epstein considers Soriano an excellent clubhouse presence, and after a 32-homer, 108-RBI season, the Cubs president contends that he will need a player of note in return if he is to trade Soriano and assume a majority of the $36 million left on his contract. Soriano will only accept a deal to an East Coast team, so the Phillies, Rays, Orioles, Yankees, and Marlins are teams that could benefit by him.
I don’t believe the national media has taken a shit on Soriano like the Chicago media has in recent years, but it’s been remarkable and enjoyable to finally see Soriano treated like the player he was always known to be. Prior to joining the Cubs, Soriano was known as one of the friendliest players in the game, one of the better teammates, someone who smiled all the time and just loved to play baseball. Upon arriving in Chicago and not winning the MVP, Cy Young and Manager of the Year Award, the Chicago media decided to flip that story around and pretend otherwise.
The fans bought in. Soriano was booed relentlessly. He was called names that I can only imagine were racist. He was called lazy, a piece of shit and so on and so forth. It was disgusting and embarrassing to be a Cubs fan while it happened.
Then last year, Soriano rebounded, had a pretty good season and all of a sudden he’s a team leader, a positive clubhouse presence and someone who goes out there every day and does his job with a smile on his face. In other words, it only took the Chicago media 6 years to learn what every other person in the media already knew.
Them Chicago sportswriters are a bright bunch of people.
NFL Hall of Fame
The football Hall of Fame released the candidates for 2013. Here are all the articles that talked about steroids or performance enhancing drugs in the NFL:
It’s almost like they don’t care about steroids in the NFL. It’s also like they don’t treat the Hall of Fame like a shrine. Like in baseball. The shrine that has a bunch of piece of shit human beings already in it. What can we learn here? That the football writers are significantly smarter than about 65% of the BBWAA. And most baseball fans.
Michael Bourn market shrinks
Also in that article by Nick Cafardo was this bit about Michael Bourn:
Nobody really knows what happened to the Bourn market. He’s a top defender and a good leadoff man.
I have a pretty good idea what happened to the market. GMs have realized that signing guys who rely heavily on speed to large contracts are not such good ideas. Although the Soriano contract has actually turned out OK (in that it’s not as bad as it might have been), the Carl Crawford contract looks to be so bad at this point that it’s going to hurt the market for speed players for awhile. A leg injury and their outlook changes entirely.
Dontrelle Willis
Saw this title on Cubs.com: Inbox: Could Willis crack Cubs’ roster? A lot of shit would have to go wrong for that to happen. So let’s just hope an already bad team doesn’t have a bunch of players go down to injury making them even worse.
Nate Silver
Nate has a fantastic article about the crowded waiting room at the Hall of Fame. It’s a must read for all fans. It’s not something football fans or their sportswriters need to read, but those who root or write about baseball, yes, they need to read it.
Comments
i have always liked soriano. Not a single one of us would turn down that money
bubblesdachimpQuote Reply
Carrying over from last thread, if MLB.tv detects something fishy going on with your proxy, it will by default assume you live at the billing address of your credit card.
A buddy of mine from Minnesota moved in with me a few years ago, there was some issue with my Internet where my proxy was indeterminable so they blacked out Twins games on his account. But we could watch Cubs games, and I didn’t have cable, so I didn’t care. (dying laughing)
GBTSQuote Reply
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/13/andre-dawson-i-didnt-play-against-more-than-a-few-hall-of-famers/
Comment below was pretty all-encompassing…
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Dawson is a fuckwad barely deserving of the HOF. Interestingly the only reason he is even in is because he was the MVP in a season in which countless others were better. That list includes Bob Brenly. If he never played for the Cubs he’d have a harder chance of getting in than Tim Raines has.
dmick89Quote Reply
If Dawson had such a problem with steroid users then why didn’t he speak up while he was playing? As far as I’m concerned, no player that sat by with their thumb up their ass and watched this should ever say a fucking word about the players that did use.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ GBTS:
Yeah, i’ve been assuming that it would read my IP address or use the credit card adress & that I wouldn’t be able to get around it by pretending I lived somewhere else. I guess I was kind of hoping that I was reading the blackout policy wrong and that it couldn’t reallty be that expansive and fucked up. Grrr.
UrkQuote Reply
@ Urk:
If you’re actually good at re-routing/masking your IP then you should be fine. Mine was for whatever reason being blocked altogether.
GBTSQuote Reply
GBTS wrote:
This happened to me when I moved to Texas, too
BerseliusQuote Reply
GBTS wrote:
Hmm. I actually don’t know the first thing about that. But I’m interested & will dig in. We’re going to lose the cable either way. the wife took a lower paying job (for mental health/quality of life reasons) and my student loan payments are starting to kick in, so we’re making lifestyle adjustments, and except for baseball, this is a pretty easy one.
UrkQuote Reply
@ Urk:
This is a longshot but if you know someone in the same boat living in a different market, you could swap usernames/passwords. Then the other person would never be subjected to the Cubs, which would make you a very good friend indeed.
Suburban kidQuote Reply
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/49ers-qb-colin-kaepernick-drafted-by-chicago-cubs-in-2009-011313?m_n=true
MishQuote Reply
@ dmick89:
This one from Jim Rice is great, too:
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/14/great-moments-in-hypocrisy-jim-rice-edition/
Rice CubeQuote Reply
Suburban kid wrote:
If you do this, I will find you and go Ugueth Urbina all over your ass.
Bud SeligQuote Reply
@ Mish:
The Cubs letting him go is even more egregious than trading Josh Hamilton. SMH.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ Urk:
I’m in the same boat and just up the road in Cedar Rapids. I’d love to dump cable, but the only thing I wouldn’t have access to is live sporting events that weren’t on the rabbit ear channels. I subscribed to MLB.com at bat last year and listened to it on the radio, and you’d get highlights after the fact, but would like to watch games too.
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ Berselius:
Can we trade Samardzija to the 49ers for Kaepernick?
mikeakaleroyQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy:
Maybe they’ll take Hayden Simpson.
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ mikeakaleroy
BerseliusQuote Reply
New Shit
MylesQuote Reply
Here are all the articles that talked about steroids or performance enhancing drugs in the NFL. But
nobody really knows what happened to the Bourn market. He’s a top defender and a good lead-off
man. Thanks for sharing such a informative post here.
CarolineQuote Reply