Soul

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. I thought Omar said it was his call all the way, and ownership said the same. This was from blurbs I heard on the radio though, and I'm too lazy to look it up. I don't know, soul. Hard to believe it's Minaya's call to have done it this way. I mean...would you voluntarily fly clear across the country at the drop of a hat at the start of the road trip, meet with your manager after a game in the middle of the night to fire him, then take a nap in then fly back to NY the next day? This is dysfunctional thinking. It has Wilpon written all over it. I'm just going by what the man said. I don't really know what actually went on behind the scenes. I know it's gullible, but I generally try to take people at their word until they show me that they can't be trusted to tell the truth. Then.........things change ;)

Sure ya can! It's just really hard to do quickly, and probably much more painful. I was never all that impressed with Randolph either.

The Cubs played a little sloppy last night, they didn't deserve to win. However, if I had to blame one person it would be Reed. He had his head up his own ass three times 1) trying to stretch the single (worked) 3) stealing third (didn't work) 4) bunting on that turf (didn't work). There's a reason why Tampa has the fewest sac bunts in baseball and it ain't b/c they're managed by an Earl Weaver clone with a lot of big hitters. I don't understand why you're complaining about him stretching that single into a double considering that it worked, but whatever. As for the bunt in the 9th, it was a great idea. If Longoria doesn't make a perfect play on that ball, the game would've been tied. Unfortunately, he did make a perfect play. Nothing wrong with dropping down a bunt there. Yesterday I drove backwards down the highway, it worked so I'm going to try it today too. Whatever works man'. I love Len but he's dead wrong. It wasn't a perfect play it was a routine play and Johnson was thrown out by 15 feet. Johnson should know better than to bunt on a billiard green. Like I said, there's a reason why Tampa doesn't bunt. 15 feet? Boy that's not much of an exaggeration or anything. I'm watching the replay right now on ESPN and as the 1B is gathering the ball, Johnson's left foot is planted and he's making his final step to the bag with his right. So unless Reed has a 15 foot stride, you're off by about 10-12 feet. The firstbaseman was standing on the bag with the ball in his hand well before Reed reached 1st. Probably 3-5 paces. Not only was he out by a very wide margin, but they clearly didn't have to make a perfect play to get the out. it was a horrible throw and he was still out by several steps. Defending that bunt is absurd. It was a horrible decision whose execution was made all the more difficult by the playing surface. People blindly applaud being aggressive, "pressuring the defense" or trying to make things happen, but that was a straight up idiotic move by Reed Johnson. Then maybe we need a "Reed Johnson, what the hell are you doing?" thread.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball. I'm guessing that this wasn't Omar's call. Bad execution but for the right reasons though. I thought Omar said it was his call all the way, and ownership said the same. This was from blurbs I heard on the radio though, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Agreed. I believe the Cubs will leave TB with 2 wins. I believe so as well, the Cubs took their best shot-love the approach to Kazmir made him work, I can only imagine how ugly it would have been had he been facing one of Dusty' Cub teams-and they barely scraped out a win. Might've been a no hitter under Dusty.

Except he did bunt it well, Percival was coming of an energizing strikeout, and it took a ridiculous play on both the throw (a diving barehander) and the scoop(hit him in the chest) for them to win it. People really need to sit down and think about it or actually see the play. Have you ever been to an infield practice? Do you know how often that barehanded scoop is practiced as the final play of IF before each IF'er heads towards the dugout? Do you know that Longoria is already one of the best defensive 3B in the game? Did you know that ball was bunted too hard and too close to the mound? The play that saved it was the scoop by Aybar rather than the play by Longoria as most 3B are capable of making that play espec. one as good Evan. If Johnson was an above avg. runner he probably beats that out. It's harder to make that bunt die in the infield on turf too. I dunno, I thought it wasn't a bad idea but it didn't work out. Johnson also sucks against righties. I don't know how I really feel about it. I'll bet Aybar only makes that scoop maybe 5 or 6 times out of 10 though. He's the backup 1B.

Talk about spin. http://www.savethefamegame.com/ Hahahahahahahahaha Yeah. Mother Nature trashing the game = Cool. Lou playing minor leaguers = OH TO HELL WITH THE CUBS!!

I suppose it would be too soon to expect it to be with the Iowa Cubbies around June 28th - 29th.

That and he went to a team that had been crappy which I beleive Ray didn't. And KG didn't play great in the finals but did his most important job. Rebound and play D. Kobe on the other hand was pretty bad especially the last three games. Yeah, the Kobe/MJ thing is done and over. He wasn't good at all this series. According to Wood Kobe is MJ right now. Kobe is clearly not made of the same stuff MJ was. Micheal took a stranglehold on games when he needed to, while Kobe seemed content to pass the buck. Kobe may well be more talented than Jordan, but he really showed little of what made Jordan great in the finals. Kobe's a great player. Great player. One of the greatest ever. But I question whether we'll ever see another MJ.

It just occurred to me when foreigners think of the image of "the ugly American" -- it's pretty much Hank and his Dad they're thinking about.

If the Cards want to unload him, I'd take a flyer on him. Who knows, maybe after everything clears he can be a mid rotation guy -- maybe a Dempster-type situation or something. I like Carp quite a bit if he's at all healthy. I don't think it's a big surprise he's going through this, given that he basically came to the Cards because of his injury history. It's just becoming a question of how long the Cards want to wait for him to get back, get stretched out again, and get back into a groove. My guess is that will probably be somewhere in mid '09. You might see him earlier, but it will take some time to resemble his old self.

Haha. "The poor play isn't his fault. But uh, I'm firing him anyway at 3am." This is the guy that was once called one of the 5 best GMs in baseball.

Halladay's price will be lower if his ERA is higher. hmmm....

OK Cubs, I can handle you losing to the Rays' best pitcher and all, plus having to go from Toronto to Tampa via Cooperstown for -- let's face it -- NO GOOD REASON. But now you have to win. Can't double up losses down there when they aren't throwing a good pitcher and we are.

interview was awful because it was pointless they really need to learn to not try to do interviews directly after some wins a championship. They had a 3 second part beeped out because he was cussing. Stop doing the on court interviews during celebrations. They also kept putting a camera up close and personal to the Boston bench late and it was picking up the cuss words so every other second the sound would be cut. Who cares? Those scenes capture the real, raw emotion of the moment. Go ahead and bleep it if you have to, but I want to see what winning the championship really means to a player like KG or PP much, much more than I want to see the sanitized interview 2 hours, or 2 days, later.

Hmmm, really? He sounded fine to me. They asked him about his maturity level and he just said "I'm 19, how mature do you want me to be?" I guess I'm not sure how he's supposed to answer that question, either. It's pretty much asking a kid why he's not a man yet. Well.......because the planet hasn't revolved around the Sun enough times yet, I guess.

Just remove ESPN from your program guide for the next month. It's going to be unwatchable. On a positive note, at least this championship kind of puts the East back on the map.

http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/basketball/knicks/blog/Eva-Longoria.jpg :shock: This game is going to rule!

This kid either A. Knows nothing of Cubs Nation or B. Seems to be confusing us with White Sox fans. Doesn't look good when we are referring to ourselves as "Cub Nation" either Couldn't resist. I went over there and looked. I saw plenty "Lou is a loser" threads. Funny, I never even gave the fact that this is a homecoming game for Lou a thought until I saw that.

Wow, way to turn a firing into a nuclear incident Minaya :roll:

Hank is even more whiny than his demon-spawn dad. I admit, I didn't think it was possible. Do away with the DH.

Should be an interesting game. Hopefully Demp is still on his roll and we can try to scratch something out.

Kristian's update following the rained out HOF game is classic: Talk about spin. http://www.savethefamegame.com/

Marmol will turn 26 this year. He's not 20 or 21, and he doesn't need to be protected like he's that young. I don't believe he pitched at all in his life before 2003, when he threw 62 innings at Mesa. He wasn't made a starter until 2004. His career as a pitcher is still very young. Couldn't that argument be spun the other way? Maybe he's less susceptible to injury because he doesn't have years and years of mileage on his arm. Nobody really knows what will happen to Marmol's arm. But if you pitch him at league-high innings (for a reliever) and his arm falls off? You can bet Lou will feel the heat for that, especially if nobody materializes to pick up the slack and we start dropping games because of it.

In this particular case, it seems to me that getting blown out 20-2 was mostly a good study in the stupidity of throwing a pitcher who has elbow pain.