Magnetic Curses

because he's exactly what this team needs. not many teams can do it without men on base. and this team, last year, didn't have anyone on base, despite hitting very well. people are upset because he virtually bid against himself, signed them for much more than they're worth, and also signed rusch to a ridiculous deal, not even knowing how he'll be used.

that's fantastic logic, don't go after the best players because they're bound to be busts, and the lesser knowns will always turn out to be great. deron williams was a top 50 guy, not a mid major talent, and luther was one of the best athletes of that class--and the first public league player we'd landed in a while. he had a very high-profile high school all-star game in which he threw the ball between his legs, off the backboard and dunked it--he was known, and he was a very good recruit. i must remind you that illinois will, barring a star juco-transfer that i have yet to hear about, have chester frazier starting at point guard next season, and chester will show you just how very very badly we messed up when we lost collins, i can assure you of that. marcus liberty did not "flop" in college, he left a year too soon, but he was definitely not a "flop", nor was shaquille a nobody. that's great. i wouldn't. i'm not looking to win "a couple of games" in the tourney. not even self could mess that team up. chalmers, collins, wright, and rush by themselves could win a title. i prefered the MSU-Kentucky game from the last tourney.

because our organization steers clear of guys who get on base, as a rule. hendry won't sign him because we might win with him, which would make his previous philosophy look worthless. GM's like hendry don't all of the sudden change their "conventional" ways for ways that are proven better, they just go out after guys who "can catch the ball", pitch one inning of relief, bunt, and/or steal bases and call it a day. if we make any trades, they won't be for abreu, who actually steals bases well.

are we interested in anyone besides middle relievers and rafael furcal (who we probably won't even get)? hendry better have some trades working, and they better be for some OBP guys.

I agree with the gist of your argument, but I wouldn't go quite that far. Pitchers do have quite considerable control over the types of batted balls that they allow - groundballs, flyballs, line drives etc. They have enough control over it that, for instance, your money is pretty safe if you bet on Carlos Zambrano having a higher GB/FB ratio that Mark Prior next year, or Glendon Rusch allowing the most line drives, or whatever. and why i predict ryan dempster to have a good year at closer.

there's that double-standard term again. okay, you're right, white people have been just as oppressed as black people here in america, and it's a terrible, terrible travesty that white people have to put up with all of dave chappelle's jokes and negative stereotypes portraying white people as weiners. one might consider it one of the worst crimes in the history of man! Yeah, well all I know is if a white manager had the same comments that Baker did about black people taking the heat/sun better than white he would be fired. The world isn't perfect and like it or not there are double-standards out there as well as racism and prejudice. yeah, well, i'm sure that josh gibson would have forgone the right to say things like that just to play in the major leagues. there are far greater injustices in the world to pay attention to than dusty making some idiotic statement.

he's my CFer in MVP 2005, and a pretty good one, too.

lefties suck, unless you're talking about lefties.

there's that double-standard term again. okay, you're right, white people have been just as oppressed as black people here in america, and it's a terrible, terrible travesty that white people have to put up with all of dave chappelle's jokes and negative stereotypes portraying white people as weiners. one might consider it one of the worst crimes in the history of man!

Playing a brutal non-conference schedule every year will do that to you. It's worked out pretty well for them thus far I'd say. with all due respect, hawaii is not a brutal team.

i'm fully convinced that, despite making the NC game, the illini will never be able to sign a top 10 recruit again. gordon is waiting for the summer (ie waiting until a better offer comes along) and rose is probably a pipe dream. if we get rose and gordon however, the sky will not be falling. though, i thought we'd get scheyer and collins too, but if the illini can't lure talents like that after a season like last one, they'll never be able to. i'm also convicned that - a. no matter how many guards self has in the fold, he will always recruit guards from illinois, and they will always go to kansas, no matter how many bucknell games there are or how many times his teams unerachieve. b. bruce weber is turning illinois into a mid-major. he can't even fill out a recruiting class for crying out loud. this is a guy, when at purdue, who never lost an illinois guy who he wanted. c. matt painter, an unproven coach who rode weber's wave at SIU, is recruiting better at purdue--must be the slicked back hair that players like.

i'd like to believe that hendry has a plan for right field, i'd also like to believe that it's not jacque jones. it's absolutely ridiculous on hendry's part to ignore OBP as a stat when it has come up to bite him in the butt the last two years in a row. oh well, hendry's plan probably contains more reliance on the "conventional wisdom" that dusty embraces: walks clog the bases, fast guys who can't get on base are better than guys with average speed who are always on, defense wins championships, bunting is good--especially when it takes the bat out of the hands of a guy who gets on base a lot, carribean players handle the heat of summer better than your average germanic player, and chemistry is vital to a team's success. instead of stopping the bus, turning it around and heading in a different direction, hendry seems to have gunned the engine. his plan is not to change things, but to overdo what he's been doing all along. doing something different would be admitting he was wrong--and besides, a smart, stat-based approach to the game would mean that gary hughes would be out of a job, and we can't be having that.

I still think the Fish should have gotten more - say, Hanley and Lester. Well yeah, but Ramirez and Sanchez is still a pair of quality prospects. This isn't Ramirez for Hill and Bruback, which is the impression I'm getting reading parts of this thread. An under acheiving can't miss middle infield prospect and a good but not "A+" pitching prospect for a questionable third baseman. (and don't kid yourself, at the time of the trade, Aramis was very questionable. link You're right!! The Marlins are throwing in a frontline pitcher and cash too! The Pie-Rats threw in Kenny Lofton. i wouldn't mention bruback and "A+" in the same sentence.

I like the idea of cuban buying the cubs, don't get me wrong, but no one should expect him to be steinbrenner, either. he'd likely have a higher payroll, but there's no way to tell how much higher. he'd probably have to start from scratch when it comes to broadcasting revenues, both radio and television, which is a ton of cash. he's no idiotic, lottery-winning, slovenly-dressed kook. he won't be willing to take a huge loss, that's for sure. his mere presence isn't going to cause GM's to lose their minds and ship talent to the cubs for nothing, nor are free agents going to wet their pants running to the north side to play for him, he doesn't have a magic wand. cuban is not the end of our problems, there is enough money floating around for the cubs to field a playoff contender next season, we just have to spend wisely. this is an upper managerment problem, not an ownership problem, and if cuban thinks he's a general manager, he'll probably cause more trouble than he alleviates. the best he could do would be to come in, raise payroll slightly, drown gary hughes in his private hot tub, shoot jim hendry through the eye while he gets a backrub, send a fish wrapped in newspaper to dusty (emphasising that he should just stay on his annual father-son fishing trip), and wake andy macphail up to his favorite racehorse's head in bed next to him. Then, hire theo epstein as GM and paul depodesta as assistant GM, have them hire the head baseball coach at glenbard north as manager, tell him to shut up and do what he's told if he knows what's good for him-----and start fresh.

yeah, i'm sold on harris now, he's not just a great hitter but can play a little pass defense too. a steal in the 6th round. that play scared the heck out of me. I had already started my "oh no" scream when he flew in and knocked it away exactly, for me, it started out as a "oh" of pain, but ended up as an "oh" of joy.

unfortunately, i do not have the ability to pick and choose my teams. i was another who was born into it.

yeah, it really killed a lot of the criticism i've had regarding the line. i've stood by alex brown for a long time now, and he's ready to step into the limelight as one of the best DE's in football.

With Prior really? I guess if you anticipate freak injuries that statement would be true. :roll: :roll: yeah, i guess coming back and finishing a season in which a line drive broke your pitching arm qualifies you as a chronic injury risk.

That was a great play. I thought Smith was going to score before Urlacher came in. I think the play of the game may have been Chris Harris pass defended in the endzone. Not only was it a great play, but it looked like it saved a touchdown which could have changed the complexion of the game. Fantastic play. yeah, i'm sold on harris now, he's not just a great hitter but can play a little pass defense too. a steal in the 6th round. that play scared the heck out of me.

i didn't see anyone mention this: the screen to smith in which he burned peanut, did anyone notice who ran smith down from behind? everyone's favorite middle linebacker. it's plays like that that make urlacher who he is--the best MLB in the game. the announcers were saying that smith runs like a 4.2, that's got to put him up there among the fastest guys in football. amazing one-armed tackle on urlacher's part, if he doesn't get him, the game's complexion might have been changed quite a bit.

Mitre, Novoa, Welly, Koronka and JVB are completely unreliable. The pen right now is Dempster, Eyre, Williamson, Wuertz, Ohman. None of which has a history of consistent great pitching in the bullpen. Rusch/Williams are both garbage time relievers or long guys (while both might be starting in the rotation in April). That being said, if Hendry is just going to keep signing marginal relievers, I'd rather he just ignore it and hope things work out (which is essentially what he's already doing) and focus exclusively on the offense. If a good starter emerges, feel free to improvise. agreed. are we supposed to be totally mesmerized by the fact that he threw a ton of money at a free agent? is it supposed to cover up the fact that he's not doing his job? instead of just half-assing it, he's now using his whole ass, which is totally unsettling. i hope he realizes that nobody is impressed with the fact that he overpaid for yet another marginal talent. putting something you found in a sewer in your display case is not wonderful.

on the score: stone: kerry, your mechanics suck, you throw across your body too much, blah blah blah. average cub fan on the street: (monotone, staring straight ahead, glassy-eyed) steve stone knows and sees all. wood is a terrible pitcher because of his mechanics and always has been, why doesn't he strike 20 guys out per game?. i love steve stone, must make him mine. terry boers: i'm outraged by the bears behavior and i will not stop being indignant about it! .................and steve stone is god, kerry wood sucks, ron santo has no legs. stone: the thing about it is, it's just that his mechanics are so terrible and he throws across his body, i've pleaded with him to stop, but, since i've never actually met him, he's not answering my messages. dan bernstein: what's that again, steve? i mean, besides my show being built solely on the premise of ron santo having no legs and us being totally morally outraged by the bears? steve: well, dan, it's his mechanics, he throws across his body, it's very technical stuff, i assure you, only something my massive brain could understand. very very technical jargon, dan, i mean it. terry boers: really? stone: very technical indeed.

"and can catch the ball"? I get the feeling that this is some sort of back-room catch phrase that hendry, baker and the cub coaches decided to bring in fashion over a game of go fish.

very good. i especially like the french silk variety from VI.

they're probably better in the clubhouse, too, as well as hitting in clutch situations. not to mention the fact that they make a lot of contact and are always seemimgly "making things happen on the basepaths". let's not forget their ability to lay down sacrifice bunts or hit the ball the other way when there's a runner at first. anyone who takes this post seriously needs to see me in my office.