Post Mortem

While this page looks forward the bulk of the time, this post will look back.

It’s funny. I took some sort of sick pleasure in watching the Cubs blow another game, and their season, today. The events of the past few days are just so fitting a conclusion for this team. They were focused on everything but winning. That’s why I took pleasure in their being eliminated. I wanted this team to win more than they did. And it became abundantly clear that they stopped being interested in winning when at last gasp, they had to have a meeting with Steve Stone.

It turns out that, according to Saturday’s Trib, the problems with the media and Stone started a whole year ago! On May 24, 2003, Stone "criticized" Dusty Baker for not having a reliever warming up when, in the 7th inning, starter Shaun Estes started to falter. That was overheard in the clubhouse and relayed to Dusty. That started the snowball that ended up distracting this team for almost another whole year.

While I haven’t invested this much time in a Cubs’ team since the 1991 edition that signed Danny Jackson and George Bell. That team has nearly as much hope behind it as the 2004 edition. The real difference was the 1991 team had players on it that made them lovable. Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Shawon Dunston, Greg Maddux, Rick Sutcliffe were all guys that I liked. I even liked Mark Grace back then.

This team was full of puds. They didn’t care about winning. Why should I care that they lost?

At the end, I didn’t. It serves them right that the Cubs finished in third place. Houston was 7 games behind the Cubs until Michael Barrett opened his yapper at Roy Oswalt. Now, they, along with this page’s must have player, Carlos Beltran, are my pick for the World Series.

Good riddance to the 2004 Cubs.

Sam-ME.

Here’s what we know. Sosa didn't arrive in the Cubs’ clubhouse until 12:10 p.m. for the 1:20 p.m. game, and would not talk with reporters. Baker said Sosa was excused from the game because he was "ailing." We also know that Sosa left the park before the National Anthem was sung. He did this on Fan Appreciation Weekend.

We also know that Dusty started Jason DuBois in his place. Not Ben Grieve, but DuBois. Message to read there is that Sammy can be replaced by a cheap rookie.

My read: Sammy is done here, at least with Baker. Can Hendry find a buyer? One can only hope.

More tomorrow on Chip Caray’s exit. Good for him that he gets to work with his dad. Good for Cubs’ fans that we don’t have to hear him anymore.