Well, we started the day with some fun Chicago Cubs news and my semi-feigned disappointment that Nick “Ron Swanson” Offerman is a lifelong Cubs fan, so why not pile on with some more North Side news? Because this one might sting a little.

Sony released a new commercial for MLB 12: The Show today, and while the theme is admittedly clever and surprisingly beautiful, I just can’t help but think that it’s like pushing a burn victim into a sand pit. The video – that you can view after the jump in case you’re impatient and don’t feel like reading one of my patented build-ups – sets the scene of the Cubs winning a World Series for the first time in a bazillion, jillion, zillion 104 years, and I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t make this Cardinals fan a little misty just thinking about what could be.

Then I felt warm so I tapped Alfonso Soriano on the shoulder and he started swinging his bat to cool me off. Hooray for baseball season!

Read the rest of this entry »

… And it was fired from Aramis Ramirez’s figurative pistol. The Chicago Cubs at least gave their fans a tiny amount of joy last night as they won the last game of the season at Wrigley Field, defeating the Milwaukee Brewers 7-1. With a 6-game road trip remaining for the Cubs, they’re currently tied with the Pittsburgh Pirates for 4th place and they also have a chance to derail the St. Louis Cardinals’ last second playoff hopes starting tomorrow night at Busch Stadium.

But beyond that relative, honorable mention joy, the Cubs are once again in a familiar place, wondering what the hell comes next. Ramirez, who could be playing for a playoff contender right now, chose to stand strong with his no-trade clause in July and August because he wanted to sign an extension with the Cubs. Unfortunately, he knows now that he’s not in the Cubs’ plans.

Ramirez said “the chances to come back here don’t look pretty good right now,” and that he believed it would come to this after Hendry was fired.

“It looked that way, because of the situation in the front office,” he said. “I knew (staying) wasn’t a good (possibility) because we don’t have a GM, and we haven’t heard from (the Cubs) the whole time. I knew nothing was going to come of it.”

(Via the Chicago Tribune)

This would be a case of your standard baseball breakup, except that Ramirez knew before the July 31 trade deadline that he wasn’t in the plans. At that time there were teams interested in trading for Ramirez, who could have added a hot bat and solid glove at third base for a playoff team on the bubble (notably the Anaheim Angels and their ripe farm system). But Ramirez said no, and now he won’t even accept the mutual option for $16 million if the Cubs chose to pull the trigger, because he wants more years and more money.

In happier news, at least Ryne Sandberg is doing well.

Recent inspection reports from Chicago’s Wrigley Field show that out of 35 concessions, health inspectors found 20 critical violations at nine booths. In case you were hoping a “critical violation” to a health inspector means something harmless like “bald guy not wearing hair net”, I am deeply saddened to inform you that it is not harmless and probably the grossest things you can imagine, including but not limited to black slime accumulating in an ice machine.

Let that sink in for a moment. Black slime. Start trying to figure out how a machine with nothing in it but ice could even grow black slime.

Big League Stew has a complete rundown of Wrigley’s violations, including an hilarious TV segment where a reporter has to ask someone if goddamn black slime growing in a vending machine is good or bad, and a “food safety expert” has to use their lifetime of experience to confirm that it is bad. In case you ever wanted to have a hot dog again, other violations included

• Food being cooked at temperatures not hot enough to kill bacteria.

• Workers serving food with the same unclean hands that touch germ-ridden money.

• More than 24 pounds of hamburgers, hot dogs and sausages that had to be thrown away because they were unsafe to eat.

I guess the Ricketts family got their healthcare procedures from the corn dog scene in Adventureland.

My theory is that God has to find some way to dissuade people from supporting the Cubs and the whole 100 years of losing thing didn’t work, so poisoning them with 70-degree black oil sausages is the next idea. To their credit, nothing at the ballpark is “healthy” (that bin of day-old pineapple I can shovel into a cup isn’t fooling anybody), a 100% healthy fast food stand anywhere that thousands of sports fans gather is probably an impossibility, and there’s a solid chance that even my souvenir soda from Progressive Field was Starbucked at the bottom with asbestos. To their discredit, Jesus Christ, Wrigley Field, could I get f**king Icee without you blowing your nose in it?

[image via RandomESHG]

The Chicago Cubs are 16 games under .500 and lost both games of a doubleheader yesterday, but at least their fans have been solid in the field.

It happened in the ninth inning of San Francisco’s 13-7 victory in the first game of the day-night twofer: Miguel Tejada disproved all known logic and science by hitting a ball into the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field, and a young man (the literal antithesis of that Houston Astros jerk that let a foul ball hit his girlfriend) caught the homer with his bare hands and launched it back onto the field — so far, in fact, that it almost hit Tejada on his way around the bases and rolled into the Giants dugout. I don’t know who this kid is, but I know how his story ends: with an eephus pitch to “Butch” Heddo.

Watch the video here, courtesy of MLB.com, and ask yourself aloud whether or not Tony Campana could’ve made this throw.

The only way it would’ve been better is if the ball had clipped Tejada in the helmet on the way down and knocked him down. If you knock Tejada down, could he even get back up? Is he like a big turtle?

[h/t Big League Stew]

I’m not much of an expert when it comes to money, as evidenced by my solid gold toilets and multiple purchases from the International Star Registry, but thankfully Forbes is here to tell us when professional sports teams are wasting money. The money magazine recently released a study that determined the most and least efficient teams in Major League Baseball this season. By considering a number of factors, including blah blah blah and the square root of pi divided by zero, Forbes determined that the San Diego Padres were the big winners this year, despite not making the playoffs. The big losers? Come on, like you had to think about it.

The Chicago Cubs paved the road of inefficiency this season, spending nearly $2 million per win, compared to the Padres organization, which spent less than $500,000 per win. Basically, as the common fan can make such astute (Ed. – Tee hee!) observations as, “Aramis Ramirez is terrible” and “Alfonso Soriano is horrendous”, these numbers also show us that certain organizations have front offices that aren’t fit to put the square peg in the circle hole.

Make me feel better about my crippling student loan payments, Forbes:

Read the rest of this entry »