Soul

What the hell does he need to talk to him now for? He got the first strike. WTF? Let's play ball.

If you decided to grab dinner or check the news, you're pretty shocked right now. That's an 8 run comeback. You don't need to clean your glasses :)

I will say this for the guy: when he gets ahold of one, it *REALLY* goes. Yeah!

God I love how they take some time to show the babes. Of all the things in Cubdom, they always got that one right.

I love that Kaplan says something and people repeat it as if it matters. What the hell are people listening to him for?

LOL, that shot of Marmol right there sums up the season perfectly.

It's only a few months. We can deal with it until the fall. I'm still concerned he might be back next year though...

Guess what? You're not getting that until October regardless of when Hendry is fired. All of the really attractive options are employed in some capacity, and their employers aren't just going to let Ricketts & Co. come in and woo them in the middle of the season, nor are they obligated to. I suppose the Cubs could fire Hendry and hire some retired relic or unemployed buffoon just to appease people who just want to see something, anything happen, but that would be phenomenally stupid. You fire Hendry now, and you're getting an interim GM, it's as simple as that. Yep. The horror of the situation is, we're stuck. And that's it. Denial. That's how I deal with it. God invented it so you could handle mental trauma like this. Use it. We aren't a bad baseball team. The season may or may not have even started. Hendry isn't the GM. I can neither confirm nor deny Ricketts is the owner...

Marmol continues to just slay people with that slider....when it's right.

Lopez has dealt nicely. Good for him.

The fact that Hendry continues to be able to say stuff as an employee of the Cubs is the real news. Until this changes, we're perpetually under the black cloud of doom.

The generosity of women is truly amazing.

Sounds good. Can you make it happen that way? Because I'm not so sure about Ricketts.

Well it makes me sad about Demetri Mccamey...he's not a bad guy, he just regressed heavily as a player. I dunno, it happens, he has a very odd mindset, and I don't think Weber is blameless in this as well. Jereme Richmond...well yeah he brought this all on himself. I don't recall anyone feeling sorry for me when I didn't hit life's financial lottery. Yeah, I really don't care if the Illini players crapped out in the draft. If you can't make it in the NBA, get a job like everyone else and deal with it.

We've been winning baseball games lately. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I can enjoy it as good as the next guy :)

Damn straight. Got 'em right where we want 'em now.

It's been the best message board I've ever participated in. And that's in spite of the fact that I'm really not of the same profile as the charter users around here, who devote far more time to the study of the game than I do (or ever will). imb's post made a lot of sense to me. I joined around 2004, right after the swirling craziness that was the 2003 season, and the resulting explosion of interest that surrounded the 2004 season. So I'm the poster child for the new influx of people that came with increased interest of the team. ...and I'm probably the poster child for those who have stopped posting regularly now that the team has fallen on--what appears to be--extended hard times. Certainly I was a regular in the game threads, which I pretty much never participate in anymore on any site. I can barely make it through a Cub game on my own these days, much less post anything about it.

Well, I haven't been posting for awhile but here goes anyway: NSBB is a good site. I don't see much difference between what goes on here and what goes on elsewhere. I suppose you could make the argument that NSBB is a little less differentiated from other message boards than it used to be. I'm posting less here now because I'm moving on to other interests right now. It's all about the fact that, for the time being, the Cubs are less interesting to me. Hopefully we'll come out of it in a year or two. Right now though, it's just not a very interesting baseball team.

It's not ridiculous. But it's obvious that once you feel you're right about something, any further arguing with you will simply yield greater and greater degrees of shoutdowns and brow beatings. I don't need that, from you or anyone else. So I'm done. Have a good day.

Couple more games with the Heat and he's going to have nothing else to live for but his hatred of all things Bulls.

Why should you care at all? I've never understood that there is absolutely zero problem in perception with people taking all sorts of powders and pills and supplements in order to get stronger, but when we cross into the arbitrary "steroid" classification, suddenly guys are just popping pills that make them into the Hulk. As if the guys who don't take steroids are doing nothing but calisthenics in order to get stronger or something. It's completely nonsensical. I'm in this camp. Steroid users are damaging their long term health, but beyond that, I just don't care. There is a pharmacological bonanza out there, most of it legal and effective. And for the record, I don't think Bautista is using steroids. If there is a new undetectable stew out there, you'd think Manny would have been using it. It's steroid-era paranoia. I don't care much at all. I don't see how being suspicious of this much of a jump in power means I care if he juiced. There are probably so many guys doing it and getting away with it that it's not really much effect at all if he is or isn't using. I'd care much more if it was a Cub player doing it, because I don't want the unwanted negative crap from others about the only MLB team I actually do care about. But even then, it's not like I sit around worrying about who is or isn't using. It just seemed to me a reasonable possibility, given the history of usage in this sport. It doesn't mean I hate the guy. If he isn't using, then congrats on the mechanics changes. If he is using and doesn't get caught, congrats you got away with it. If he does -- too bad you rolled the dice and lost.

Really? He's kinda gritty and grindy. No, please stop.

Or there's all the obvious changes in his swing and approach at the plate. Unless you somehow think that is PED-enhanced, too. Why does it have to be one or the other? Remember when Sammy Sosa changed his swing in 1998? Remember when he turned into a gigantic monster? Do we really have to take the Soul way of things and be afraid and not trust everything and everyone? It's really frustrating to see people laying out and quoting and linking to the really well done analysis that makes it perfectly clear the huge difference in Bautista's offensive approach prior to the end of 2009 and then afterwards. He started raking at the end of 2009 because he started making obvious changes with his swing and stance. He didn't suddenly balloon up or even get significantly bigger; yet of course you have people leaping to the idea of steroids. It's really disappointingly lazy. Maybe it is lazy. It's been the case way too many times. And there's nothing that says a guy needs to balloon up like Bonds to get extra power from drugs. Not in the face of the ever-evolving world of PEDs. Why should I trust? Why should I continue bashing my head against a brick wall for these guys when they repeatedly go out and do things like juicing up? Not going to happen. You can call it fear if you want. I think that's pretty stupid, but whatever man -- these are the kinds of posts you like to make to rile people up. It's what you do. The fact that there's analysis of a swing change isn't conclusive. Not in the slightest. I read the posts on that, looked at the link. The bottom line is, a guy can do more than one thing at a time.

Well, you know loads more about basketball than I do. But I can't buy this until I actually see it. Everything in my little layman's mind says the Heat would absolutely destroy the Thunder in the Finals.

Or there are new drugs or combinations that evade detection.