Daily Facepalm, Literary Appreciation Edition – 9.5.2012

In Facepalm by andcounting109 Comments

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured, or well-bred, is merely a popinjay. —Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

Cubs Like White Elephants

I sat in my car last night and listened to the first two innings of the Cubs at Walgreens.

"Ian Desmond goes in standing with an RBI double. His third and fourth RBIs of the day against the rookie Chris Rusin."

"He just can't get ahead of any of these hitters."

"Here comes Dale Sveum."

I changed the radio to auxiliary mode and listened to Spotify.

I stared out the driver's side window. A bird flew overhead and disappeared behind the tree line.

"Let it go. This too shall pass."

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  1. josh

    Reminds me of this poem (though Wright’s ending is even more fitting):

    Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota
    James Wright

    Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
    Asleep on the black trunk,
    blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
    Down the ravine behind the empty house,
    The cowbells follow one another
    Into the distances of the afternoon.
    To my right,
    In a field of sunlight between two pines,
    The droppings of last year’s horses
    Blaze up into golden stones.
    I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
    A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
    I have wasted my life.

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  2. josh

    @ WaLi:
    Wouldn’t be surprised if the Simpsons writers were familiar with James Wright, actually. He’s pretty famous in terms of recent poets (insofar as “fame” applies to a poet not named Maya Angelou).

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  3. josh

    A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured, or well-bred, is merely a popinjay

    What do you call a writer who sees another trying a different approach to writing than his own and automatically sees him as trying to show off?

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  4. Aisle424

    In a normal season, the Cubs would have a real good shot at that #1 pick, but the Astros are a juggernaut of suck. They haven’t officially clinched it yet, but I don’t know if the Cubs can catch them if they lost all of their remaining games. I honestly don’t think the Astros can possibly win 10 of their last 26 games.

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  5. josh

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    It’s a story about two people (man and woman) discussing something without ever saying it directly. Many take it to be an unwanted pregnancy and/or an abortion. They could easily be talking about a murder or anal sex, really.

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  6. Berselius

    Aisle424 wrote:

    In a normal season, the Cubs would have a real good shot at that #1 pick, but the Astros are a juggernaut of suck. They haven’t officially clinched it yet, but I don’t know if the Cubs can catch them if they lost all of their remaining games. I honestly don’t think the Astros can possibly win 10 of their last 26 games.

    Someone pointed out on twitter last night that the Astros would have to go 1-25 in their remaining games to match that awful Tigers team from a decade or so ago. You never know.

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  7. SVB

    @ josh:
    I might have seen it. All Carell movies seem the same to me. Is that the one where he’s at a family reunion near the ocean?

    I thought B meant Steve Rosenbloom (-burg?).

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  8. SVB

    josh wrote:

    The droppings of last year’s Cubs
    Blaze up into golden stones.

    Fixed

    /low hanging fruit. Geez, it took 17 comments for someone to do this? We are slipping. Never gonna get reundiscredited this way.

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  9. josh

    @ SVB:
    Steve Carrell’s not in it. It’s Donel Logue from Grounded for Life (the movie is called The Tao of Steve). It’s about a fat guy who is really good at nailing chicks. Also, he and his friends have a theory that all the coolest people are named Steve. (Steve McQueen, e.g.).

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  10. josh

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    it is, I was just being contentious. But I still don’t think you could necessarily call it callous. I mean, the characters are having what I would call a fairly realistic discussion. Like when the woman says things like “well, I’ll do it if you want me to” and he says “you shouldn’t do it if you feel that way.” I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. People communicate like that, where they feel out each other’s meanings. how committed are you to it? What are your doubts? Maybe I can tease them out. Etc. etc.

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  11. josh

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Well, the original sense of white elephant was actually something like a land purchase that the owner didn’t need, so I don’t think that Hemingway meant to cheapen the idea.

    Then again, dude was a pretty callous old fuck.

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  12. Author
    AndCounting

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:

    We are real Cub fans, and we will not be content waiting ‘til next year.

    Yes. That guy is smart. A real Cub fan because he only likes good baseball. (dying laughing)
    Sorry. What a moran.

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  13. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ AndCounting:
    I think he means the “we won’t be waiting until next year” to convey “we won’t be bought off with bells and whistles and Candy Maldonado and Rodney Myers anymore”

    I think he’s largely right. There’s no reason for the vocal minority of Cub fans that love that pathetic BS to be the face.

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  14. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ josh:
    Exactly. I get what Theo is trying to do, but “we’re building something and it will take a long time” isn’t going to hold much water in a couple years.

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  15. Mercurial Outfielder

    Here’s the meaty bit of that article for me:

    But why does it always have to be stupidity like this, Cubs fans? Why is there a group of cockroaches that survived the Hendry nuclear holocaust and still cling to bad nostalgia and superficial garbage while a new regime really tries to bury the old ways of Cub crapdom? Why would so many of you sign a petition of zero consequence to make very real business into a PG movie? Why must you perpetuate baseball fan stupidity and give the many intelligent, championship-or-failure Cub fans a bad name?

    I’m done with you. I’m breaking off, divorcing from the morons in Cub Nation. You who don’t “get” Theologic and all this need to analyze numbers because math is hard and judge only batting average and think hustle equals skill. You who treat going to games as some status symbol or cocktail party. You who think this Clevelander kid should get more looks behind the plate. You who put little guys who try hard and smash into things (or have things smash into them) on pedestals. Get out of my house. Party’s over.

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  16. Author
    AndCounting

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    Yeah, I know. But I think not letting Greenberg play has the same net effect as letting Greenberg play. It’s a nonfactor for a franchise that is a nonentity. And if he hasn’t been bought off with cheap, sentimental frills, what exactly is it that has kept him hanging on all these years? I understand the desire to make winning a priority, but if all he cared about was championships, it seems like the thoughtful thing to do would be to become a fan of the best team. It’s the degree of sentimental attachment, not great critical thinking skills, that keep guys like him cheering for the Cubs. I don’t see why people insist on making intellectual arguments defending their Cub fandom. There isn’t one. It’s like a Disney fan campaigning for more hard-hitting, realistic story lines. That’s not what draws a person to Disney, so why complain by the lack of something that was never a part of the company’s philosophy to begin with?

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  17. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ AndCounting:

    Sentimental attachment devoid of critical thinking is exactly what led to the Cubs actually selling their fans on a tradition of losing. He’s calling for smarter fandom, not fans who are fans because they are smart.

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  18. Mercurial Outfielder

    The Greenburg thing is a problem because it smacks of the Rodney Myers days. It’s the kind of candyassed shit an org that’s more concerned with making money than winning does. Win first, then do the silly shit. It’s about priorities, and the fans pushing this thing don’t seem to get that. Just like they didn’t get that re-signing Gaetti was a bad idea or that Theriot and Fontenot were not the second coming of Tinker and Evers or that Ronnie Woo-Woo is not part of the charm of Wrigley, he’s a drunk who serially gropes women in the ballpark and urinates on himself. They don’t fucking want to win. They want their Cubbies and their floppy hats and their Torco sign back.

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  19. Aisle424

    I get frustrated with the dopes in their We Got Wood shirts and all that nonsense, but what bothers me is when the Cubs pander to that shit and seem to make that the priority rather than actually building a winner that would appeal to absolutely everyone. For once, we have a front office that actually has those long-term goals and an actual plan for achieving those goals (and I assume metrics for measuring their success in executing their plan). That’s pretty much good enough for me.

    Like I said, I was happy to see the Cubs take a pass on this because normally they would have been all over it, but it really wouldn’t have mattered. He seems to be thinking the Cubs would cut an actual prospect to put Greenberg on the roster, when in fact it would be someone with absolutely no future with this team that will one day be getting his walking papers anyway, so it might as well be now (Joe Mather, Joe Mather, Joe Mather, Joe Mather, Joe Mather). So AC is right that it really wouldn’t have hindered anything.

    The petition is stupid, but it doesn’t bother as much as it might have in the past because I now have a certain level of confidence that Tommy actually is trying to oversee a massive overhaul of culture on the team instead of just taking our money and applying band-aids everywhere. There will always be a certain level of this crap with any team. GW pointed to the link about Billy Crystal playing in a spring training game for the Yankees. I seem to remember that Garth Brooks had a similar situation with some team years ago. It happens. I just don’t want it to be the focal point and it doesn’t seem to be right now.

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  20. Mercurial Outfielder

    I have confidence that Theo wants to do that. I have far less confidence that a guy who thought it was a good idea to don goofy glasses and chug Bud longnecks in the street is ready just yet to let all of that shit go by the wayside.

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  21. Author
    AndCounting

    @ Mercurial Outfielder:
    I just think bitching about the silly shit creates a false sense of fixing the problem. The silly sideshows never prevented the Cubs from winning. The fans haven’t done a thing to prevent the Cubs from winning. If the fans were smarter, the Cubs might be poorer, but they wouldn’t be better.

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  22. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ AndCounting:

    See, I think that’s false. A more demanding fanbase creates urgency in the FO. When a team can lose without financial consequence (which the Cubs could through most of the 90’s and early 00’s), there’s no need to make real improvements. And that’s a real part of why the Cubs org was so fucked when Theo took over.

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  23. Author
    AndCounting

    I mean, the cubs aren’t screwed right now because they’re digging out from under Gary Gaetti’s contract.

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  24. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ AndCounting:

    No, but they also never had to worry much about developing a real farm system because they could just sign a guy. There were no consequences. 3 million fans a year, every year.

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  25. Aisle424

    The problem with the Trib was not that they didn’t care about winning. They knew as well as anybody that a winning team would make them boatloads more money than a losing team, even if the losing was still extremely profitable. The problem was that they had no idea how to allocate their resources to build a true winning organization. They only saw results at the major league level, and they saw that every winning team netted them about 3 or 4 years of good faith, so when they had a crappy team, which was most of the time, they stuck a bunch of crap together in the name of veteran leadership or whatever bullshit they were peddling at the time and occasionally the veterans got it right and the team won for a season.

    The baseball budget right now is probably close to what it was in the Sosa years (adjusted for inflation), but now more of that budget is being spent on the stuff the fans can’t see. That shit never flew with the Trib. if their money wasn’t spent with the intent of immediately raising revenues, it wasn’t spent. So you got shitty veteran contracts and the marketers had to spin it as something the fans should be excited about. Ricketts is actually spending money on stuff that doesn’t have an immediate payoff. The Dominican facilities, the gargantuan amounts of cash they threw at international and amateur players in the last year they were able to, improvements to the minor league facilities so they can develop and monitor their farm more efficiently. You can’t tell me that the cameras on the minor league parks is a new idea or new technology. but it cost money and the Trib would never, ever spend on something like that.

    So the fact that Tom has opened his wallet and is apparently letting Theo spend it behind the scenes is a huge indication that he finally does get it, to a degree. He also gets that pandering to the masses is essential, so he’ll still be dragging out the oversize glasses and other bullshit as well. And I’m fine with that as long as the behind-the-scenes stuff keeps happening.

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  26. Author
    AndCounting

    @ GBTS:
    No urgency would have left the Superfriends with a crappy house they could tear down and rebuild. The spending to make the team good short-term (and raise the selling price) left the new regime with a crappy house AND a giant mortgage.

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  27. Mercurial Outfielder

    @ GBTS:
    I think AC is referring to the backloaded deals and NTCs that made it very hard to clear the decks and rebuild properly. Granted some of those were signed prior to 2006-2007.

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  28. Author
    AndCounting

    Obviously I want the team to win. I just think the thinking that publicity stunts and LCD-pandering has been the problem is a stretch. I think it has been nothing more than window dressing. The owners of this team never knew how to win. They didn’t know how to run a media company either. The biggest draw the Cubs have ever had has been periodic flashes of competence.

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  29. mb21

    @ Aisle424:
    I agree here. I hate it when they pander to the fans. I do agree with MO though in that this “we’re trying to build something” shit isn’t going to fly with the fans for very long. That includes me too. I’m fine with building a strong farm system so you have a foundation to work with, but the idea that you can’t also sign free agents really irritates me. The Cubs are going to suck next year, but sign a couple star free agents and you just might find yourself in contention. Keep working on the farm system the same as they had, but they don’t have to ignore the MLB team to do so.

    The problem with “building something” is that in this business there’s a very good chance of failure. The Cubs attempt to rebuild from within is fantastic, but it could very easily fail. The Royals and Pirates have been rebuilding for two decades. This was actually an article I was thinking about writing, but I’d have to do a lot of work. The two teams that rebuilt that had success were both in Miami. They traded a shitton of players for a shitton of prospects and spent a lot on minor league talent along the way. The Cubs were able to do neither.

    I’m not impatient, but at the same time I want to see the MLB team get better and look to have a brighter future. One way or another that will require free agent signings so I see no reason not to spend some of the Cubs money and do just that.

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  30. Rizzo the Rat

    Dunn moved up to 11th on the all-time single-season strikeout list (tying himself in 2006). He needs one more to reach the top ten (tying himself in 2004). He strikes out a lot is what I’m saying.

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  31. josh

    I got the DVDs for being awesome (I assume). I thought Kerry Wood’s 20K game was on here! The Sandburg game is on here, which is sweet. You can all bask in your jealousy now.

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