Soul

You said it man. At one point MacPhail said "Firing Dusty is the furthest thing from Hendry's mind." That's a paraphrase, but it's what he said. Christ Almighty. If your GM isn't even thinking about the possibility he has the wrong manager right now, then there's absolutely no doubt you've got the WRONG GM!

You guessed it: http://www.artistdirect.com/Images/Sources/AMGPORTRAITS/music/portrait200/drp100/p165/p16556j26g5.jpg Hah, nice.

Just raise her to be a Yankees fan like everyone else. At least you know she won't have to go through this crap all the time.

So, who is really in charge of the Cubs? No seriously. Nobody really believes Andy has control......right?

Oh my God here we go with the Astros crap again. Give me a freaking break.

MacPhail: all that matters is the pitching you develop. Position player development doesn't matter (paraphrase, but that's what he meant).

This is it. Here's the disconnect. MacPhail clearly all out stating there is no emphasis on position players.

Talks about getting back to how they played in April. Absolute bunk. April was the aberration, Andy boy. What you're seeing right now is the real team, not the other way around.

Yeah, if you read between the lines it definitely sounds like Kap wasn't all too thrilled with the outcome.

The interview was taped. Nice. I'll bet that was another board room decision from the Trib :roll:

no, but setting record attendance #'s with a 70 win team isn't incentive to go out of their way to win either. Until the ticket money drys up, we get token effort I don't think they're naive enough to think that near-capacity attendance will continue. And, in fact, it hasn't this season. They're only averaging 95.4% of capacity so far. They've only been over 3 million for two seasons and will be again this year only because of the increased capacity. They didn't even break 2.7 in 2002. There isn't much of a reason to believe that attendance won't suffer if this keeps up. If that happens, the Cubs will be losing a significant amount of potential revenue. i hope they do So do I. Not sure we'll see much decrease this year though. People already have their trips planned.

Who is accepting low standards? Hendry isn't accepting low standards, either. He just has no idea what he's doing and actually believes he's buidling a winner. Standards are too low if anything other than a Championship is acceptable. Hendry may have convinced himself he's building a winner, but he's put himself in the sweepstakes for better players than what we have. He just settles for less and the Trib, being the board room faceless owners that they are, don't allow him to spend whatever it takes. We could build from the minors and save alot of money; that's an alternate route to spending a ton of cash. Other teams have done it. But Hendry has built a farm system of crap with no emphasis on fundamentals, no emphasis on OBP. It's terrible. Those are low standards. Takes alot of work to build a winning franchise. Ours has never shown---and I mean NEVER shown----the gumption to do the damn difficult work and the long hours and the digging in the dirt that it would take to turn this thing around, either from the FA perspective, or the development perspective. Those are low standards. Where is the teaching? Where is the commitment to acquiring the best, no matter the cost? Where is the accountability? Don't hand me the payroll figures, either. I'm so sick of that argument. Trib bloats it's payroll on junk players so it can claim it wants to win. Bull-pucky. They care like a millionaire cares when he buys his 15th Mercedes. Some may think they're going to live forever so they can handle a few more years of terrible baseball in the hopes that it works out. I did this in the '80s. I'm too old now. Seriously, I've bled Cubbie blue for 40+ years. I want to see a Champion before I die. I watched my Dad die without ever having seen one just last year. I'm sick of this nonsense. Everyone has a clever argument why this stuff is all going to work out, or it isn't as bad as it seems. Meanwhile, we continue to tank over & over. Enough! I want some accountability. Who among us would have a job with this kind of performance?

I'll take the Jones contract if I can show Pierre the door in turn for a real center fielder, and someone to platoon with Murton in LF. Pierre must go. Preferrably today. Yes, I would call up Pie---as long as Clines and Sarge get a nice long vacation; the kind with a one-way ticket out of town. I need to see the end of Neifi. It's like a man who just had surgery for lung cancer, and the doctor says "you must quit smoking or you will die." That's Neifi. We must be rid of him or we'll die. Wood must go. He will never be a workhorse starter again, and everyone on the planet knows it. Prior gets one more chance to prove he will carry the load. Yes, you heard me, one more chance or Prior must go. Sorry, but this Irish tap-dance routine with pitchers hitting the D/L before spring training even begins must stop. Prior and Wood are worse than Rusch and Williams----because Prior and Wood are the REASON Rusch and Williams must trot to the mound and give up massive runs. I'm sick of Gooz. He's either a prime prospect or a bust. You don't get to languish in the minors for a damn decade and still be called a good prospect. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but Gooz gets one more callup. If he pulls the crap he did last time, then bye. Pitching: Williamson, yep. Eyre, yep. Howry, yep. Dempster, still yep. Blanco must go. At some point the defensive skills can't outweigh bad offense. Blanco is well past that point. Minor leagues: we need a coaching clean-house. Those jokers haven't developed a position player of real substance since Mark Grace. The players they bring us are most often unable to discern the strikezone, and have terrible fundamentals all around. Enough of this crap. When will someone see this and make some changes? We are a minor-league catastrophe position-player wise. Worst ever.

Welcome to the boards, Jim Hendry!

The only acceptable rock bottom for a winner is anything less than a championship. If that sounds ridiculous to you, then you just hit on why we are a perennial loser, while other teams make runs at World Series titles. We have been lulled into accepting low standards. We take the scraps from winners and pray for a miracle, while others are implementing strategies designed to produce champions.

Go for the Gusto. Hire Piniella.

Jason Dubois turned into Justin Berg, a high A pitcher with a 2-3 record and a 4.40 ERA Jody Gerut and Matt Lawton were just middlemen in that whole process. I don't know how any of that can be a good thing. It can't, especially considering the minor leagues are now pretty much drained and it has yielded what is likely a 95 loss ballclub. Hendry's a vampire; he's sucked all the blood out of this franchise top to bottom. The ARam/Lofton trade doesn't excuse the cavalcade of crap he's foisted on us ever since.

Of course the Cubs will win this game, and likely two of three. Anything to get our hopes up for a moment and then... smack! down again. Except at this point, the best thing that could happen is for us to continue losing, and losing badly.

It's too bad MacPhail is such a dullard he didn't see Hendry starting to choke on his mission last year, when many of us on this very board were seeing the cracks in the armor. We saw it, but MacPhail couldn't. Hmmmmm......strange that unpaid fans can see what multi-million dollar executives cannot. Instead he signed him to an extension, which has this entire franchise trapped in a corner like an animal. Except unlike many animals who are cornered, this one has no fight... Terrible situation. This will go on for awhile. I hope we're prepared to see the blue "L" flag flying, because that's what it is going to be for a good long while. ...and once again Cub fans are left with that "punched in the gut" feeling. May 25th, wow. Didn't take long for this season to tank.

Cuban would bring an all-consuming desire to win that doesn't exist with the Tribune. Is it motivated by a vain desire to be worshipped? You bet. So freaking what? Like he's the first owner to be full of himself. Hah. I'd love to see him here. Although, to be fair, all of this was sparked by an off-the-cuff remark Cuban made on a radio show one day. There isn't anything serious that points to Cuban buying the Cubs. Nothing I'm aware of, anyway. A few comments made to Tony Kornheiser or whoever doesn't mean much.

states simply. 3-3 is a whole lot better then 0-6. I see improvement. It might be small but I see it. Well----they did have a great comeback win in a hostile ballpark yesterday. Sure it was sparked by a Uribe error, but the bats still needed to take advantage afterwards and they did. That's definitely something to hang your hat on going into this week. Let's see what happens in Miami.

Good to see Hill own up to his comments. Sure, he has a right to say them. We all have the right to say whatever we wish. But it wasn't a good idea for him to inject himself into that situation, especially when it was a clean play and everyone knows it, and Barrett was already trying to own up to his mistake, calling it a clean play. Hill showed some character. Good for him.

Barrett's is appropriate. Love the guy, but what he did was dead wrong. Not so sure about Mabry though---? Anderson should get some games.

I definitely agree he's annoying as hell. Still though, if I'm a rook with an 0-6 record, I'm not giving the likes of Ozzie any ammunition on the eve of being sent down. I hope Hill can recover from it. I'll bet he slept very little last night---and he didn't strike me as a guy with the thickest of skins.

HAHAHHAAHHA Defending a teammate = headcase. Greg Maddux when he beaned a guy in retaliation his rookie year to stand up for a teammate = crazy headcase. Shoulda traded him for a 2B. He's a headcase because he says stuff like he pitches like Sandy Koufax before he even threw a major league pitch. Then he backs it up with one of the worst starts to a major league career in history. If you think we're watching a young Koufax, I apologize to you. Personally, I don't think he is or ever will be near that good, but that's just my opinion. Koufax? This guy might not ever make it back to the major leagues. He really said that? That's insulting to baseball fans everywhere.