Sammy Sofa

It's not.

The debate over replay is good for baseball, from Selig's perspective. Actually slowing down the game with it is not. It's not going to happen until he's out of there in a few years.

The Cubs need to stop welcoming their new players with a big basket of clutch cancer.

So he was great in 2005 because it didn't matter? He had an OPS over 1.200 through April. He had an OPS over 1.000 every month through August. Apparently it didn't matter from day one, because he was [expletive] killing it the entire time.

You're kidding, right?

That was completely expected.

It's the same with Santo and Cubs fans. Both are biased to a flaw, and have next to no broadcasting skill. If you're a fan of their team, you probably love them. If you're anyone else, you almost certainly can't stand them. The difference is that Hawk is the PBP guy and gets to torture a national TV audience with his unprofessional shtick for some unfathomable reason. But at least Santo has Pat with him who is great. Also, Hawk is so boring to listen to, at least Ron is Entertaining. I'd disagree and say that both Hawk and Santo are awful but entertaining in their awfulness. The key is, as you pointed out, is that Ron has Pat to even things out and Pat actually handles the PBP. It would be one thing if Hawk was there to be the TV version of Santo, but he's supposed to be the TV version of Hughes, which is absurd. Couple that with the smarmy cloud of douche that is Steve Stone and it's torture to listen to.

They weren't on WGN for a long-time, they were on closed-circuit, then Chicago only cable, which is why the Cubs are popular and the White Sox are not And by the time CWS went to WGN the national aspect of WGN was smaller. I know people in PA, NY and NJ that had WGN growing up, but it's not out here anymore and hasn't been since I came here in the late 90s. WGN is still available on most of the East Coast, but it's WGN America.

No, not all of them, since there's WGN and then there's WGN America. Besides, the point was looking for the reasons why the Cubs have such a large, historic fanbase. The Cubs have a long history of national or multi-regional coverage because of WGN radio and TV dating back decades and across generations. The White Sox do not, so unless you expect them to somehow magically catch up with the relative smattering of games they have on WGN America and the mighty Midwest broadcasting power that is the Score, you brought up a very moot point.

Nothing against Ramirez specifically, but after this season and last, I'm ready for a radically different Cubs team. I like Ramirez, Z, Lee, etc. but it's time for a new direction. Out with the old, in with the new -- manager, GM, and core group of players. You don't do it to the point that you're going out of your way to hurt the team. It would be one thing if the Cubs already had candidates who could passably play 3B for a full season (unless DeWitt makes a jump power-wise, no, he doens't count) or had ANY prospects near being ready who could take over at 3B or if there were decent candidates out there as FA who the Cubs could get to replace Aramis...but there isn't. They'd be dumping him simply to dump and more than likely having to pay a big chunk of his remaining years to do so.

Not really. It's not your fault you never look beyond the USA in the medals table, or that the calculations to convert relative to population size can be too complicated. We are actually quite tolerant about intellectual laziness. 8-) http://ic2.pbase.com/o4/52/150052/1/60237644.staxsmall.jpg And something posted on the first page keeps trying to install malware on my computer. Be careful.

Only the Cobs.

Scoring hasn't been the problem for most of the 2nd half.

On the upside, Cashner sucking in the bullpen will hopefully keep the Cubs from penciling him in there next season.

Castro [expletive] rules. I love watching this kid play so much.

Productivity! RF OF THE FUTURE.

Just for fun: .288 .339 .571 .909

If anyone wants to pitch around him they might as well make sure someone is on base when he comes up: .210 .289 .412 .701 RISP: .178 .295 .411 .706 And the only reason his numbers with runners on are this "high" is because of his hitting with guys on 1st and 2nd: .250 .500 .750 1.250 Every other scenario with runners on he has a sub-.700 OPS.

Wells certainly has his share of games where falls apart by just giving up a ton of singles.

Case in point today. Wells is just too ridiculously hittable when he's off to amount to much or to sustain success that was initially seen from him in his first year.

Yeah, same here. He seems like he can be a serviceable back of the rotation guy and not much more.

Nah, I disagree with that. The Cubs have the fanbase they do due to the size of the city they play in, their longevity and, most of all, WGN TV and radio. Anyone who defines themselves as a Cubs fan by the team's futility is just the worst. It's not the futility, it's the desire to end the futility. If you were right, I would have been a fan of the Braves instead of the Cubs, because the Braves are on TV almost every day in the south, and have been for decades. Where are all the White Sox fans? Based on your criteria, wouldn't they have the 3rd or 4th largest fan base? I think they fall in the 20ish range? White Sox don't have national coverage and the Braves had national coverage for like a blip compared to what the Cubs have had between WGN TV and radio. Atlanta is also a much smaller market and city than Chicago and they've only had the Braves for 44 years.

People would flip out and go nuts, but it wouldn't come close to the same level. You still had the Red Sox at 88 years and the White Sox at 80-whatever. You had several franchises who had never won in their existence. The Cubs with 1907, 1908 and 1969 just wouldn't create the same reaction to disappointing losses. Philly was at 28 years of drought when they won, in a city with a hell of a lot less success in other sports, and they weren't nearly as nutty about things as Cubs fans are. The 100 year thing makes all the difference in the world. 33 and 97 are completely different. The Cubs would be nowhere near the top of every list about futility, they wouldn't even be in the discussion. Hell, Cleveland doesn't even come close to replicating the reaction to 2003, and they were much more than 33 years. If the perception is that a fan caused a team with a fanbase and a market like the Cubs to fail to snap a decades-long WS drought then the reaction would be bonkers at least similar to what we saw in 2003.

The black cat happened during 1969 right? Your theory is that if the Cubs went on to win the World Series that year, that in the ensuing decades people would go back to something that happened before they won the WS and talk about that event being related to the fact that they haven't won another since, except for the one they won that year? I truly cannot understand how you can possibly think that last sentence is true. It was the fall of Boston/Chicago possibly meeting up and neither made it. It reiterated to everybody that wanted to believe it that these two doomed franchises would never win. Had the Cubs won in 1969, that's not a story. It easily could be. Obviously, neither of us knows this for sure, but I wouldn't it surprising to see it have become "a thing" after a hypothetical win in 1969 if the followup was the same 30+ years of wretched baseball that we've been blessed in reality. You've already got a team and a fanbase saddled with/embracing the goat going into 1969, and it's a sport that thrives on this kind of ridiculous mythology. You'd have an occurrence as bizarre as a black cat running around the on-deck circle and then a storied team going on more than three decades of truly horrendous baseball after the last time they had won the WS. Is it as "big" as 102 years and the baggage that comes along with that? No, but it still provides the context that you'd still see a very similar reaction to 2003 with Bartman and Alou and Gonzalez and Prior melting down. 95 years or 34 years: people would have been flipping out and going nuts in 2003.

Nah, I disagree with that. The Cubs have the fanbase they do due to the size of the city they play in, their longevity and, most of all, WGN TV and radio. Anyone who defines themselves as a Cubs fan by the team's futility is just the worst.