UMFan83

Rose got player of the game honors and took home some silver cup thingie from Tiffany for his performance

The 2006-2007 Lions did end up putting more points each season than any lions team in the decade, but I feel like that team also set the opponents up for many points as well. In 2007 Kitna threw 20 INTs and fumbled the ball 17 times (not sure how many of those were lost). Likely because the lack of O-line causing Kitna to rush things and either throw into traffic or not protect the ball well enough. That said, Kitna had always had some level of fumble and INT issues. I just worry that we might have an unholy trinity of a QB that is prone to throwing INTs, an offensive system that can lead to many sacks/INTs and an offensive line that even in a normal offense would allow the D to get to/hurry the QB too often.

I guessed they released the box art on the 5 disc Blackhawks Stanely Cup Special edition box set: Front: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51MpHoM%2B%2BgL._SL500_AA300_.jpg Back: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61u-TxIcQbL._AA300_.jpg In case you can't read the back, this is what each disc will contain: Disc 1: Western Conference Quarterfinal, Game 5. April 24, 2010. Kane's shorthander ties it with 13.6 seconds left, and Hossa's goal 4:07 into overtime wins it. Disc 2: Stanley Cup Final, Game 1. May 29, 2010. Kopecky's third-period tally is decisive in a wild, 6-5 Hawks win. Disc 3: Stanley Cup Final, Game 2. May 31, 2010. Antti Niemi's 32 saves and goals :28 apart by Hossa and Ben Eager give Chicago a 2-0 series lead. Disc 4: Stanley Cup Final, Game 5. June 6, 2010. Hawks reclaim series lead with first-period explosion and clutch goals galore. Disc 5: Stanley Cup Final, Game 6. June 8, 2010 (wasn't this June 9?). Kane scores in OT and the Chicago Blackhawks are Stanley Cup champions. Slightly disapointing IMO. I would have loved to have seen at least partial clips from the other 2 series against Vancouver and San Jose, 2 series that I enjoyed immensely, more than the Nashville series at least. As enjoyable and as necessary as the SCF's were, those 2 series where we came in either underdogs or very slight favorites were as much rewarding as the SCF wins (except game 6). Doesn't say anything about special features or bonus videos but maybe that will change.

Girardi could stay in NY and win probably a couple more WS titles and eventually be revered like Torre was. Or he could come to the Cubs, probably not win a WS title, lose all his hair, get booed constantly when the team is worse than .500 and likely destroy his reputation as a manager. I don't know why he'd leave NY.

For a second there i thought he was trying to help the cubs quest towards the record.

Z would have ruined his anger management training if Marmol finished blowing that.

I don't know if I could ever handle Marmol being the closer on a competitive Cubs team.

Got them right where he wants them. Unless he doesn't.

Damn, I thought we somehow acquired John Maine. Probably would be getting the same results but at least it would be interesting.

I almost feel like the team USA people try to increase the level of difficulty by purposely lacking in certain areas. Either that or they decided that they'd rather have someone like Andre Iguodala than Kyle Korver.

I remember the good old days on NSBB when you could start a thread saying "Adam Dunn went 1-4 with a HR, BB and 3K" and the thread would have 40 pages of 99.95% pro-Adam Dunn talk within 2 hours.

Cubs will sign Dunn, NSBB will have an orgasm, casual Cubs fans will eventually rail on him for his striking out and horrible defense. Of course we've been predicting that would happen if we signed Dunn for about 5 years.

This was an Onion article right? Right?

The overreaction is justified even though it is an overreaction. I may just be rephrasing what others have said, but Williams is one of the biggest X factors, if not the biggest, for the Bears success this season. If he is the player we hoped he would be and we were told he would be in the offseason, then the Bears line looks a lot better as a whole and if Cutler is protected and the run blocking is better then Martz's offense might actually work out and be successful. But if he's as bad as he was Saturday then we're in big trouble. It is only the preseason so I have to tell myself to not take anything from it (maybe Williams was trying a new technique and struggled in game action with it). Either way, giving up 3.5 sacks to a mediocre pass rusher in one half is absolutely terrible. And then when you consider that the Tribune claimed that 2 of those (I think) were when only 3 guys were rushing, that's just unbelievably bad. But there's still time and I'm not making any major judgements until the curtains go up.

lol Harden left the game with a no-no, presumably due to pitch count. It's still going in 7th.

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.

Agreed. I just spend 20 minutes on Baseball Reference trying to figure out how we did not win the WC that year. It came down to 2 things: LaTroy Hawkins and bad luck. We played 5 games below our pythag and Houston played 3 above theirs. Prior had 16 freaking Ks against the Reds and lost and the obvious Victor Diaz game. Those 2 games just took the wind out of their sails and lost a ton. On September 24th, the Cubs were 87-66 and the Astros were 85-69. The Cubs went 2-7 to finish the season and the Astros went 7-1. The Cubs lost games 3-4, 2-3, 3-4, 1-2, and 4-5 - that's five of the seven losses by one run, where they never scored more than 4. You could also see it coming though. Immediately before that 2-7 stretch, we had a 13-3 stretch...the type of consistent winning where everyone thought "see this is a Dusty team, just like last year this team is catching fire in September". The thing was...at the start of that stretch our offense was booming....scored 11,5,7,3,13,5,12,5. And then at the end of that streak our offense started tp struggle mightly. That series against the Pirates we scored 12 runs and swept them. The first game of the Mets series was really a struggle...it took us 10 innings to score our 2nd run of the night against the hapless Mets pitching staff. But still we won and were 21 games over .500 for the first time since like 1989 or something. At that point I thought I understood the cycle of our feast and famine offense and thought 'this is great, we are in our famine cycle and still winning, now our offense will break out and lead us into the playoffs'. But the famine cycle did not let up and Victor Diaz happened. I don't want to review what happened after that because we all know.

I remember Sammy coming within inches of hitting a grand slam in one of those losses to the Reds at Wrigley the last game of the season. Instead of a 4-1 lead, I believe we lost 4-3 in extras.

Pittsburgh but yeah. The final score of that game was 1-0 The Cubs were an incredibly streaky offensive team that had a crapload of power but not enough patience. If they had more patience, there's no doubt they would have hit more consistently and probably made the playoffs. Heck if the season went 170 games instead of 162 they probably make the playoffs seeing as the Cubs were due to go on an offensive surge, and Houston as a whole had to start cooling off eventually. The 2004 Cubs had so many quality hitters but their batting line was .268/.328/.458. A .328 OBP for a near 90 win team is pathetic. To compare the 2008 Cubs had a line of .278/.354/.443. Lower SLG but much much better OBP. They scored 100 more runs than 2004 roughly. And the offense was much more consistent than 2004, even though the finally memory of the 08 team will be the offense no showing in the playoffs.

I have to agree. His .328/.437/.737/1.174 line in 2001 screams "I only care about HRs"

The entire article is up now. It's a long but good read: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/September-2010/Sammy-Sosa-Cubs-Threw-Me-into-the-FIre/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

I found this to be an excellent resource to rate your team: http://subscribers.footballguys.com/rate-my-team/form.php Basically you enter in your team, enter in the specifics of your league (#of teams, scoring, #starters per pos) and then submit it and instantly it comes up with a detailed analysis of your team. It breaks down each position and how you drafted relative to projections, tells you where you are weak and strong, gives you suggestions for how to improve team, breaks down your schedule and byes, and calculates the odds of making the playoffs. Great stuff. For example here is the first part of mine that I just did: Crazy, it does not at all read like it's computer generated.

Rose scores the last 4 points in a 1 point Team USA win :)

You know I'd always heard how bad Braves fans are, but I've seen more Braves fans around Chicago this weekend than any other opposing team's fans besides the Cardinals and Brewers.

WTF did Trammell do? Wow