Pathetic, Parts 1 Through 3

Pathetic, Part 1

If you haven't seen this play...wow! I'd call it a little league play, but I don't think even a little leaguer would let this happen, let alone a catcher who's supposed to be a defensive specialist. At least I think he's supposed to be a defensive specialist - his OPS is barely over .500, so he must be good on defense, right?

Pathetic, Part 2

If you wonder why Cubs players suffer from brain-lock, maybe they're just following the cue of Cubs management, as seen by this note at the end of today's game recap.

The Cubs called up OF Sam Fuld from Triple A Iowa to take the roster spot of 1b Derrek Lee, who was traded to Atlanta for prospects on Wednesday. The Cubs had told 1b Micah Hoffpauir he was being promoted, but because they just sent him down Monday he isn't eligible to come back up until next week.

I guess it's not too much of a stretch to go from not knowing that John Grabow shouldn't get a multi-year, $7.5 million contract to not knowing how the rules for calling players up from the minor leagues work, leaving Xavier Nady as the only true 1b on the roster. Way to go, front office!

Pathetic, Part 3

The 2006 Cubs, who lost 96 games despite the 3rd highest payroll in the NL (7th highest in MLB), were 53-69 after 122 games.

The 2010 Cubs, who have the highest payroll in the NL (3rd highest in MLB), are 50-72 after 122 games. Yes - this team has a chance to be worse than the team that completely quit on Dusty Baker in his final season as Cubs manager.

And not so pathetic

Everyone says people will come to Wrigley Field to sit in the sun and drink beer, regardless of how bad the product on the field is. Well, apparently there are limits to how many of those people there really are. Check out this "highlight" from Wednesday's game, and how many empty seats there are in the bleachers (on a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon, with school not yet back in session). Today's game had a paid attendance of 30,687 - that's about 10,000 less than capacity. And those attendance numbers don't figure to improve as the team continues to lose and the kids go back to school. The last time there were this many empty seats was the end of the aforementioned 2006 season, which led to Jim Hendry's offseason free agent spending spree (Soriano, Lilly, Marquis, DeRosa). This year, he won't be able to "fix" the team's problems by throwing money around, so I'm going to look at the silver lining at say that the next couple of years I'll have plenty of material to blog about.

A College Football Post!

If anyone is reading this blog, they'll notice that I haven't said much about college football yet. It's hard to believe there's not much buzz around the Illini football program and the soon-to-be unemployed Ron Zook with only a month to go before the season kicks off, but that's what happens when a team has only two winning seasons in a decade (and three in the last 15 years), I guess.

Well, college football fans, today's your lucky day, because I came across this article, entitled "Ron Zook Looks to Stimulate Fan Support." Talk about a misleading headline - there was nothing in the article saying that Zook was about to resign! But after all the blather about staying positive and working harder came this quote, from the author:

All teams need fan support to play their best. If Illini fans want their team to be successful, they will forget last year and focus on helping the team win this year.

Even if they think a change in the head coach is the only solution, they cannot rule out their own contribution to failure if they refuse to support the team. Illini players and coaches will give everything they have to the effort, so the fans need to do likewise to know without doubt they aren't part of the problem.

Yes, because that's the biggest problem with this team. It's not the players, or the coaches who recruited them, or the Athletic Director who hired the coaches who recruited the players. It's the fans who have endured the second-worst Big Ten football program of the last 15 years (only Indiana is worse, and I'm not even sure they have a football team) - yes, it's our fault that the team stinks (hmm, I think I may have heard that before).

Look, guys, I'm more than happy to forget last year (and most of the last decade, frankly) and give "everything I have" to help the Illini win in whatever way that I can - you know, support the team. But if it's a Saturday afternoon in October and Illinois falls behind 28-3 in the second quarter, I'm probably going to be doing something else besides supporting the team. My leaves aren't going to rake themselves, you know.