July 09, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
With the name Saloon included in our moniker, one could surmise that we here at TMS like to drinky drinky. One that would make such an assumption would be correct, thereby throwing out the whole, 'when you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' bullshit. We also like to plagiarize each other. In the same vein as the Wrigleyville Bar Project, we are proud to bring you another installment of the TMS Beer Project. The premise is simple: we review beers. Each rating will feature a variety of scores from 1-10 and comments from the bartender. This is a public service damn it. We don't want you to be the sucker who pays $15 for a six pack of some overrated Belgian cat piss. Now, we all drink massive amounts of beer so we know what we speak of. Each of us seem to have a favorite style of beer though. Will we be reviewing macrobrews like Bud and Coors? Oh you bet your Aunt Susie's ass we will. For purposes of this science experiment, and it is in the name of science, those will be the "control" group. Use them as a base line for when we review lesser known imports and microbrews. Without further ado, I bring you our next beer:
Shock Top Belgian White
Brewery:Shock Top Brewing Co. Anheuser-Busch
Type: It thinks it's a Belgian Style Wheat
Receptacle: 12 ounce bottle someone brought to my house and left here.
Drinkability (1 being Jim Jones' kool-aid, 10 being the nectar of the gods): 5 All 5 points go to the fact that I can drink it with ease. No points go to the fact that this is the shittiest excuse for a Belgian White I've ever had. Maybe a small bit of citrus detected but the coriander is non-existent. Did they just waft a bowl of coriander over the top of the brewing tank and call it good? Look I don't like to get all beer snob with these but for fuck's sake look at the label in the photo. If you advertise coriander, you better deliver some god damn coriander.
Heartiness (1 being fresh mountain spring water, 10 being a pureed British steak infected with mad cow disease): 4 Hearty? If Karen Carpenter was a bottled beer, this would be it.
Intoxication (1 being your friend's weird pentecostal grandmother high on Jesus, 10 being Boris Yeltsin on a week long bender in the Crimea): 5 It's 5.2% so I suppose it'll get you drunk, if I chose to drink more of this shit.
Celebrities You May See Drinking This Brew: Jim Edmonds. Fucker is probably sucking one back now.
Affordability ($ being chicklets in Tijuana, $$$$ being diamond encrusted braised lamb shank from a trendy cafe on the Champs d'Elysee): $$: As far as six packs of "microbrews" go, I don't think it's too terribly expensive, but why the fuck bother? If you really want this beer then go get some Goose Island 312, or even some Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat. I cannot tell you enough how incredibly not good this beer is.
Overall: 2 This beer is as phony as the crappy "microbrewery" that makes it. I have a hard time liking much of anything in St. Louis, and Shock Top certainly doesn't help matters. If you must drink St. Louis beer then I wholly endorse the fine brews from Schlafly. Check those out instead of this pee water.
Starlin Castro and Bryan LaHair were named to the All-Star Game. While Castro was a no-brainer, it was a little surprising to see LaHair get the nod. He did get off to a hot start, but has cooled significantly as the season has progressed. Plus with all of the Jizzo'ing for Rizzo'ing going on, I'm surprised that anyone remembered Bryan was still on the team.
June 25, 2012 | Comments (2) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
It's official. Anthony Rizzo will make his Cubs debut tomorrow night. We want to wish Rizzo all the best as he begins his major league career. Hopefully it's a successful one. At least successful enough to unseat Stockard Channing from the top spot when I Google Image Search "rizzo."
Also, we call dibs on trademarking the catchphrase "I'M JIZZO 4 RIZZO!"
Not a week goes by when I check my Facebook and don't see
some snarky post by some 30+ year old man bitching about Justin Bieber, Katy
Perry, Lady Gaga or any of the other 4 pop stars currently inhabiting planet earth.
What the fuck is going on here? Aren't you a grownup? You have a career and a wife and kids. Or you don't and you live in your parents'
basement while amassing an unparalleled blu-ray collection. Whatever. It really doesn't matter if you're an
accomplished adult or an unemployed turd of a blogger drunk on cheap whisky in
the middle of the night. You should have
come to terms with pop music already.
Here's the memo you apparently missed:
They stopped making pop music
geared towards you the moment you walked across the stage and snagged your
diploma. Whether that was your high
school diploma or you happened to buy yourself another few years of youth by
going to college is completely inconsequential.
The moment you got out of school and tried to forge an existence is the moment pop music stopped being made with you
in mind. So take a deep breath, shed a
tear for your lost innocence, briefly complain about the useless Grammy Awards and plunge into the Wilco catalog already.
Typical fan at a Wilco concert
Our parents went through this with grace and style. Or at least mine did. I grew up with a sister who was the
perfect age for a full-blown New Kids on the Block obsession. Posters, dolls, lunch boxes, and the constantly
repeating "Hangin' Tough" playing on the newfangled CD player...which cost $400 and was only connected to the stereo of the entertainment center in the living room. I'm
sure my dad wasn't thrilled with his daughter's skeevy-looking masturbation material
hanging all over her bedroom walls, tempting her to seek out her budding womanhood, but
he didn't complain about it incessantly, even though that period of time was probably weird as fuck for him. And he would certainly never have 'liked'
an anti-New Kids on the Block group on a social network, had they existed
at the time. He handled it the correct way; the entire rise and fall of
a pop group wasn't worthy of his acknowledgment, even though his daughter
was obviously rubbing it out like a bonobo monkey in heat to the 24" x 36" poster of Joey, Danny, Jonathan,
Jordan and the other guy.
Joey's hair is ribbed for her pleasure
My dad might have been an anomaly though. Even back in the early 60's, adults were
writing songs about that stupid teenage fad that were The Beatles. In 1964 alone, there were over 200 songs
recorded about the Beatles, and a good chunk of them weren't positive.
Now, I'm not comparing Justin Bieber to The Beatles. And I don't necessarily think that complaining about Justin Bieber puts you on the wrong side of history. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've never even heard a Justin
Bieber song. BECAUSE I STOPPED LISTENING TO THE THINGS THAT PLAY THAT KIND OF MUSIC OVER 10 YEARS AGO. I'd be willing to bet that
I wouldn't like it, but I'm at that age (and posses enough self-awareness) that I realize I'd probably have flat out dismissed
rock 'n' roll as an incomprehensible noisy mess had it just arrived on the
scene during my early 30's.
Adam fighting the good fight c. 1962
The point is, this shit obviously isn't for us and we can't predict
what stands the test of time. I'd like to think that our parents would have drown us in the nearest creek bed had they known "Don't Stop Believing" and "Wanted
Dead or Alive" would be two of the top karaoke songs of all time. For all we fucking know, our grand-kids will be singing along to Ke$ha on the 2040's equivalent of the Guitar Hero franchise, Auto Tune Glory, on the PS8. The future very well may suck for us, but it simply isn't up to us
to decide. In the meantime, listen to
the shit you like (which, judging by the militant pop-music haters out there, is
just the same old shit you listened to in high school anyway) and leave the brand new pop music to high school girls and DJs at gay clubs.
Apparently I slept through spring training this year because I don't remember Luis Valbuena at all. If you're like me, you're wondering who this guy is. I thought he was one of our young farm guys. Not so.
Valbuena's MLB career started in 2008 for the Mariners. The Venezuelan was later traded to the Indians, then sent down to the minors in 2011 and eventually traded to the Blue Jays. The Cubs claimed him off waivers from the Jays in April 2012.
It's been a small sample size, but I like what I've seen from Valbuena. He looks solid in the field and he's got two homers and 7 RBIs in 6 games. He's also not Ian Stewart. His career stats don't really suggest that he'll continue on his current pace, although he hasn't played much the past few seasons.
Valbuena saw action in 17 games for Cleveland last year, following a 91 game campaign in 2010 and a 103 game run in 2009. He hit 10 home runs in 2009 with a .250 average, his best season. Homers dropped to 2 in 2010 and his average fell to .193. In the 17 MLB games he played in last year, he hit .209 with 1 home run.
So obviously Valbuena's probably not the long term answer at third base. Stranger things have happened though and the Cubs have a dearth of talent at third in the minors. He's only 27 and the job seems to be all his for the moment. Let's see what he does with it.
This picture has nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was dumb.
I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what still counts as "stupid" in this country. It seems like year after year, the bar is lowered further and further, to the point where it's almost now just sitting on the ground. Getting into how the good ol' US of A got to this point is another post entirely.
It takes a whole lot for something to be so idiotic, so incomprehensibly dumb, that it stops me dead in my tracks and causes my brain to hurt trying to make a modicum of sense of what I'm seeing. It's even harder for something to have that effect on me when I see it on Facebook. Because I regard Facebook as mostly a dumping ground for the very first unfiltered thing that pops up in people's brains, my tolerance for seeing things there that make me want to light myself on fire is pretty high.
But holy shit, I cannot keep what I saw this morning to myself.
As someone that went to high school and college in Illinois, I have a lot of friends on Facebook that are Cubs fans and a lot of friends that are White Sox fans. When both teams clash, I see a lot of updates on Facebook (from both sides) that make me shake my head and move on. But what I woke up to this morning...I'll just jump into sharing it with you. All names have been blocked out to protect the innocent as well as the idiotic.
In case you can't read what the caption says, it's "(Name Withheld) tell this dummy they have the worst record in baseball and sit down lol". This in and of itself is perfectly reasonable. The Cubs do have the worst record in baseball, and in a rivalry like this, it's something that's bound to come up.
As we look at some of the comments that continue under the picture, things start to spiral out of control. Here's the first comment posted:
Well then. If you've ever seen bad improv before, you know that when someone can't think of anything remotely clever to say, they usually resort to excessive swearing or vulgar references, hoping they can get a cheap laugh. The internet equivalent of this is calling someone gay. The biggest difference is that for the improv performer, they're on the spot and have to say something. No one was clamoring for this person's two cents to be thrown in. There is no excuse. But at least we get the mandatory homophobic comment out of the way first. It frees up the rest of the conversation to go in any direction. Of course, it goes in a very predictable one.
There's a very real chance that the guy pictured at the top was being a drunk asshole and ruining the experience for everyone around him, If that's the case, he deserved to get booted out. But to the best of my knowledge, I don't think our homophobic friend was actually at the game. And if that's the case, they're saying the pictured gentleman deserved to be kicked out of his seat just because he was a Cubs fan that had the audacity to cheer for his favorite team in a game that just so happened to take place in the city that team also plays in.
Got it. So what you're saying is you're losing to the Cubs on purpose because you feel sorry for us? Now I know that this person probably doesn't actually think the Sox are losing to the Cubs out of pity. But even saying it makes your team look stupid. Either you look bad for tanking a game or you look bad for getting pasted by the worst team in baseball. You look bad in both cases.
Last night was the only Cubs win of the entire season??? Seriously??? I thought that a team that had an 0-66 record coming into last night would have made more news than it did. I didn't hear about this anywhere else.
The funny thing is that the simple addition of 3 words would have made this a valid statement. "This may be your only win all season against the Sox" would have been infinitely better. It's funny that taking out those 3 words would turn a valid point into one that makes zero sense.
I think my favorite part is that even when making a ridiculous statement, this person can't stick to their guns. If you're going to talk impossible smack, you say "THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WIN OF THE SEASON", not "this maybe your only win this season". Have some conviction!
Also, talking about how terrible the Cubs are doesn't really look good for you. The "worst team in baseball" just hung a dozen on you last night. And you might want to call Kenny Williams about these "charity wins" you're giving to teams you feel bad for. You're .5 games up in your division and way back in the Wild Card. You can't afford to give many games away. I don't think Detroit will return the favor and tank against the worst teams they play.
What a fantastic bow to tie on the entire conversation.
First off, you wish your team sucked at trading? Even if we had the ship in Prometheus, I don't think we could discover a world where that makes sense, even as a joke.
The other thing that actually made me excited was that I'm connected through a mutual friend to someone that works in a MLB front office! How awesome is that? After all, the only way this person could ever know that the Cubs are currently "sucking" at trading Dempster and Garza would be if they were actually in on those trade calls between Jed Hoyer and other GMs across the league, right?
/sarcasm
Seriously, this is about the dumbest statement out of all the ones you've seen here. The Cubs have two prime trade chips in Dempster and Garza. Since they're still on the team, that means the Cubs have to be terrible at trading them, right? It's not because we're waiting for the best deal to come along, is it? It's not that we can get more for them closer to the deadline, using potential injuries and pitting other teams against each other to drive up the price, is it? This guy seems like the type of person that sends you incredibly lopsided trade offers in fantasy baseball, and gets pissed at you when you don't accept them.
I know that the people above aren't representatives of all White Sox fans. Hell, the person who posted that picture in the first place is a Sox fan, and one of the more knowledgeable baseball fans I've ever met. But the other commenters need to realize that they're making all White Sox fans look like idiots.
Well, the Cubs lost another series last night, dropping 2 out of 3 to Boston. This team has been every bit as bad as I expected them to be, but losing hasn't bothered me as much as it has in the past. Reason being, I'm still confident that Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer have a plan to rebuild not just at the major league level, but system wide. That kind of sea change takes time and isn't going to happen overnight, much less over the course of a single season.
The only thing I've found frustrating is some of the comments and complaints I've read from some Cub fans on the internets. A lot of people seem to have missed the memo on just what's going on the North Side right now. There was no chance in hell the Cubs were going to be competitive this year, so please dispense with the bitching and moaning about Theo not knowing what he's doing or calling for Dale Sveum to be fired. It just makes our fanbase look foolish.
Yes, the Cubs suck. However, I would argue that this year, the Cubs suck with purpose. As one of the ESPN announcers pointed out last night, this is audition time. Any of the players on the current team might be trade bait or cannon fodder. Guys like Darwin Barney need to step up and prove they deserve to be on this team when the rebuilding dust settles. Theo and Jed are going to be watching carefully to determine who stays and who goes. Meanwhile, they appear to be ready to trade anybody they can get good prospects for, even ready to eat some money in order to do so. Along with the draft and the addition of Jorge Soler, this will go a long way to replenishing a barren farm system. Theo has admitted he made some mistakes in Boston, but most of those mistakes were on the free agent side. This guy knows talent and I have confidence he can build a first rate farm system, which to me is the foundation for sustained success. What a nice change from the Hendry regime, who merely threw oodles of money at the major league roster. The Cubs had a few good seasons with this method, but no sustained success.
Dale Sveum may not have been the sexy hire the fanbase was hoping for, but honestly, if I see one more doofus bitching about Sandberg not being hired, I'm going to slap them around. I'm not sure why these people believe the results would be different with number 23 in charge. I loved Sandberg the player, but Sandberg the manager has never managed at the major league level. There's no way in Hades he'd magically be able to make this a better ballclub. Being a Cub icon ain't gonna make Ian Stewart hit for average, reverse Soriano's steady decline, improve Castro's concentration, or solidify the duct-taped bullpen.
I see Sveum's role much like Alan Trammel's in Detroit a number of years ago. The Cubs have a motley collection of youth and veterans and Sveum's job is to stress the fundamentals and teach these kids to play the game the right way. As they get better, add some better free agents over the next two-three years and all of a sudden, you're ready to compete. Whether Dale will continue to be the manager at that point is anyone's guess, but I think he's the perfect guy for the task at hand. The only thing that worried me at first was how he handled the bullpen, but the bullpen is so bad, there's really no way of telling if he's handling it right or not. It seems like a complete crapshoot as to what kind of performance you're going to get from any Cub reliever at this point. Hard to pin that on Dale.
I hate to say it, but as fans, all we can do is be patient. I think we can look to what's happened in Detroit and Tampa Bay over the last decade to see what the future might hold. You build from the bottom up, not the top down and I think your team is going to always have a chance to be in it. The Cubs are going to have more money to spend than either of those teams in the next few years, but before you start spending money, a solid foundation has to be there. That's what the Cubs are doing this year: pouring the concrete. Yeah, watching it dry isn't going to be super exciting, but what the Cubs build on top of that just might be what Cub fans have been waiting for this past century and change.
June 12, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
Apparently everyone at the Saloon forgot we were running a fucking blog again. In an attempt to keep some content fresh, allow me to revive an old feature. Also did the Cubs win? Eh, it doesn't matter.
With the name Saloon included in our moniker, one could surmise that we here at TMS like to drinky drinky. One that would make such an assumption would be correct, thereby throwing out the whole, 'when you assume you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me' bullshit. We also like to plagiarize each other. In the same vein as the Wrigleyville Bar Project, we are proud to bring you another installment of the TMS Beer Project. The premise is simple: we review beers. Each rating will feature a variety of scores from 1-10 and comments from the bartender. This is a public service damn it. We don't want you to be the sucker who pays $15 for a six pack of some overrated Belgian cat piss. Now, we all drink massive amounts of beer so we know what we speak of. Each of us seem to have a favorite style of beer though. Will we be reviewing macrobrews like Bud and Coors? Oh you bet your Aunt Susie's ass we will. For purposes of this science experiment, and it is in the name of science, those will be the "control" group. Use them as a base line for when we review lesser known imports and microbrews. Without further ado, I bring you our next beer:
Grain Belt Premium
Brewery:August Schell Brewing Co.
Type: I don't know, fucking BEER I guess.
Receptacle: 16 ounce god damn tall boy
Drinkability (1 being Jim Jones' kool-aid, 10 being the nectar of the gods): 7 It's not bad, but it is a heavy so if you have a vagina and can only handle light beers you're probably not going to fare well.
Heartiness (1 being fresh mountain spring water, 10 being a pureed British steak infected with mad cow disease): 6 It's a regular blue collar beer. It's got some meat to it but it's not going rape your taste buds (it may rape your soul).
Intoxication (1 being your friend's weird pentecostal grandmother high on Jesus, 10 being Boris Yeltsin on a week long bender in the Crimea): 8 It's a traditional macro, and the fact that the ABV isn't labeled leaves me to believe it's probably around a 4.9%. However these are tall boys that I'm drinking. In fact it was a 12 pack of tall boys. I didn't know such things even existed until tonight. What else have I missed in my 33 years of life? So many more questions than answers have arose.
Celebrities You May See Drinking This Brew: Prince, Tim Pawlenty, Jesse Ventura, Rod Carew, Zombie Kirby Puckett, Brian Dennehy.
Affordability ($ being chicklets in Tijuana, $$$$ being diamond encrusted braised lamb shank from a trendy cafe on the Champs d'Elysee): $$: Grain Belt seems to sell at a higher price than PBR or High Life. Sometimes too high in my opinion. You shouldn't be spending over 10 bucks for a 12 pack. Unless of course the 12 pack is god damn tallboys. Seriously, tall boys in a 12 pack? What an age to be alive!
Overall: 8.12515 In the world of blue collar macro beers, Grain Belt is really overlooked and underrated in my opinion. PBR has the hipster crowd locked up. Schlitz has the hipsters that have tired of PBR. Old Style has the Cub fans. And High Life picks up the rest of America that shakes their cock at shitty light beer. If you haven't tried Grain Belt I highly recommend it if you can find it. More often than not it comes in bottles. But if you happen to find tall boys in a 12 pack, you buy that shit and never look back.
June 04, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
Come now. If you're going to put asterisks next to MLB achievements at least be consistent!
Seriously. I understand if you're upset because of the bad call. But show some respect to Santana. It's an official no-hitter so just recognize it as such. You wanna complain about the botched call then do it in your article instead of making a grand juvenile statement in your damn headline. It just makes you, the Cardinal fans, and your city as a whole look extremely petty.
June 01, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
It seems like ages ago when I posted about attending the 4th Annual Wasting Away in Wrigleyville Pub Crawl. I had promised that I would video document the event and then publish my footage of each bar stop back here at the Saloon.
Well I've got good news and bad news.
First, the bad news. It turns out, that the first handful of bars provided nothing real interesting. Unless you enjoy watching relatively sober people quickly chug a beer before heading to the next bar. So I pretty much scrapped any ideas of posting that footage because it's pretty terrible and worthless.
Now the good news. I did eventually get some footage that's pure gold. Apparently shit doesn't start getting crazy enough until after the 8th inning. That footage, my dear readers, you will get to see.
So here's a basic bar-by-bar recap of what transpired, with the few amazing video clips I got added in.
Pre-Crawl: Lucky's Sandwich Shop
Standard meeting place every year. The plan is to fill up on one of their giant sandwiches to give yourself a solid base before the marathon of boozery begins. This may draw the ire of some folks, but can I just say, on the whole I find Lucky's sandwiches to be woefully overrated. Are they decent? Yes. But holy shit, can we take a knee with the fries and cole slaw on top? They make up 75% of the god damn sandwich. I'll happily take both items as sides with my normal sized sandwich thank you. It's disappointing when several bites turn out to be nothing but a french fry and cole slaw sandwich.
1st Inning: Blarney Stone ...aw shit, um Rebel, I guess
Classic Pub Crawl moment. It never fails that at least one bar won't be open for us when we get there. Rebel turned out to be a decent Plan B mainly for its proximity. I drank a Bud Light then I left. That's about all I can say here.
2nd Inning: The Stretch
Always a nice place with good staff. I avoided the wait for a beer and instead bought one from WAIW's Steve's bucket. Fellow TMS Bartender White Chili retells us his story about the time he stole someone's birthday cake from this place.
...on the way to Merkle's, WAIW John (aka Muldoon) offers some solid advice.
(This is the only worthwhile thing I filmed for 8 innings)
3rd Inning: Merkle's
Oh Merkle's. Home to so many terrible drunk moments I either don't or rather choose not to remember. After drinking two pee water Bud Lights I was ready to strap on a real beer so I went with the Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. It was nice to finally have a beer that tasted like something. Not much else happened. They have Colonel Sanders statue at the entrance. I have no idea why.
4th Inning: Mullen's
Got an Old Style here. Spent a good chunk of time talking with Corey from Ivy Envy about how to podcast. Most of this conversation has now been lost in a booze-induced fog. I think you gotta record some shit and then put it on the web and... damn. I need to talk to Corey when I'm not drinking.
5th Inning: Sluggers
Like a dumb kid, every time I forego any beer and immediately run upstairs to the batting cages, where I then flail wildly at pitches and see how fast I can give myself blisters from the shitty bats with no gripping on them.
6th Inning: Captain Morgan Club, -wait, seriously? What's that? The Dugout is actually open? The day is saved!
In a strange twist of irony the Captain Morgan Club was close yet The Dugout was open. We must've gotten lucky and got there during one of the 4 hours a week they're open. Two years ago The Dugout was supposed to be a 7th inning stop but wound up being closed, therefore we spent an extra inning at Captain Morgan's instead.
7th Inning: Sports Corner
I never went to the old Sports Corner but the new incarnation is quite nice looking. Drank some High Life and played foosball. A few folks learned two things by being my teammate. 1) I'm fucking terrible at foosball. 2) I'll cheat like a motherfucker. I'm honestly kind of surprised I've never been punched while playing.
8th Inning: Murphy's
OK, now things start taking a turn. And the one firmly grabbing the wheel and veering us towards certain doom, is our good friend Malört. I do believe I had two shots of the stuff while there. Possibly three? It's not that important. What is important is that said Malört consumption then led to this.
After touching the Wrigley Field wall (and Mr. Funk apparently making out with it?), I decide to sprint like a drunken ass down the sidewalk to some folks up ahead. One of which, is our good friend, Mr. John Carruthers. As you can hear in the video as I reach them, John shouts "KARATE KICK!" followed by an audible "thunk" sound and then me making a grunting sound. The "thunk" would be John's foot landing squarely in my stomach. It knocked the wind out of me and I completely biffed on the sidewalk. Impressively though, I maneuvered to protect my iPhone. Aside from a few scrapes I was fine, and once I was able to breathe again I couldn't stop laughing.
9th Inning: Bernie's
We made it! Mostly unscathed. Once I got a beer and sat down I was able to have a word with John asking him to explain what just happened.
Cool story bro!
A little bit later I got some classic footage of a Pub Crawler passed out at the bar.
Post-Crawl: Gingerman
Ah yes. The official bar of Thunder Matt's Saloon. Had some PBR, did some more shots of Malört, and tried to make friends with an old Puerto Rican dude who was a marine in 'Nam. Pretty sure he was ready to stab me when I left. Oh, and I also made this disturbing discovery. Let me also say that I was pretty much shit-rocked at this point.
Thankfully I wound up not having AIDS. Mr. Funk and I later adjourned and went to the Double Door that night where we saw Electric Six, who managed to render me deaf for at least two days after.
And that's it. Fun times had by all. Oh and the Cubs lost the game too. I guess we were following that supposedly. I can't wait for next year's pub crawl. Hopefully I remember to not go in to John's dojo, WHERE KICK, MEETS CHEST!!!
Acquired: From the Reds for cash considerations the same day they picked him up in the Rule V draft in 2008. JIM HENDRY: DEALMAKER
Random Write-Up: David Patton was a Rule V guy who had an impressive Spring Training once upon a time. The Cubs, one playoff collapse removed from being perhaps the best team in baseball, were slated to contend for the pennant. It follows, then, that they would spend the majority of the year keeping a roster spot for a guy who had gone 4-5 in for the single-A Modesto Nuts the previous season. Right? Congratulations, you're Jim Hendry!
It became apparent fairly soon that the man was as overmatched as he was hairless, culminating in a Saturday relief appearance against the Cardinals in May 2009 that was so cartoonishly brutal it should have been the first act of an underdog Disney baseball movie. Subbing in for Sean Marshall with the Cubs down 3-1 against the hated rivals in St. Louis, our man gave up a single and proceeded to walk the bases full for Albert Pujols, who has been known to do some clutch hitting in his time. With the bases loaded and the meth-mouthed rabble of Busch stadium as far toward the edge of their seats as their fat fucking asses will allow, Mr. Patton throws a fastball down the middle to the best hitter in baseball. Game. Fucking. Over. Final score 8-2, Cards.
In 27.2 relief innings that year, the man we had to hang on to, lest he be scooped by an enterprising rival, managed a 1.807 WHIP and an ERA north of 6. He got "injured" and placed on the DL after the deadline had passed for the Cubs to hang on to him. Jim Hendry was said to have been seen tenting his fingers and laughing at a plate of chicken nachos later that evening. He need not have bothered. One crappy season in Daytona later, he was cut loose for good. He presumably wanders the central plains now, righting wrongs and teaching Mormon women about kung-fu love.
At least he got a cool $400,000 for his trouble, and a minor spot in the Cubs team history. Better than I can say. Of course, I never had Albert Pujols crush my soul either.
Also of Note: Over a thousand people have watched this video of him throwing a routine bullpen session in 2009. This makes me far more depressed and disappointed in the Internet than all but the darkest German scat porn found in the dank FTP basements of the web's underbelly.
Nicknames: Admiral Fuckstick, Ol' Shit-Ass, Dickbag, Dr. Blumpkin, Milty
Media Guide Year: 2009
Position: RF
Acquired: Signed to a 3 year/$30M contract that greatly helped Jim Hendry's reputation drop straight into the toilet.
Random Write-Up: Remember riding high the day Ted Lilly and the Cubs beat the Cardinals on a beautiful day at Wrigley to clinch the division in 2008? Say what you will about playoff collapses, but this is where the wheels really fell off. Even coming off an All Star season and a .321 average, there was a pervasive feeling that this was NOT going to end well. I'm not saying that we needed to keep Mark DeRosa and Kerry Wood around with that money, but I am saying that he eventual blowup wouldn't have been nearly as bad, nor as tinged with accusations of racism. 2009 was the fucking Challenger of the modern-era Cubs.
After his prolonged slump to begin the season, Milton Bradley decided that the reason he wasn't performing was because of pervasive racism in the Cubs fan base. Incredibly, Steve Rosenbloom, Alpha-Douche of the Chicago Media, decided this was his pot to stir, and proceeded to do so in the shittiest manner possible, bringing up names like Dusty Baker and Juan Pierre in the process. Now I've never heard the N-word at Wrigley, but I've only been to 100-something games, so maybe small sample size. The insane part isn't that Bradley threw that card, it's that the media, and to an extent the fans allowed themselves to be sucked into his bipolar whirlpool for the better part of two weeks.
So he left under circumstances that left him envying Todd Hundley, got arrested again on domestic violence charges, and we were left to ponder whether we were really turning a blind eye to racism or whether we perhaps put too much trust in a sniveling little faux-Mariotti and a man who inspired the TMZ headline "Ex-Dodger Bradley: I Never Threatened to Kill My Wife."
I'm not saying that the Chicago sports media is reactionary and easily manipulated. I'm just saying that they put a lot of stock in the word of a man whose wife accused him of swinging a bat at her. His failure to make contact just backs her story up even more. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned among all this humorous head-shaking at the 2009 disaster.
Also of Note: Was responsible for most baseball fans learning the term "Restricted List," which really paved the way for all the whackadoo nutbags of today to grab an extra headline while their lives spiral out of control.
There's a reason Cub fans are the laughingstock of baseball. It's stunts like this that send other teams' fans into hysterics. Look, it's great that they're raising money for cancer. It's nice that they're getting some exercise. The fact remains that these boobs are walking across the country because they believe that a man and his goat caused the 103 year old pennant drought on the North Side of Chicago.
Be it Bartman or the goat, I am so tired of Cub fans giving legitimacy to this crap. Blowing up the Bartman ball, goat carcasses left on the Harry Carey statue, rain dances in the outfield; nothing will change the fact that the Cubs' only curse has been a procession of bad baseball teams peppered with some bad luck whenever we do actually get a team that's worth a shit.
Other franchises have gone through long stretches of mediocrity. Look at Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Are their fans blaming the fucking supernatural? No. Is the answer walking across the country with a farm animal? Again no. The Cubs' time is gonna come, provided the owners continue to make building a winning franchise a priority. The worm will turn, folks. The Red Sox broke their championship "curse" not by making absurd pilgrimages or by desecrating Babe Ruth's grave, but by making smart baseball decisions. The Cubs can do the same.
In the meantime, please stop making it even more embarrassing to be a Cub fan.
This is Garza's impression of what the Astros did to him last night.
Well...shit.
Things don't seem to be going well for the Cubs lately. The Sox came in and swept the first interleague series of the year. Garza got shelled last night. Dempster's looked pretty average lately. LaHair is doing his best impression of Alicia Keys' first single ('Falling'? Anyone remember? God, you stupid kids these days don't appreciate the classics...).
But as any gambler will tell you, just because a prostitute on the Vegas strip has a deep voice and a pronounced Adam's Apple doesn't necessarily mean it's a dude, and on a lonely night when you're down $20K, a mouth is still a mouth.
Wait, what? Hang on. I lost my train of thought there. Let me try that sentence again.
But as any gambler will tell you, luck can come in streaks and turn at any time. Take a look a Dempster last season. In six April starts, his ERA was a whopping 9.58. But if you looked at his underlying stats (BABIP, K/9, etc), mathematically he should have had a much lower ERA. In other words, his terrible April had a lot to do with bad luck. Baseball stat nerds knew he was going to turn things around eventually, and he did, posting a much improved 3.94 ERA the rest of the way.
Now some players can ride a good luck streak for an entire season sometimes. Remember Esteban Loaiza? If you played fantasy baseball in 2003 you do. From 1995 to 2002, Loaiza had a career ERA of 4.88. Out of nowhere, he goes 21-9 with a 2.90 ERA and obliterates his career bests in ERA, strikeouts, WHIP...pretty much everything. After 2003? He goes right back to being awful again for the final five seasons of his career.
That's just a rare case. Luck doesn't usually run one way or another for an entire season, as the Cubs are beginning to see.
I'm not saying that Garza, Dempster and LaHair aren't good players. But they were all performing way over their heads. Going into last night, Garza was carrying an ERA of 2.58 when really, he's about a 3.20 - 3.70 ERA pitcher. After last night's molestation at the hands of the Astros, that's exactly where he is now (3.72 ERA). Even after 2 shaky outings, Dempster's ERA is at a cool 2.28. Expect that to end up closer to 4.00 than 3.00 by the time the All-Star break comes around. And LaHair? Well he's certainly no top-10 player. If he can keep his walks up, he'll be solid, but anything more than 25 home runs and a .260 average would shock me.
The saddest thing about all this regression hitting at once? Three of the Cubs best players were getting extremely lucky on the field so far this season, and they're still a last place team 12 games under .500.
Bust out the Malört, gents. It's going to be a long year.
Expect to see this picture 4,000 times this weekend.
One of my favorite baseball players of all time retired today. Kerry Wood is done suiting up in his familiar blue pinstripes and will announce his retirement this afternoon. With an ERA north of 8.00 and struggling with health already, he probably knew that it was time. While I would have loved to see him pitch one last inning in front of the home crowd this weekend (especially against the Sox), I think #34 has given us our fair share of memories over the years.
You're going to see a lot of articles written about Wood over the next few days. Links to video of the 20 strikeout game. Talk about the incredible (and sometimes improbable) playoff pushes Kerry was a huge part of. Since all of these things will be covered ad nauseum by bigger and better blogs, I'd like to take the time to point out some of my personal favorite Kerry Wood memories.
During a crosstown game in 2003 (I think), Kerry was pitching at US Cellular and Paul Konerko was standing in. Wood threw him a slider, and Konerko dropped practically to his knees because it looked to be on a direct path to his head. Only after he had already bailed out did the pitch break down at a Bugs Bunny-esque angle and settle in for a strike. It was one of the single nastiest pitches I've ever seen, which was a microcosm of Kerry's ability when healthy and dealing in his prime. And it didn't hurt that it made a Sox player look foolish.
I was as crushed as any other Cubs fan when Wood lost Game 7 in 2003 to the Marlins. But the fact that he stood up and took 100% responsibility for the loss really showed how much of a gamer Kerry was. He wanted the ball in the biggest moments in the biggest games. Sometimes I think that with his mentality, Kerry Wood could have been one of the best closers of all time had he only focused on relief pitching from day 1. It might have led to less injuries.
What really made me love Wood was that in 2008, we had to basically push him out the door to leave the Cubs. Hendry told him we couldn't pay him even close to market value and he didn't want to insult him with a lowball offer. Kerry said he didn't care. I really wanted him to sign back with the Cubs on whatever offer they could afford, but I think the player's union would have had a shit fit if a $10 million a year player signed for 20% of that.
On the "Former and Current Cubs I'd Love to Get a Beer With" list, Kerry is right near the top with Mark Grace and Kyle Farnsworth (you know that guy would start some shit worth seeing every time he goes out drinking). I'm assuming Wood will get some kind of front office or coaching gig with the Cubs, so it's not like he'll be gone forever. He was tough as nails, didn't talk any bullshit and did his job well. I don't think we could have asked for more from Wood in his time in Chicago.
Adios, 34.
(Side note: If you really want to read a good summary of Kerry Wood's awesomeness, get Three Nights In August, one of the better recent books on baseball. Lots of good Wood stuff in there.)
As a legitimate blogger who posts nearly weekly, I've made it a habit during my adult life to pick up a crisp, new Official Chicago Cubs Media Guide at the beginning of every year. No, I don't know why either. But now I find myself with a stack of these, and thus am able to throw myself down the rabbit hole of the Cubs careers that never were.
Name: Jose Prado Salazar Macias
Nickname(s): Joze Mackey, Now Pinch-Hitting, That Guy - What's His Name I Can Never Remember
Media Guide Year: 2004
Position: 3B/OF
Acquired: Traded from Montreal for Wilton Chavez, who has pitched for 14 different minor league teams, if you count the Mexican League.
Random Write-Up: Born in Panama City, Panama, a hardscrabble metropolis notable mostly for its vicious dancefighting culture.
Signed in 1992 by Montreal, which used to be a franchise that existed. Not many people saw them, though. Played in Montreal's minor league system from 1994 until 1997, when he was went to Detroit as a Rule 5 draft. Finally made the majors in 1999, where he was a lifetime .256 switch hitter with 26 home runs and 173 RBI. Came to the Cubs in 2004 and played two years as "that guy," then went to the Nippon-Hokkaido Ham Fighters, and the Diablo Rojos of the Mexican League a couple years after that.
Notice anything? Bland. He's perhaps the blandest of the mid-2000s Cubs, which is saying something. He makes Daryle Ward look like Mark Grace in terms of charisma. If he were white, I'd call him Whitebread, but I'll stay away from baking terms, as Brownbread sounds pretty racist.
Also of Note: He was at Wrigley on June 6, 2004, helping Greg Maddux win his 5th game of that year, back when we were a trendy World Series pick and LaTroy Hawkins was a name that people on the North Side hadn't yet begun to despise. It was also the first game at Wrigley where I enjoyed a wax paper cup of Old Style. I ... may or may not have been 20 years old at the time. It's where I got this media guide I inexplicably hang on to!
You May Remember Him From: You won't remember Jose Macias. But you all remember the concept of Jose Macias in your Cubs fan hearts.
Thanks to an idiot with diarrhea-mouth over at the Wall Street Journal, we've had yet another round of "Well, maybe we should tear down Wrigley"/"No, but maybe you're a fucking idiot" that in no way has become tiresome and idiotic. In no way at all.
But I will admit that as much as I think people who want to abandon ship for a bland, new-construction job are stupid, I don't at all mind new advertising or anything that would help build a Series-worthy team. Hell, I really like the new scoreboard that went up over the offseason, because the Bleacher Boxes were stupid, and so was the Family Seating section incarnation before that. I'd imagine most reasonable Cubs fans acknowledge that it'd be great to win a series, baseball has always been a business big on sponsorship, and that it's a great ballpark - a legendary ballpark - but once you start whispering that it's a cathedral, you need to take a fucking knee. It's baseball - you're not supposed to use your library voice when you're holding an Old Style.
So what level of sponsorship would you accept for a contender? A conversation among the bartenders envisioned a newly-renovated and thoroughly modern Wrigley Field, with one small compromise to modernity - sponsorship. Namely, this:
Oh, and we even thought of slogans. Credit attributed to the appropriately juvenile bartenders:
Lingering Bursitis
"Tampax Field - Built for comfort."
"Tampax Field - Home of the most absorbent outfield in MLB."
"Tampax Field - We screen "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" on the jumbotron between innings."
"Tampax Field - No, you don't look fat in this baseball stadium."
Muldoon
"Tampax Field - Where you can play baseball! Or go swimming, or horseback riding, or play tennis ..."
"Tampax Field - Where all the elevators are like that one from The Shining."
"Tampax Field - Where the Cubs keep up a heavy flow ... of WINS!"
"Tampax Field - A cardboard applicator full of family fun!"
"Tampax Field - Are you really going to trust your white pants to Store Brand Field?"
Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
"Tampax Field - This isn't a good week."
"Tampax Field - Stay too long and you'll get toxic shock syndrome."
"Tampax Field - Because fairweather fans bleed Cubbie Blue periodically."
Mr. Funk
"Tampax Field - Where We Bleed Cubbie Blue (liquid)"
"Tampax Field - Where it's not 'hormones,' it's 'steroid rage!'"
Just when I start to feel a little positive about the 2012 Chicago Cubs, the bullpen decides to remind me just why the Cubs are in last place. Now granted, as Dale Sveum pointed out, these guys are pitching in roles they really shouldn't be in. If Marmol and Wood were reliable this year, the Cubs wouldn't have to worry about tossing guys like Scott Maine and Michael Bowden out there to face major league hitters with a game on the line.
By the way, what the fuck is up with Matt Garza and his inability to throw to first base? His turf-burger in the 3rd was one of the more embarrassing things I've seen in a while. At least Juan Pierre managed to top that when he screened himself with his own glove and dropped an easy out on a Bryan LaHair popup.
Speaking of LaHair, the real bummer last night was his streak of consecutive games in which he reached base came to an end at 32. Pretty impressive for a guy a lot of people, including myself, were writing off as a 4A player. LaHair has been one of the main reasons I've actually enjoyed watching this team this year. Editor's Note: He did reach base on an error last night.
Last night's loss aside, I'm still feeling pretty positive about this team. They're not going anywhere this year, but they're a lot more fun to watch than the sad sack collection of dogdoo Cub fans were treated to over the past couple of years. I'm starting to look forward to games again, which is pretty cool.
Speaking of cool, it's awesome to have the Saloon back up and running. As you could no doubt tell from this post, I'm a little rusty at this whole blogging thing, but with time and more enthusiasm for this team, I'm hoping to once again reach the lofty heights of esoteric nonsense that made Thunder Matt a household name.
Without going into the specifics of why I loved a movie that many people didn't see, I'll just say I was a fan of 2011's Real Steel and leave it at that. Yes, it's basically just Rock-'Em, Sock-'Em Robots: The Movie. Yes, it's just as hard to get emotionally invested in as Rocky would have been if Rocky was a giant robot that couldn't feel pain.
The reason Real Steel was great was Hugh Jackman's performance. While not winning any Oscars (unfortunately), Jackman was completely committed to the role and sold the hell out of it, which is impressive considering he was acting alongside what was basically a bunch of toasters. And just being 100% committed to a silly role isn't the key to success (just ask Leo DiCaprio after J. Edgar).
What made the performance great was that the whole time, you could tell that Hugh Jackman was in on the joke with us. He knew how batshit ridiculous the concept of training boxing robots was, and you could tell that he had an attitude of "Eh, why not? Could be fun, right?" throughout the entire movie.
That's exactly the kind of feeling I'm getting from the Cubs and their recent play as of late.
This isn't like the 2007 - 2009 Cubs, who fell apart under the weight of expectation, either in the playoffs or just before. There's no delusion here. Everyone, from the fans to the players to the front office knew coming in that 2012 was going to be a full-on wash of a year. Year One of a new rebuilding project always is. And I think the team is playing better because of it.
If Bryan LaHair had come up a few years back and been expected to mash from day one like Hee Seop Choi or Micah Hoffpauer, would he have done nearly as good as he is so far in 2012? Who knows? But there's a chance he wouldn't. Cubs players don't handle the pressure of expectation to well.
But so far in 2012, players like LaHair and Campana know that they're playing with house money, and I think it's letting everyone play relaxed and loose. By no means are the Cubs a threat to win the division, but they've played some really great baseball against division leaders over the last few weeks and that's...well, that's something right?
2012 is shaping up to be a lot better than I expected so far on the North Side. Sometimes being in on the joke, even if you are the joke, is a lot more entertaining.
May 11, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
No Friday Bar Rag this week. Instead I'm too busy resting my liver for tomorrow's big event. I will be heading to Chicago for the 4th Annual Wasting Away in Wrigleyville Pub Crawl. 9 innings, 9 bars, no mercy. I'll be joining John and Steve from WAIW along with fellow TMS bartenders from past and present including Mr. Funk and White Chili, and whole cast of ragtag misfits for what's surely going to be an event I'll not remember.
And to share with you, our dear readers numbering in the tens, I plan to video document this event. Armed with a beer, my iPhone and a childlike sense of wonderment I will film our descent into madness, one bar at a time. Then historians can some day piece together the events of that day and perhaps shed light on what exactly happened. It'll be like Cloverfield but with fewer alien monsters and a lot more Malort.
Also, I made a map for the event!
It's a long hard journey, and some of you may perish along the way.
May 09, 2012 | Comments (1) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
It's hard for me to say this but...
I'm sorry.
I thought for sure you would fail miserably, and after a month you'd be relegated back to AAA and out of our lives forever. However that has hardly been the case. I blame the long line of Cubs players showing promise that inevitably let me down. There are too many to name but specifically when it came to you I could only think of Micah Hoffpauir. The parallels were all there. Roughly the same age when he had a breakout year in AAA, he emerged with the big league club and was given a shot, only to fall flat on his face.
Granted there's a lot of baseball to be played yet, but you've already shown me that you sir are not the next Micah Hoffpauir. I just wanted to clear the air and say I'm rooting for you. So are we cool? Cool.
Mr. Samardzija. You're still not off the hook yet however.
FUN FACT: In 47 games with Chicago, LaHair now has 10 home runs. That's just two shy of Micah Hoffpauir's 12 in 162 games as a Cub.
Unicorn George Brett shall haunt your dreams...or your nightmares.
I wish I had something witty or insightful to start this post off with. But I don't. Much like this year's Cubs team, I'm only going to do juuuuust enough here to (hopefully) keep your passing interest. Here's what I saw this weekend, with the Cubs and other things.
The Cubs took two of three from the Dodgers! As great as it is to have the Cubs take a series from a first place team, I feel like the Dodgers are not as good a team as their record may show. 11 of their 18 wins have come against the awful Padres, Astros and Pirates. Yes, you have to beat who you play, but I'd like to see the Dodgers beat a few better teams before saying they're "for real".
Rafael Dolis has done pretty well since being named one of the Cubs' potential closers. I hadn't seem him pitch much this year before today. I was confused about his pedestrian 2.45 K/9 seeing how he usually sits around 94 MPH. After seeing him this weekend, it seems like it's because he ONLY throws his fastball. Fangraphs says he goes to the heater almost 87% of the time. If he doesn't develop a changeup or throw his slider more often, the league is going to catch up to him. Quickly.
The Red Sox and Orioles played a 17 inning game today. Chris Davis, Baltimore's DH, went 0-8 as a hitter, but won the game by throwing two scoreless innings. Hopefully Chris Davis now needs Tommy John surgery. Am I still angry at being burned by Chris Davis multiple years in a row in fantasy baseball? Yes. Yes I am.
The Bulls lost. Again. All those people that said "There's no team as prepared to lose their best player as the Bulls" can suck it. With the Blackhawks out of the NHL playoffs and the Cubs being only passably interesting, I'm throwing my support behind the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx to defend their title this year.
Holy shit, The Avengers raked in $200 MILLION this weekend. Having seen it already, I can say it deserved every penny. I don't usually have the urge to watch many movies twice in the theater, but I'll definitely be seeing The Avengers again in the next month or so. Expect a final tally of about $450 million in the US.
Alright, Mad Men is almost on, so here's where we part.
May 04, 2012 | Comments (0) | by Jake the Terrible Cubs Fan
While you sit and wonder if we really did see Carlos Marmol blow a save for the last time, here is a hodgepodge of crap for you to check out from the past week.
bbq for men - For $950. And it's going to have fucking terrible heat retention. But yeah, the mahogany handle is the tits. Can't wait to keep it outside during winter. Let's see how "art"looks after the thaw.
New Nets logo - It's a million times cooler simply for not having "New Jersey" in it.
The Fourth Annual WAIW Pub Crawl is coming up on May 12. It's too late to buy the shirt (shown at right) but you can still probably tag along. You just won't be a suave-looking motherfucker like the rest of us.
Kate Upton Bikini Dance - Probably not the best thing to watch at work. Actually you'll probably want some "alone time" for this.
Desipio.com - Take a trip down shitty Cubs memory lane.
Being cautious gives you Parkinson's - I know it looked like I did a ton of cocaine and drove my car into the side of a building before running off and stabbing a hobo. But it's all part of my Parkinson's prevention.
T-Shirt Gatling Gun - The free fan promotion war has escalated. (Warning: site has repeating Flash video with sound that you can't seem to turn off or mute. Just an FYI for those that don't want to startle folks in the other cubicle with sounds of gunfire. Or maybe you do...?)
Shock Top Belgian White
