SouthSideRyan

No You'd be surprised. I know there was always at least a small anti-Dusty group on this board, but most of the meh-Dusty or pro-Dusty people (and this board was littered with them..myself included in the meh-Dusty category) had that sentiment. Then again a lot of us were not as jaded as we are now. Sure, there were people blind to the truth. But I know I was not the only one who was against him from the start. You're talking about 2 different things. People could think the '04 team was getting hot down the stretch while still thinking Dusty was a terrible manager. That team wasn't healthy until September, and there was reason to believe they'd finish strong.

I hate preseason football way more than Cris Collinsworth. I actually kind of like him

To be fair, the Giants finished 2 games ahead of us too.

And for the meatheads, With the Cubs tied for the wild card lead and 5 games to go, Sosa put this line up 429/556/929 when it MEANSDAMOST Probably just to pad his stats though.

Seamus O' Lay, the Irish bullfighter

Looking at stuff from the 2004 season is depressing. You look at when the batting order move was made, why was there all this clamoring for it? Sosa was OPSing about 875 at the time along with pretty much everyone else on the team.

Barry Rozner is a [expletive] moron

Except given the fact that it was written by David Haugh and about a team run by Jim Hendry, making it completely meaningless. Don't you think he's basing this off of some sort of source? I'm not saying it's true, and we could just as likely wind up with Don Baylor again, but the idea even being out there is somewhat encouraging

Why couldn't they send Hill back instead? He's the freaking spokesperson of this team. I've never seen a more inconsequential and incompetent player take such a prominent role in the team's conversation with the media. You can't get rid of that. Not since Ryan Theriot in 2009

That's the first bit of good news about the major league club in months.

Sorry, Bull Durham's already been ruined forever. (And it wasn't that great to begin with) Fire away on Major League

The problem is, his archaic descriptions of how to play baseball didn't come up just as a teaching method in the minor leagues. He droned endlessly about it in his HOF speech. Every article he wrote for Yahoo Sports was straight out of the Joe Morgan playbook. I have little reason to believe that he'd take a drastic turn on everything he's said/done in public when he got to the majors. My only hope would be that he'd have an intelligent bench coach who could steer him in the right direction, but I have no idea who that'd be.

WHY

Does this mean they're going to play for UCF's baseball team for a semester?

They were less optimistic on my teams' chances. They also told me Rob Bironas wasn't starter caliber so screw them.

More importantly where has Roast been? Did he get spiked into a trough by an crazed fan?

Guys should stop striking out so much, and be more like Mike Schmidt.

The bunting with Ty Wright thing bothered me, but I'll admit I don't expect him to bunt in the first inning with a middle of the order guy if he manages the Cubs. I do think, from that event and from things he's said, that he prefers the more traditional type of baseball that emphasizes batting average and small ball. Baseball might be moving in that direction as a whole. Pitching has been pretty dominant this season. Regardless, all the bitching about Ryno bunting his #3 batter is nonsense. The point of the minors IS TO DEVELOPE PLAYERS. That's what he was doing. I've seen books and such that stated that the big league club lets the minor league coaches know what they want certain players to work on. As far as Ryno's statement that grounding out to second to get the guy to third is not a bad thing... it's not when the other outcome is the batter striking out and now your sitting with a guy on second and one out. I think what he's referring to is the exact reason that Dunn, Howard, and a multitude of other HR hitters will never be near the player that Pujols is. Pujols makes sure to put the ball in play. Striking out is not OK most of the time, especially in the fore mentions scenario. Part of what Ryno is saying, is that the HR hitters in his day were for the most part "baseball players", not just HR hitters. Dawson, Schmidt, Canseco (I know), Bonds, Griffey, Evans, etc., these guys were all around players, not just one dimensional strike out artists. If Nolan Ryan pitched now, he might strike out 6k batters. I don't have the table memorized, and I don't have either book here, but I'm almost positive your run expectancy goes down from a runner on second and no outs to a runner on third and one out. That would mean intentionally giving yourself up to move a runner over is a bad thing. If it just happens, ok, but they (the old timey guys like Sandberg) talk about doing things like that on purpose to help the team. In reality, things like that cause you to score fewer runs, which in turn, hurts the team. Agreed, it does go down, but guess what's even lower... a runner on second and one out after Mark Reynolds just struck out because he's incapable of making contact on a regular basis. Guess what makes it go higher. 2 runs scored because Mark Reynolds hit a HR, because he wasn't busy worrying about putting the ball in play at the expense of actually making good contact.

Evidence that Sammy is universally considered a jerk? Cause I like and respect him, and I think Hendry's a jerk. I don't get the Sammy love around here. Even when he was crushing, he was a self-centered, egotistical ass when he wasn't blowing kisses to the camera. Are folks just too young to remember Dawson? And I wouldn't call Hendry a jerk. Grossly incompetent, but I've never read any reports that he mistreats players or anyone else or has anything but the best interests of the team in mind. Hawk may have been a great guy off the field, but he strikes me the same as every other baseball player. He's one of my favorite Cubs growing up (as was Sandberg, who was the biggest jerk of any athlete I've ever met). Sosa isn't much different than Dawson, imo. Almost all of them have huge egos. When Dawson went nuts due to a botched call by an umpire throwing a full bat rack on the field and inciting the crowd to throw [expletive] on the field, he was just showing passion for the game, and showing that he cared. When Zambrano went nuts due to a botched call by an umpire, whipping a ball to the bleachers, he's a lunatic.

Poor Memphis, Poor Cal, why can't the NCAA just leave them alone

Less Tranny, more Bob Brenly

Love the starters, not thrilled with the depth

I'd let him go in a heartbeat if someone claimed him. He usually looks like he's barely trying. Think he's gone full Roger Dorn. Gives every tough ground ball that ole' bs. Good god, I would pay a lot of money if people could no longer use Bull Durham or Major League as the basis for their inane complaints. Million dollar arm, ten cent head IMO. MEAT!!!

Iowa Cubs in 2008. That wasn't really your question though.

LALALALALALLALALALA I'M NOT LISTENING