Magnetic Curses

I don't agree with that. You are basically saying the Bears need a short, quick WR. I personally like the big bodies. Wish they used their size better. But there aren't a lot of Steve Smith, Santana Moss type WRs. I think it is a different style of WR, they're out there. I like Santana's younger brother as far as being a potential smaller quick type WR. Bigger bodies like Gage are great, if you know how to use them. Moose knows how to use his body and great route running, players like Berrian and Bradley have great speed, but lack quickness. I want a WR with quickness. Ok, I see what you are saying. If Bobby Wade could catch, or run routes, he would have been a good guy in the WR corps. I wanted Bradley's OU teammate in the draft (can't remember his name now). He fit the description you are speaking of. mark clayton.

i could play for the lakota nation. wait, a second, they probably don't have a team anymore.

i guess we can call off the olympics, too.

In some ways this is similar to the 1984 Post Season, the young Bears were embarssed in the NFC Championship by the 49'ers. They learned from that and we all know what happened the next season. I'm not saying the 2006 Bears will be as good as the 1985 Bears but, I believe they'll be superior to the 2005 Bears. i'm unconvinced that the bears aren't cursed at this point. doesn't seem that they can win a playoff game. i'll believe it when i see it, although i feel that bears can be supremely talented. in the late 80's, the bears were more than a defensive match for any other team around, yet only won a handful of playoff games. call it a playoff curse.

i think the cards are the favorites until they display why they shouldn't be. i also think that the cubs are behind the brewers, and, depending on clemens, the astros. and they deserve to be until THEY display why they shouldn't be.

you mean "thread", then.

why would we want more squeeze plays? i tell you that he could have won more games by playing guys with a better chance of not making outs.

the marlins were terrible base stealers in 2003, dead last in stolen base efficiency in the NL with .67%. they were arguably the worst baserunners in the majors that season. did they have speed? yes. did they waste it by running into so many outs? yes. no, they won in the regular season with very good starting pitching. they won in the playoffs because their bats got hot and beckett pitched out of his mind.

there are several ways to win. pitching is probably the #1 factor. but putting speed and defense on the same plane is just innaccurate. getting on base is much more important than speed or defense. you can't simply win by being fast, nor can you win by having a good defense. defense and speed are nice compliments to the 2 most important factors: pitching and the ability to make fewer outs than anyone else, but they're more peripheral. speed and defense are important in basketball and football, but don't confuse baseball with either of those two sports.

by the way, john fox needs to stop it with the dramatics on the sidleine, it was getting on my nerves. act like a head coach, not a freaking drunken fan.

okay, i take a few positives away from this game. it's a game like this that is the reason rex was starting at the end of the year. he can lead a team to victory, even if the defense is faltering, which it did. we'll start next year geared up for dominance and if rex can stay healthy, he'll have the big game experience that we need. as for the negatives, terrible coaching job by lovie and rivera. they made no adjustments at all, they simply let carolina do whatever that they wanted. it appeared like the bears were giving the panthers roughly 1-2 looks all game. you cannot win without strategy, even the best defensive players will fail when the coaching is lacking. granted, the field was terrible, and i'll remind goony that i stated that the bears would be in trouble if the field was bad.

We feel that it was largely a factor of timely hitting, we just weren't executing in key situations. Walks are nice, but they are not something you go up there looking to do. You have to be aggressive, we preach being aggressive at the plate and if you look at last year's world series you'll see two teams that got there with situational hitting and aggressive at bats, not a lot of walks. As far as plate discipline, we feel that the acquisition of one of the premier leadoff hitters in the game will go a long way toward fixing whatever problem there may have been in that area. bravo, we have a winner!

Here's a question that I would ask, someone give me their best Jim Hendry answer. "Jim, the Cubs were the best hitting team in the NL last season but were 9th in runs scored, do you think that this fact is in any way attributable to the team being dead last in the league in walks taken? If so, why did you not focus more of your attention on improving the team's plate discipline this offseason?

Yeah, I'm not envisioning anything be addressed that I want to be addressed. It's not like you can sit down and have a back and forth conversation where you can more or less call them out on their BS. ideally you would get about 4 or 5 of us to go together and stand in line armed with an original question and 4 follow ups. that way they couldn't dodge it. sounds like a good idea for next year. I would get together this year and do it with some of the guys who are going, but I can't get my hands on a pass. my brother had two, but his fiance, who doesn't know anything about the cubs, insisted on using the other pass, what a freaking waste.

Yeah, I'm not envisioning anything be addressed that I want to be addressed. It's not like you can sit down and have a back and forth conversation where you can more or less call them out on their BS. ideally you would get about 4 or 5 of us to go together and stand in line armed with an original question and 4 follow ups. that way they couldn't dodge it. sounds like a good idea for next year.

i'm just envisioning a bunch of people getting up there and asking dusty why he doesn't bunt, hit-and-run, and "shake things up" more. "could everyone who has a question related to why the cubs don't play more small ball sit down, please?" that would probably make the line a lot smaller.

please ask OBP-related questions Bruce.

How can you hate that which you do not know? i don't know jack bauer, i don't want to know anything about jack bauer, jack bauer is dead to me.

You don't deserve to watch 24. Jack Bauer disagrees. Cannot wait for 24. Hope the game ends quickly so I can see Jack kill lots of people and thwart terrorist attempts only to learn there's a bigger one lying ahead. i hate jack bauer, i don't know anything about jack bauer, i don't want to hear anything about jack bauer, can we please stop discussing jack bauer?

he wouldn't have been bad at all.

Why? They are virtually the SAME player. So what makes Tavarez better then Pierre? (and don't say the age) ------------------------ And the O's trading for Lidge in the proposed Tejada deal, would have made NO SENSE at all. The O's would be battling the DRays for last place in the East, thus Lidge would hve been pretty much useless for a team that would have very save opportunities. So that deal with Houston made no sense at all. i must agree. as a fan of neither, i must say that tavares is a good little AAA hitter.

welcome, cary! i was excited to see that you had signed up. good stuff, man.

If you know the door shut, then the door is shut and you move on. I don't see the problem. I guess fans would have been happier if he made a public display of 'Giles desire' just to please them, but Hendry is too much of a straight shooter for that kind of stuff. Hendry was quote was, "I'm not getting into a bidding war with NY and St. Louis." If he is a straight shooter he would have said. I spoke to Brian and he not interested." Giles never publically stated he wanted to stay in SD, to my knowledge. Perhaps BBB can enlighten us all. the NY/STL quote would lead one to believe that he believed Giles to be available, doesn't it?

So Bruce Miles saying Hendry didn't look into Giles means Hendry didn't look into Giles. But Giles saying he never wanted to leave San Diego doesn't mean anything. Him saying he didn't want to leave the West Coast clearly didn't mean anything either. Giles turning down the more lucrative offers you guys toss around in favor of SD doesn't mean anything either because if the Cubs did it, everything would change. Did Bruce Miles also tell you that no other team in baseball tried for him and no other team in baseball topped 3/30? Because apparently that's what happened, right? Apparently it was a big free-for-all where every team had a good chance of landing Giles then, coincidentally, he ended up in San Diego afterall. So the contracts he turned down from elsewhere would have been accepted if the Cubs offered them, and you're positive they were not offered because Bruce Miles said so. So, Bruce Miles saying something is the be-all and end-all. Giles or his agent commenting on Giles means nothing. I see. I really don't understand why some people behave as if Giles was this big secret that you're privy to but Hendry and every other GM not with the Padres was clueless to. Yeah, I get the context of "anything is possible and you can't say for sure it wasn't possible!" It's cute. I prefer reality where people make stubborn decisions. But I'm not going to have yet another "Brian Giles totally would have come to the Cubs if we just put our heads and hearts to it!" debate. He didn't. You say Bruce Miles said the Cubs never tried. Well, I have someone who told me that Giles had zero interest in playing for the Cubs and any involvement Hendry would have played to would have been moot because Giles wouldn't have come here. I'll go with that since it's backed with he and his agent's comments and what actually happened - Giles turning down bigger offers to stay in SD. But sorry to interrupt, continue pretending there was ever a chance of Giles coming here. woah, settle down a bit. didn't mean to offend you. 1. Bruce Miles said hendry never so much as made a call to ask. I'll believe him. 2. Giles said that san diego was his first choice after signing a new deal. what should he say? "i wanted to leave, but nobody wanted me?" that's ridiculous. 3. find one pre-signing quote from giles or his agent indicating he wasn't listening to other offers, please. 4. again, there is a difference between san diego being his first choice with a willingness to give them a home town discount, and a steadfast refusal to entertain the idea of leaving for more money. but please, continue your nonsensical ravings.

Will there ever be a day when people stop pretending like Giles was available to us? Or any of the top OBP guys fans covet? This offseason provided minimal opportunity to improve the team in FA or by trade without giving up Prior, Zambrano, or Pie. And somehow the Cubs brass were supposed to sign the players who weren't leaving their current teams, or trade for these studs without giving up equal value. The Cubs were actually hurt by the fact that their only real trading chips were simply too good for the Cubs to trade. There wasn't a tier between exceptional talent and respectable talent to trade from. The expectations were overblown from the start. Hendry could have done better than Jacque Jones, Glendon Rusch, and Neifi Perez. Otherwise, he did a solid job improving the team. this team scored the ninth most runs in the NL last season and had the best AVG. why do you think that is? there were plenty of options fro him to upgrade this team's plate discipline and he DID NOT. slight upgrade in CF, status quo in RF, rookies in LF and SS, Neifi still hanging around. bullpen upgraded. not a good team this year either.