Role Reversal

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, I was more Bears fan than Cubs fan. The Bears were a model of excellence. Only Charles Martin prevented the Bears from multiple Superbowls back in the 80's. When Dave Wannstedt was hired, I knew the Bears were in for a downfall. I slowly lost my Bear-goggles and returned to my first love, baseball. That defaulted me to watching the Cubs.

Through the 90's, the Bears were the model of incompetence. They were probably the worst run franchise in all of football. Probably even worse than the Cardinals and the Bengals.

Well, with Lovie Smith's naming of Kyle Orton as the team's starting quarterback, the direction may be reversing.

How refreshing to see the Bears actually play the guy on the roster who has the best chance of leading to more victories later at the cost of some victories now. Do any of you have any doubt that a Dave Wannstedt 2005 Bear team starts Jeff Blake at QB? Of course he would. Blake would give the team the best chance to win on Sunday. He doesn't give the team the best chance to ever win a playoff game, even if that game isn't until the 2006 season.

Now, take a look at the Cubs. They are already playing for 2006. Jim Hendry even says so. He knows that the fans want to see if 2006 has any hope from the guys already here. He also wants to see how much work he needs to do. Ronny Cedeno and Matt Murton: Role players or starters? He needs to know. And we fans would like to judge for ourselves:

"I think [Murton] held his own admirably coming up from Double A," (Jim) Hendry said. "So it's not like we're going to have 12 guys without big-league experience up here by Sept. 1. I think if Cedeno and Murton are playing, that's a positive, and I think our fan base would appreciate that."

Right on, Jim.

But the rest of the article suggest that we may not see this:

But (Dusty) Baker may have a different opinion on what the fan base wants.

"We owe it to ourselves and to our fans to put the best team on the field and try to win," Baker said.

That suggests kids like Cedeno and Murton won't play on a regular basis.

"It's too early for me," Baker said. "I haven't been in this position in years. You still owe your best to the team and to the fans and to everybody, for now. Eventually you're going to have to start thinking about that, but right now we plan to end up the best we can. We owe it to ourselves, to the paying customers and out of respect for the game."

Screw you, Dusty. You owe it to the fans to win a World Series! If you can't do that in 2005, you need to get ready for 2006! The fans know this, Lovie Smith knows this, why don't you? Do the Neifi Perez's of the world have stat bonuses you need to help them achieve?

See, Dusty, what you are really doing is screwing the fans, not giving us a quality product. You don't like us. We're just an annoyance. Your players are all that matter to you.

Well, we pay your salary. Ticket sales, ad rates on TV and radio determined by viewer / listener ratings, memorabilia sales, etc.

Lovie Smith gets it. You don't.

Note to the Tribune. As of right now, I'm more willing to give Mike McCaskey my money than you guys. Any readers who know me know that what I am saying is huge for me. Right now, I wouldn't give you guys a quarter for a scorecard pencil so long as you have a staff that thinks my presence is necessary evil.

Think about that when you review the season.

Yesterday, I saw that the bleachers were about a third empty late in the game.

Maybe Cubs fans aren't suckers. It looks like they showed up for Ryne Sandberg's jersey retirement and took off. Good for the people that left. Keep doing that, Cubs fans. Maybe the suits in Trib Tower will get the message.