General Cubs Chit-Chat

[jersey cubs fan]

The only thing I remember along these lines in high school was a plague of dead-legging, and that wans't about tricking someone into doing or saying anything; you just tried to wail on the leg of someone standing up and not paying attention in the hopes they'd go down in a heap.

 

savage

[Clem Fandango]

A particularly cruel game during middle school for us was when, on the bus, you catch some unsuspecting person from behind and slam their heads into the bus window.

[SouthSideRyan]

I am now cutting off Phyllis’s Head with a chainsaw

[Bull]

I am now cutting off Phyllis’s Head with a chainsaw

Rrrring-ningning-ningning

[We Got The Whole 9]

A particularly cruel game during middle school for us was when, on the bus, you catch some unsuspecting person from behind and slam their heads into the bus window.

We went through a period of kneeing each other in the nuts

[tfarks]

 

4chan got Theo ‘shivering’ with a troll job started a couple years ago. On the day Russell comes back to boot, how coincidental. I couldn’t have foreseen white supremacists taking the circle game away.

[jersey cubs fan]

 

4chan got Theo ‘shivering’ with a troll job started a couple years ago. On the day Russell comes back to boot, how coincidental. I couldn’t have foreseen white supremacists taking the circle game away.

The sign was used by white supremacists before then

[tfarks]

I’ve seen it.

[JennieGarthAlgar]

Look, either the guy flashed this sign because he's either:

 

A. a white supremacist (very bad)

B. a 4chaner who loves owning libs (slightly less bad)

C. a guy who plays a game where he flashes a sign and expects his friends to.. touch his leg trough the television? lol they can't, so now he wants to punch them? Because its funny somehow? (possibly the worst of the three)

 

I just can't fathom a single situation here where a person like this should not be banned from a place like Wrigley Field.

[Sammy Sofa]

I don't understand people who think the 4chan thing is some kind of excuse. If someone is doing it to either actually be racist or "ironically racist," who gives a horsefeathers about that difference? "Oh, they're just trolling people into thinking they're white supremacists! Boom, haw-haw! Owned, somehow, I guess!"

 

Or, as someone else put it much better than I:

 

“I just did it so you’d think I’m racist!”

 

Ok, well now I think you’re racist.

 

“HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF BEING RACIST!?”

Edited May 10, 2019 by Sammy Sofa

[Sammy Sofa]

Look, either the guy flashed this sign because he's either:

 

A. a white supremacist (very bad)

B. a 4chaner who loves owning libs (slightly less bad)

C. a guy who plays a game where he flashes a sign and expects his friends to.. touch his leg trough the television? lol they can't, so now he wants to punch them? Because its funny somehow? (possibly the worst of the three)

 

I just can't fathom a single situation here where a person like this should not be banned from a place like Wrigley Field.

 

Yeah, at the very least the dude was essentially trying to prank a live broadcast...which pretty typically also gets you kicked out at the very least if you get caught.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

Look, either the guy flashed this sign because he's either:

 

A. a white supremacist (very bad)

B. a 4chaner who loves owning libs (slightly less bad)

C. a guy who plays a game where he flashes a sign and expects his friends to.. touch his leg trough the television? lol they can't, so now he wants to punch them? Because its funny somehow? (possibly the worst of the three)

 

I just can't fathom a single situation here where a person like this should not be banned from a place like Wrigley Field.

I had a guy at a Cubs Rockies game at Coors Field give me a wet-willie once. Let's call him "D." I would rank them, from worst to least worst:

A, B, D, C. (Guy C also happens to not exist.)

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

 

4chan got Theo ‘shivering’ with a troll job started a couple years ago. On the day Russell comes back to boot, how coincidental. I couldn’t have foreseen white supremacists taking the circle game away.

Where in the horsefeathers is the downvote button?!

[Guancous]

I haven’t heard of the okay symbol being repurposed in this manner. If someone’s defense of anything, devoid of context, involves 4chan then they deserve to be ostracized from society to a degree that would make Black Mirror writers cringe.

 

There are racists in the owner’s box and racists running the new tv channel. Not too much to ask to keep the horsefeathers off the field and out of the stands.

[CyHawk_Cub]

Dude will be back once the Ricketts figure out how to monetize all of this.

[CubInOK]

What do Stephen Miller, Mike Cernovich, the New Zealand mosque shooter, and Roger Stone have in common?

[Sammy Sofa]

The way I'm looking at it is that I actually do think Kenney and Theo's comments that make it sound like the org checked out this guy's social media presence is legit. If this had just been some people on Twitter complaining about what they think might be a dude flashing a racist troll symbol, I really don't think they would have responded if there was nothing beyond that.

 

I would think that acting like this (banning the guy and making the statements they did) without anything else pointing to this guy's intentions would potentially leave them open to some kind of defamation lawsuit (even though they didn't publicly ID him). Even if that would have just been a relative nuisance, I would think it's something they would rather avoid, so it seems far more likely that they quickly ID'ed the guy, checked out his social media and, no shocker at all, found the kind of garbage you would expect from someone doing this for the worst of reasons, snapshotted everything in case he tries to make a stink, and then made the statements they did.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

edit: horsefeathers facebook

 

[tweet]

[/tweet]

[badger]

Fun cultural fact: Today is Mother's Day in Mexico.

[Sammy Sofa]

So is this an example of actual racism, or ironic trolling racism? And who gets punched?

 

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/turning-point-usa-university-nevada-las-vegas-president-white-power

[Sammy Sofa]

But I'm sure somebody somewhere will post a picture of a PoC obviously just doing a completely unrelated gesture and be all, "YOU STUPID SNOWFLAKES, I GUESS THESE GUYS ARE RACIST, TOO, DUR-HUR-HUR."

[Brian]

Is there not a Lester thread?

 

What are the numbers saying about the hot start? Is it like last year where the results are way out of line with the data, or are is this a more legitimate good start than last year?

[Sammy Sofa]

Fangraphs has his FIPs numbers as 2.72 and 3.39, which is pretty freakin' awesome.

[squally1313]

Is there not a Lester thread?

 

What are the numbers saying about the hot start? Is it like last year where the results are way out of line with the data, or are is this a more legitimate good start than last year?

 

Well I can tell you with some degree of certainty that he will not maintain a 1.16 ERA the rest of the year...

 

It kinda depends on how deep you want to go into the numbers. His K/BB rates are essentially both the best he's had since he joined the Cubs, the walk rate being especially encouraging after watching it increase every year the last four years. That's giving him a career best FIP of 2.72. The BABIP looks normal, one point off his career average. Those are all the good things.

 

His line drive rate is down from last year, but above his career average. His hard hit rate is a career high by a pretty significant margin, which is the big concern (previous high was 32.6% in 2007, 31.9% last year, 40.5% this year). As you'd expect, that's leading to a career low in soft hit % besides the 81 innings in his first year. His velocity looks to be down about 1 MPH across the board, but if memory serves me correctly he usually picks up a little bit as the year goes on and it warms up. He's throwing a lot less 4 seamers and a lot more cutters, which seems to be helping.

 

Overall it's encouraging, especially if you had (not unreasonable) thoughts after last year that he wasn't going to be anything more than a mid-rotation guy going forward. Would like to see more soft contact, but the control has been great, especially because it hasn't come at the expense of strikeouts.

[jersey cubs fan]

Is there not a Lester thread?

 

What are the numbers saying about the hot start? Is it like last year where the results are way out of line with the data, or are is this a more legitimate good start than last year?