Tag: cubs fans

C'mon, What's Ol' Gil Gotta Do to Get a Bunch of Overpaid Players on the Cubs?

The Patience Plan that the Cubs are executing was first met with wide appeal when Theo and Jed first arrived on the scene about a year ago. They came in and stated quite clearly that they would be building from within, re-stocking the largely barren farm system they inherited from Jim Hendry, and any free agent signings in the near future would be safe, low-risk signings that would not jeopardize long-term fiscal flexibility for when they do have an actual competent team that can contend. These declarations were music to most fans ears at that point.

Finally! A regime that will address the organization as a whole instead of concentrating solely on the major league level every five years or so! It was a miracle. We danced in the streets as we dreamed of a day when the Cubs would have a true organization and not a hodge podge of minor league teams all teaching their players different things depending on who is coaching them at any given time.

It was a big project. A HUGE project. This wasn't about fixing a single team. It was about re-creating the philosophy and operations of an entire organization from top to bottom. They were very clear about this from Day One. This was going to be a process. This was going to take time.

Well, Theo, your time is up with some fans. We've already heard from Chet Coppock live from a high school gymnasium. Today we're hearing from a blog I didn't know existed until MB referenced them the other day. Gil Gerard at RantSports.com is fed up with patience. He has been patient for a whole year, and now he is just plain upset about what an embarassment the Cubs have become under Theo.

You can't spell "short-sighted, moronic, ramblings" without R-A-N-T, so let's see what Gil is so mad about:

The Chicago Cubs continue to show their fan base they don’t want to win now.

Gil has already made the mistake of confusing desire with ability. The Cubs want to win now. Of course they do. None of the people in charge of making decisions on the baseball operations side has reached the level they have in the industry by not wanting to win. The question is whether the Cubs have the TALENT to win now and I think we saw over the last couple of seasons that the resounding answer to that question is: No, they do not.

With the trade that went down between the Toronto Blue Jays and Miami Marlins, there is simply NO excuse for the Cubs to not have been involved in talks for Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson. The fact the Blue Jays didn’t even give up their top prospects shows that it was a salary dump by the Marlins – one that the Cubs could have easily been in on.

Well, Josh Johnson, I'll give you, but Jose Reyes? Don't we already have a shortstop? Of the many issues the Cubs have, their shortstop isn't anywhere close to the top of the list. And what makes Gil so sure that the Cubs weren't having conversations with the Marlins? Who is to say that Jed hadn't been on the phone with them to talk about Josh Johnson and the Marlins were more interested in dumping every player on their team who makes more than league minimum in one fell swoop? Why piece together multiple deals that bring back bit players from many teams when you can lump all your garbage together and get a decent little package of talent from one place? That's what I would have done if I were the Marlins.

Yes, that’s right: the Cubs could have turned themselves into a World Series contender – but no.

Wait… what? Adding Josh Johnson and a shortstop that we don't need makes the Cubs a World Series contender? You do know the Cubs lost 101 games last year, right? You also know that even if Josh Johnson returns to the value he had pre-injury, that adds about 6 wins. I won't even subtract anything by plugging in Reyes because I should since Castro was actually more than half a win better than Reyes last year. That brings the Cubs up to 65 wins. Even if you buy that they were unlucky last year, I think the most any rational person could expect is 75 wins. The most optimistic projection in the world would still be putting a Cubs team with Josh Johnson and Jose Reyes on it as below .500. Unless baseball does the old hockey thing and lets everybody into the playoffs, the Cubs aren't contending for jack shit next year with or without Johnson and Reyes.

The Ricketts family bought this team and promised the Cubs faithful they want to win; well, that went quickly out the window. The lack of funds, or perhaps the simple inclination to be cheap, have essentially turned them into the enemy – one that sports the opposite message: winning is not part of the program.

Nothing the Ricketts have done since they took over convinced me they didn't WANT to win. I questioned whether they had any clue HOW to win or WHO would be able to execute their vision of a consistent winner, but the WANT was never the problem. They started sinking money into the infrastructure of this team from Day 1. They are building a new state-of-the-art Spring Training Facility, they are building a new training facility in the Dominican Republic, they are upgrading the facilities up and down their minor league system. That costs money and it doesn't generate revenue right away, so if an owner was "cheap" as Gil contends, these are the first things that a cheap owner wouldn't bother with. And it is exactly why the Cubs are in the situation they are in now, since the previous owners didn't sink money into anything that didn't directly impact the ability to raise revenue. Wrigley Field isn't an ancient hole because the Wrigleys had a vision of creating a historical tourist destination. They didn't pump money into it to keep up with the times. So blaming the Ricketts now for having to allocate money into solving long-term problems that weren't their fault is pretty unfair.

Not even if the cost comes down to simply taking a calculate risk on salary.

There are a finite amount of dollars to spend on the baseball budget. I'm sorry if you think it should be infinite, but the Cubs aren't the Yankees. No team is the Yankees.  Even the Yankees have finally found the ceiling of what they can spend before it starts getting self-defeating. The Cubs are allocating their money as much as possible to development. Again, this is not a surprise to anybody who paid even the least little bit of attention for the last year. This team will not squander salary on cosmetic, short-term solutions that do not help the team in the long-run. I don't think they could be any clearer.

They want to make profit; that’s great and dandy for the Ricketts as business owners, but for a Cubs fan like myself? I’m disgusted. While the Cubs are signing the Scott Bakers of the world, mid-market teams like the Blue Jays have turned themselves into a contender overnight while not blowing up their farm system.

Overnight? They dropped off last year because Jose Bautista and a million other Blue Jays like Adam Lind, Colby Rasmus, Brandon Morrow and others got hurt. They finished over .500 the previous two seasons in the AL East. There is nothing overnight about anything the Blue Jays have done if they contend this year. Just because you weren't paying attention to them, Gil, doesn't mean they didn't exist or sucked.

It makes me sick.

Your incredibly shallow, short-sighted analysis? Me too.

Let’s look at this logically.

Yes, for the love of God, let's finally look at this logically.

The Cubs could have sported a rotation of: Josh Johnson, Matt Garza, Mark Buerhle, Jeff Samardzija, and Travis Wood/Scott Baker. They could have picked up a REAL lead-off hitter in Jose Reyes to play short. They could have moved Starlin Castro to third, brought in a catcher that isn’t a total travesty in John Buck, AND add a super-utility guy like Emilio Bonifacio to the bench in one fell swoop.

I don't think you know what "logically" means, Gil.

And they could have done all this without giving up Javier Baez, Albert Almora, and Jorge Soler.

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THAT, GIL? Baseball America had Marisnick as their 2nd highest rated prospect in the Blue Jays' system. Nicolino was #5 AND he's a pitcher. The equivalent pieces in the Cubs system would be Baez or Almora (depending who you ask) and Dan Vogelbach. The closest pitcher comparison would be Arodys Vizcaino. PLUS they gave up a young major league arm in Henderson Alvarez along with the rest of the group. I don't even know who the equivalent there would be, Travis Wood? If you squint really hard and drink enough alcohol, maybe. I don't know what the depth of the Blue Jays' system is, but that trade would re-fuck everything Theo and Jed had just started un-fucking about the Cubs' pathetic level of talent in their farm system. And for what? Overpaying Mark Fucking Buerhle? Your little dream scenario there gets the Cubs major league roster back to the same talent level they had at the beginning of last season, AND THEY FUCKING SUCKED AT THE BEGINNING OF LAST SEASON!

What the heck. Seriously.

SERIOUSLY!!

I don’t want to hear this garbage like “the Cubs are rebuilding from within”, blah blah blah. The Cubs once spent $300 million in an off-season and it gave them a window to win a world series.

LOOK WHERE IT FUCKING GOT THEM, GIL! IT GOT THEM HERE! They pissed a shitload of money down the toilet to make the Cubs APPEAR like winners to FALSELY INFLATE the value of the team. If you think Sam Zell gave one flying fuck about the Cubs' record in any way other than how it made his team more valuable on the market, you need to go back to whatever school educated you and demand your money back.

The Cubs are supposed to be a big-market team, and frankly, they could – and should – be spending money and rebuilding at the same darn time. Letting this trade go down and not getting involved sends the message to me, as a fan, that the owner doesn’t give a damn about winning.

Yes, the Cubs are supposed to be a big market team. But you know what big market teams have that the Cubs don't have? Stadiums with huge money-making luxury suites. They have signs from advertisers that scoop money into the owners' pockets. They have television deals that provide ungodly sums of money. The Cubs don't have any of that compared to a real major market team. Again, this is shit that doesn't get the headlines until it goes hilariously wrong, but the Cubs are at least trying to change these factors so that they can act like a real major market team. So yes, they SHOULD be a major market team, but the difference isn't Ricketts just snapping his fingers and saying, "Make it so."

He only cares about the bottom line.

Again with this. Look, saying it repeatedly doesn't make it any more true than the first time you said it. You just look dumber.

The Chicago Cubs are never going to win by “rebuilding” from within like the Pittsburgh Pirates. It’ll be even more hilarious if the “blue chippers” don’t ever become the stars the Cubs are trying to tell us they’ll be.

Who said it would be like the Pittsburgh Pirates? You know why the Pittsburgh Pirates never finished a rebuild? Because it eventually costs money. Because every time they had players that were any good at all, the rest of the team was still so bad that that they had to trade off the good players. The Pirates have to hope that all of their prospects eventually all get good at the same time. If the Pirates had the resources of even a medium market team there is no way in hell that Barry Bonds ever plays for the Giants. Certainly not through the height of his career. The Cubs aren't in that position. Even with all of the restraints put on them by the ballpark and their crappy television deal and the bitchy neighborhood, they still have more money than the Pirates do. They just extended Starlin Castro didn't they? Aren't they talking about locking up Jeff Samardzija? The Pirates would be trading Jeff Samardzija without even thinking about it.

It’s laughable and I for one am FED UP with the clown car that is the Chicago Cubs.

I think it's laughable that you sat peacefully by during the Trib and Zell years without calling them out, but now that they have an actual owner trying to make the team great by addressing more than the cosmetic issues, you can't take it anymore.

Someone tell the Ricketts family that they need to sell the team to real owners. Cubs fans have waited long enough for an ownership group that, oh, I don’t know, wants to celebrate a winning team in October?

Oh, I see where this is coming from. You see the Dodgers gobbling up salaries like the fat kid at a hotdog eating contest for no apparent reason and Toronto taking on bloated salaries in a desperate effort to stay relevant in their division and equate spending with effort. Here, as a present from me to you, something for your spank bank:

Now shut the fuck up and let Theo and Jed work.

Cheers!

I recently stopped in at a local dive called Ritz Klub in Michigan City, Indiana. I had heard their burgers were the best thing ever to happen to dead cattle, so I had to see for myself. I had also heard the place was something short of a spectacle for the eyes, and I love a place that’s not too fancy.

Trust me, Ritz Klub is not too fancy.

This wasn’t a hole in the wall; it was a rented-out nook in the far dark corner of a hole in the wall. It smelled like beer and grease with faint wispy reminders of an age when smoking wasn’t merely legal but practically mandatory in such establishments. Smaller than some walk-in closets, the room was shabbily divided into four quadrants: the seating area, the pool table, the jukebox, and the bar.

No two of the 7 or 8 tables in the place were alike. They may very well have been the remnants of 7 or 8 different cafeteria fire sales. My friend and I sat down at the one in front of the two giant tanks of carbon dioxide. We weren’t handed menus. They were printed on a half-sheet of paper (one side) mounted in a clear plastic tabletopper. Burgers. Three varieties of fries. A couple options nobody ever orders. That’s your menu.

The pool table was small. The jukebox was gargantuan. The bar sat about eight, and six of the stools were occupied. Before our arrival, the rest of the less-than-cavernous environs was deserted.

The lighting was extremely dim except for the overpowering glow of a few really nice widescreen TVs mounted around the place. Clearly the primary investments poured into this place over the last decade were for entertainment purposes.

This was a place where you come to watch the game. They’ll even give you the remote to the screen nearest you.

“They” are a brother and sister team who run the place. Sam works behind the bar, serving up colossal steins of beer and half-pound (at least) cheeseburgers on toasted sesame-seed buns. No joke, they serve a 5-WAR burger. The sister comprises the entire wait staff. I assume her name is Margaret . . . because she really looks like a Margaret. She needed a full two minutes to examine my ID under the glow of the lamp in a nearby popcorn machine, even though all I drank was a Pepsi. She’s really cute in a way only Margarets can pull off.

But the raison d’être of this joint is the bar and its assorted viewing options. And that’s really the raison d’être of this post: the phenomenon that took place there during my visit (and, I presume, the one that takes place just about every night).

The men sitting at the bar came to watch the White Sox game. Or they came to commiserate, and the game gave them an excuse to stay for three hours. They sat together and barked at the screen. When Hawk uttered his catchphrases, these six Sox fans recited them in unison (He gone!). When the Orioles started breaking out against Jake Peavy and the Sox bullpen, these guys filled Hawk’s long, frustrated silences with wisecracks and red-blooded advice (Hit ’em. Open up a can of whoop ass. Whoop ass! Whoop ass!). And during commercials, they’d pass the time with political analysis (I heard that if Obama gets reelected, the Amish are gonna move to Canada).

It was fantastic. It made me think of that question Aisley asked earlier: What does it take to get White Sox fans to the ballpark? The answer seemed so clear. No, not “a designated driver” or “the short bus.” For Sox fans to go to the game, it has to make more sense for them to go instead of hanging out with each other in front of the big screen and cheap beer.

And really, that’s not all that different from the reasoning of Cubs fans. We just tend to hang out at a much more expensive bar.

And let’s be honest, at it’s best, Wrigley was a family-friendly bar. In the ’70s, the cover charge was a quarter. In the ’80s, when I first started attending games as a kid, there wasn’t a single time I didn’t have to (get to?) pass a couple rounds of beer along my row at least every other inning. Ever since, the atmosphere of the place has fluctuated between frat house and upscale(ish) pub.

Wrigley and the Cell have both raised their cover charges inordinately. Cubs fans still flock to the Northside dive in droves, but most Sox fans (and, let’s be honest, a ton of Cubs fans) seem to recognize with greater consistency that the ambience, thrill, and camaraderie can be replicated elsewhere.

But this post isn’t really about attendance. This is a post about us, the fans. We the people, I guess. The teams we watch are the excuses we use to come together as friends, especially if we’re uncomfortable considering each other friends.

Take this blog, for example. Commenters drop by when there are a lot of others joining in the discussion, not necessarily when there’s a game on. The Cubscentric posts are basically a front to excuse discussion about anything. (Side note: the tagline for this site could easily be “A Cubscentric Circle of Hell.”) Cubs news draws more of us out of our holes, but the range of topics covered in this site’s comments is broader and more diverse than my Facebook feed ever is. The Cubs are our excuse for showing up so we don’t ever have to admit that we really just like each other. And please, don’t. I don’t want this to get awkward.

My point, if I even have one, is that it’s nice to have a place to get together and converse without taking ourselves too damn seriously. But, at the risk of taking this too damn seriously, it’s pretty cool to have a place to go where everybody knows your fake name.

What would make you give up on the Cubs?

Aisle 424 wrote last week about the paucity of fans at U.S. Cellular at the conclusion of the White Sox' sweep of the Yankees, and it got me to thinking. It got me to thinking so much I actually used the word paucity in a sentence. But mostly it made me ponder the possibility of the same thing eventually happening to the Cubs. Sure, in this current epoch of unconditional attendance (or at least ticket purchasing) by the Wrigley faithful and word-of-the-day Cubs blogging by yours truly, it doesn't seem like a remote possibility that a good Cubs team would ever have such a difficult time putting blue-bleeding butts in the bleachers.(Sorry, that expression is completely gross, but I'm keeping it.) But over time, it's a real possibility. 

If Cubs fans lost interest one by disappointed one, if the market for witnessing baseball melancholy gradually dried out, if you, dear reader, became the first domino in a chain of secession from Cubdom . . . the Cubs could eventually become unpopular. What I want to know is, what would it take?

What would have to happen to make you stop attending Cubs games altogether? I'm not saying you'd abandon all hope and start cheering for the Expos to make a comeback, I'm just asking, what would it take to make you so disinterested in watching Cubs baseball live that you wouldn't even go to a game in which their Cy-Young caliber pitcher had a chance to lead the sweep of the best team in the league? Let's face it, that's pretty much the pinnacle of attendance apathy.

I know some of the OV regulars have no interest in attending as it is. But if you are among the throng of willing participants in the conga line through the Wrigley turnstiles, what would it take to get you to hang up your . . . conga shoes? Here are some possibilities.

Maybe it's the rising ticket prices that could dissuade you from buying tickets. That would make sense. The Cubs are a bad baseball team charging really-good-team prices to watch them play bad baseball. But if cost is going to be the predominant factor in turning Cubs fans away, the Cubs would have to be absolutely obstinate about keeping prices high. For whatever reason, a lot of people are still investing a lot of money in buying tickets to Cubs games, and if that trend is declining, it's doing so slower than a Joe Mather curveball.

I'm laughing loudly at the idea of the Cubs collapsing. What's to collapse? It's not like the Cubs are a house of cards waiting to fall. They're a house of card. But I'm using C-words here, so deal with it. If the Cubs stay really bad for a really long time (and who among the living and reasonably sane doesn't think that could happen?), interest will wane. Judging by the current market, they'd have to continue losing, uninterrupted by success, for the better part of a decade. That can be tough. You never know when even an ineptly run team might accidentally be good for awhile, so the Thoyer Super Friends brain trust would have to thoroughly disappoint to sustain the current tidal wave of suck. I'm not saying it isn't a possibility, but the inertia of Cubs fans' loyalty doesn't seem to allow for a mass exodus due to bad baseball anytime soon.

Let's not forget that the White Sox are less than seven years removed from their last World Series parade. If the same thing happened to the Cubs, is it possible that fans would stop coming to Wrigley? Cubs fans could tune out the way Moonlighting fans did after David slept with Maddie. Once the seemingly endless chase for success finally comes to an end, maybe that could be the ironic last straw for fans just looking for a reason not to come to the ballpark anymore? Maybe Cubs fans only want what they can't have. Maybe . . . heh, shit, come on. This would never happen. 

This is has been a really, really boring team to watch. Maybe people for whom the novelty of new prospects playing at the major league level has become tiresome will actually slip into a state of prolonged unconsciousness. That might physically prevent fans from attending games at Wrigley, but it would, ironically, be just the thing to make the endeavor bearable.

This is the one I'd be most interested in feedback on. What if the Ricketts finally approved and implemented serious changes to Wrigley Field? Or maybe they blow up Wrigley altogether and start from scratch. What level of change would it take to kill your interest in coming? Replacing the troughs with civilized urinals? Cutting off beer sales in the top of the third inning? Orange shag carpeting in the mezzanine suites? Or, perish the thought, replacing the Wrigley scoreboard with a gigantic jumbotron that merely simulated the old-fashioned hand-operated scoreboard? Seriously, what change at Wrigley would keep you from ever returning?

Really. They are the Cubs. If there's one thing they can do, you'd think it would be getting people to stop coming. Somehow they're failing even at that.

What the hell is wrong with us?

 

Ten Things I’d Be Happy Never To Hear Cubs Fans Say Again

I don’t want to presume to tell you how to be a fan, but . . . here I am doing just that. I’m just trying to be helpful. And like so many other people whose attempts at helpfulness produce nothing but aggravation, I’m willing to take that risk for you. I’m a giver.

What I want is for you to enjoy being a Cubs fan and to avoid looking stupid in the process. That’s not to say I don’t look stupid. It’s too late for me. Save yourself. If you start by eliminating these expressions from your personal Cubbie lexicon, you’ll also be saving me a couple thousand facepalms a week. 

10. Player X needs to step up.
In basketball, sure. But in baseball? Players step up when they’re told. It’s your turn to hit. Go step up. If it’s not, sit down and find a new cliché. If a player has a bat in his hands, he should try to be as productive as possible. If he’s wearing a glove or a mitt, he should try to prevent runs from scoring. A baseball player’s duties in any given moment are pretty well defined for him. The guy who tries to do more than he can is either trying too hard or wasn’t trying hard enough to begin with. Either way, stepping up is an indicator of stupidity in baseball. 

9. This loss is on Player X.
There are virtually no instances in which one player acts completely independently so as to determine the outcome of a single play let alone the entire game. For every batter who strikes out, there’s a pitcher who bests him. A pitcher can’t just give up 8 runs in the ninth; he needs the cooperation of his defense and the opposing batters to yield that result. Baseball is a game made up entirely of confrontations. Every showdown has at least one winner and at least one loser. To place the outcome of a game on one player is to ignore the efforts, failures, and victories of everyone else involved. And that’s dumb.

8. Booooo. 
I just don’t get this one. It’s just funny that there are still people who actually cup their hands around their mouths, lean back, and say the word Boo. Educated, evolved human beings. I don’t get it.

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