That's not a typo. The little Cubs blog that could has made it to a milestone...100 Posts! I want to take this opportunity to thank our regular readers (thanks Jeff and Mom!) and all the people who have stopped by now and then to see if we had fallen on our faces yet. It's been a lot of fun.In honor of this festive occasion, we've decided to do a list (I know, we're nothing if not original).
100 Random Observations About the Cubs (Mostly): Part 1
1. I’ve never listened to Len and Bob’s Podcast and I’m OK with that.
2. I wish I could time my craps like Pat Hughes. You could set your watch to that man's BMs.
3. Geovany Soto is the second coming of…man, we’ve had a lot of shitty catchers over the years.
4. Someone needs to kick Ronnie Woo Woo in the throat (yes, the anger management classes are working, thanks for asking).
5. “If you hate him so much, why do you continue to read his stuff?” is the question the logical part of my brain asks me each time I finish reading a Mariotti column. I wish I had an answer.
6. There’s hell, there’s the 7th circle of hell and then there’s listening to the another worthless guest conductor during the seventh inning stretch. For the love of God, make it stop.
7. I want a championship for Ron Santo so bad it actually hurts.
8. “That ball’s got a chance…gone!” is quickly becoming my favorite home run call.
9. God Damn it Fontenot, get in front of the damn ball! Don't give me this o'lay bullshit.
10. It’s not officially summer until you hear: “Ladies and gentleman, here to sing ‘Take Me Out to The Ballgame’…the Illinois class 2A Girls Field Hockey Champions!”
11. Every time I’m flipping channels and I come across Chicago Tribune Live on Comcast SportsNet, I die a little inside. (I know, let’s put GIANT pictures of the sports page behind us! That will really class up this broadcast!)
12. I can’t explain it, but I really get a kick out of Pat Hughes describing the uniforms. It’s so old-timey!
13. You know what the difference is between a good Cubs game and a bad one? Rich Hill. (Zing!)
14. I found out recently that there’s a drinking game where you do a shot ever time Zambrano adjusts himself on the mound. How has no one died playing this yet?
15. I wish I could have been in the meeting when the Comcast execs came up with the “Let’s have a bulldog as a mascot!” idea. If that was the big winner, how bad where the rest of the ideas?
16. It’s the worst feeling in the world when you notice that they haven't put up a new number on one of the games on the out-of-town scoreboard in long time and then you suddenly realize you’ve got the pitcher on your fantasy team. Ruins my day every time.
17. I always see the foam claw vendor, but I never actually see any foam claws in the stands. Does that strike anyone else as odd?
18. Finding out that Corey Patterson was the worst lead off hitter in the majors this year made me smile. Then I thought, how could he be worse than Soriano? Then I cried.
19. In my opinion, the jersey t-shirt may be the greatest invention since squeezable ketchup bottles. If only they had been around when I thought it was a wise investment to spend 90 bucks on a f*#king Corey Patterson jersey.
20. I haven’t heard a lot of “F#*k You Dome” jokes so far this year. Maybe that’s because I haven’t sat in the bleachers yet.
21-40 Coming Soon!
Posts
Even though there are minimal interviews with each of the Joes, it becomes pretty obvious that these are the guys who take things a bit too seriously. They’re the guy who takes a walk in a co-ed softball game, or whines at the ref just long enough to make the rest of his teammates uncomfortable in the flag football game. Granted, this is coming from the guy who has been banned from commenting on any aspects of his wife’s softball performance within an hour before or after any weekend softball contest. However, there’s a recognition among even guys as borderline-too-intense as I am that, once the game is over, we’re not actual athletes, and we go back to being the semi-unathletic sarcastic observers of the real ones. Unfortunately, the Joes on this show have never given up the dream.
This is what makes the show so much fun. For an hour, you get to see the guy who takes his MVP of the rec league just a little too seriously get the shit beaten out of him by professional athletes who (a.) are old enough, and have had enough surgeries that they walk around like Forrest Gump before he got the braces off, and (b.) might as well end every contest by saying “so, when do I get paid for this crap?” The professional athletes (who clearly stopped caring about their physical well-being about 3 seconds after the retirement papers were signed) utterly destroy the Joes in every way imaginable, and barely break a sweat. This is exactly what everyone else in the softball or flag football league wants to see, and watching the archetype for every annoying wannabe I’ve ever encountered on a field (some of whom were on teams with me) get not only physically, but mentally destroyed by a real professional athlete makes us feel better than David Silver when he finally sealed the deal with Donna.
But I guess that’s all reality TV is: a chance for people to vicariously take out their frustrations on the people they dislike. From Puck to Johnny Fairplay to the Joes, we viewers get to slap around the archetype of the guy on the field or in our building who just utterly and completely annoys the crap out of us. Sure its nice when the million dollars gets paid out to the person who really played fair on Survivor or when Flavor really finds love (again), but we don’t watch for that reason. We watch to see that douchebag who calls charges in the pickup basketball game get speared by the steroid-riddled corpse of Bill Romanowski. Long live sports. And vindictiveness.