Post Mortem: The 2008 Chicago Cubs

I took awhile before writing this final 2008 baseball blog. The Chicago Cubs had a wonderful regular season. Not since Ryne Sandberg was MVP and Gary Matthews was the 3-hole hitter have the Cubs piled up as many victories. So, it was a shame they bowed out early to a hot Dodgers team.

What probably hurt more was the way they lost 3 straight games. Game 1: Ryan Dempster suddenly can't find the dish. Gives up a granny and the Cubs offense disappeared under the Meadowlands with Jimmy Hoffa. Game 2: A comedy of infield errors led this Cub fan to want drink excessively, start a fight with a 65 year-old Dodger fan geezer and hope Game 3 in La-la would be fa la la la, la la la la terrific. Game 3: No life in this body as the Cubs showed up dead on arrival.

I am not a poor, pitiful Cubs fan.

Sure, I am poor enough that a new Democratic president will have to give me a tax break in order for me survive through the Second Great Depression. Pitiful would be dependent upon whether my income, car options, job prospects, lack of girlfriend or living arrangements deserves such pity. (I think they do.) Cubs fan: We have seen the last 100 years leave us behind in a dusty trail of Texas dust. But I am not a poor, pitiful Cubs fan.

As an original member of the National League, one steeped in an odd ball history of very good play for nearly 34 years (1876-1910), that went through 2nd division droughts like the one between 1946-1966, and have the tagline lovable losers attached to one's franchise woes, ineptitude and managerial stupidity, it almost seems too funny to get an attack from a Ranger fan.

I wrote a piece about Josh Hamilton this season shortly after the Home Run Derby display. I felt that Texas had bargained shop a guy that should have been where I was, in life - and that was likely given his addictions and proclivities before he 'got saved.' But he turned it around. And that impressed.

I don't harbor any delusions about the Cubs or the playoffs. As Billy Beane was quoted (or miquoted): "My shit doesn't work in the playoffs." The Cubs' shit didn't work in the playoffs because they left their shit in the shithouse of 100 seasons of disappointments. I can relate to these Cubs, with all their potential, their dreams and ambitions, only to come up on the very short side of a playoff ass kicking.

But I don't need curses or Bartmans to know that being so close to the brass ring is actually more a kick in the teeth that being a mediocre also-ran team for 3 decades plus that can't find pitching, but digs up the hitters a plenty, is.

No one is promised a shot at the playoffs.

If the wild card was nixed, the Cubs would have played the Los Angeles Angels in the World Series this year. (Using pre-1969 rules.) Of course, many many millions of dollars would have been forfeited under that design, and thus, not in the best interests of baseball. So we have a playoff. We reward team mediocrity by allowing barely .500 teams in the dance as division winners or wildcards undercast in the same role.

The 1998 Cubs benefited from this rule. So did the 2003 Florida Marlins who beat my Cubs and the Yankees to boot. (And they, the Marlins, still can't get fans, a stadium deal or whatever else a South Floridian needs to root for them. Let me live on South Beach and I'll build the goddamn stadium for them.)

But I can't feel pity or sorrow for teams that haven't mastered the new playoff paradigm. I've seen enough baseball to know that it is as much luck as it is skill in building a champion - or at least a playoff bound team. Oakland did it with money that wouldn't buy a 3rd rate action film in Hollywood. Texas had A-Rod, and nobody else. Spent foolishly on pitchers that couldn't get me out.

But that's the past.

We all need to go forward except for those fans still lucky enough to root for their 2008 teams.

Go Tampa Bay!!!

TGIF: Beautiful Things

Just a few beautiful things for the weekend:

Andain-Beautiful Things



Barack Obama's Speech from Denver: Part of his acceptance speech


Paige Butcher Pic (from Supermodels.nl):

The Rolling Stones Satisfaction:

Short selling your readers: Hey I might as well, given Wall Street

I will try to produce more relevant posts in the future. I realize I get too far afield from my main interests, but, it is more interesting to write (and learn while doing it) about a wide array of things.

I choose to be a bit different than the attention-seeking types that have infested the blog world. They have their place. They make their claims to popularity and make a few coins while they are at it. Hey, if I could really turn this into a mint, printing Yuans at a fever pitch, I would. But then I would have to move to the People's Republic. (Not in this lifetime - maybe my next one.)

So whatever you see, or hear, here, it is likely a hodge-podge of thoughts, feelings and concerns. Hey, I can focus on the Chicago Cubs all I like. Or Bush's idiocy. There's plenty of material on both. We got financial markets in a rollcoaster ride - all those SIVs, CDOs, NINJAs are coming back on them hard. A Balance of Payment situation - thanks to all those imports and Nixon and his suspension of a Gold Standard. We got oil and refineries running in weird ways - like 25 cent price jumps in one day!

Darfur gets another year of inadequate defense - because you know, the U.S. doesn't want to take part in any real stoppage of injustice. Middle East...like the Wild, Wild West.

Personally, I'll be 36 in 4 days. And so much the poorer for it. I'm suppose to grow into happiness as I get older, while females get less satisfaction from their old age. Well, I've always been a bit on the margins of anything...

If I could solve anything in my own life, the world would beckon. I could fix a local government or two. Maybe get people to stop putting up with democrats and republicans (notice I didn't capitalize them.) Vote some real people with real ideas.

But, I guess Obama has his work cut out for him, assuming that latent racism of America doesn't kick in. And believe me, I don't think being President will be a fun ride between 2009-2013.

I'll write more next week. Later.

2008 Election: Everybody (or maybe just 3) want to rule the world

Unless you've been hiding out under a metamorphic or igneous, you've probably noticed that 3 people are in the final hunt for the most powerful position in these American lands. If you have been hiding out, say for 60 years, go back to your cave with your sanity, because really, I mean really, you don't want to embrace any culture developed since that time. (Not to say those were the good ol' days...but you are not gonna like it...here...and now. Rock & Roll isn't exactly a smooth cultural transition. Nor is TV/VCR/IPod/Gotta blow up my cell phone hypervisual display gonna appeal to you, the lost person, from Wake Island or Bikini atoll.)

For those non-rock people, this election cycle has seen plenty of fire on the Democrats side.

Hillary found her voice once she got peeled in Iowa. (But lost it down in South Carolina. She doesn't speak southern...ya dig.)

Barack's voice was clear and resonating to young people and disenchanted people, to go along with whatever social demographic Hillary didn't poll well with.

McCain fought as only a Navy man could through the Scopes trial that is the Republican nomination process. Winning out over a band of misfit toys for this party, he now is gone a courtin' anyone with money, attachment to ideological similarities to the Republican base and even his current commander-in-chief. So principled, until he's just about 15,000,000 or so heartbeats away from the office.

Meanwhile, the Democrats can't get 'er done. Hillary realizes that February 5, her personal groundhog day, was not to be a royal crowning of her candidacy, but the beginning of a clock- cleaning adventure. (She clean out her clock, releasing Mark Penn from his campaign strategy duties.)

Don't... stop...thinkin' about...Barack likely played through Hill's head all night long... all night long. All Night. Getting smart, she ditched her ed-u-makation, got down to bid-ness, and tossed back a few down at the the Pigly Wigly. (see below video taken in Crown Point, Indiana, a stones throw from my porch...)

Barack's candidacy took a turn for the worse with Jeremiah Wright preachin' and a proselytizing about everything from 9/11 to AIDS coming via government experiments in Africa. Oh boy. Can't you give a brotha a break, rev? Am I running for President, or, are you?
After denouncing and repudiating his pastor's comments, some of them made back when I was still optimistic about a normal life, Barack could only add to his elite black man baggage, that grew up without a dad, by saying people were bitter and used faith and guns to get through it.

Stereotypes do not become you Barack. Now you lost most of those people between Hillbillyville East and Pottersville West, those white (working class) voters Hillary panders to, while you try to educate them, and enumerate the ways the Republicans screwed them over since 2001 (and years prior.) But they just go back to those loud guns, shooting pool (which you should have done first, not bowling, fire that political surrogate) and drinking on Saturday, praying on Sunday life they always have led. YEEEE!!!! HAWWW!!!!!

Now Hillary's strategy has changed. (Not much.)

Screw the math. Forget the results of 48 elections or so...just hang on to Michigan and Florida and that political clout your hubby still has in the party. He's not electable you know, something might happen, in June, or whenever.... Ferraro likes me, obsesses over me, sees what I see...yah, that's the Democratic ticket. So what if I lose an entire Demographic (unless I ask Barack to be my VP), I can beat that tired septuagenarian McCain. (He still thinks he's in a cage in Viet-fuckin'-nam.)

McCain wakes up periodically to espouse whatever keeps Kudlow & Co. happy (and the neocons too.)

Attention Barack: close the deal, Mr. President. It's that fuckin' simple. Put that old warhorse in her (or his) place. Stop trying to sell me on your CV or foreign policy bona fides. Take them to the presidential woodshed. Hell, you got a current President sending love letters from Israel, guising them in that neocon babble that Scott McClellan barely understood. (Not so smart, but he can get a book deal. Fairness be not thy name.) You got 3 SOBs trying to take you down, hello, that means you really are pissing up the wrong political tree - but you got a bunch of slacker, 20 somethings, educated no less, that admire you. You got almost an entire race supporting you. You got white dudes like me actually fucking caring...You got Obama girl...too.

It's ashame Everybody Wants to Rule The World...

A Super Fat Tuesday: Picking A Candidate before Lent???

I am not a practicing Catholic, so don't go thinking I have "found Jesus." (I didn't know he was missing...)

With the super pre-election process coming to a frothy end, at least on the Republican side, I guess I'll step out on the plank and pick a candidate: Barack Obama.

I believe all the candidates have "their diseases" not revealed to their wives or husbands, in the case of Hillary. But I also think it is not sound to just ignore it, or not "change it", or otherwise, not vote for it.

I think Barack Obama can and does stand for a change in the policies that have decidedly led the United States into a pit of delusion, mediocrity and rabid preachiness at the cost of its soul.

Among other things, I believe he can see the Environment Issues in a whole new light, if directed well. He comes from a state that uses Nuclear Power heavily, which, even give a skeptics point of view, is more ecologically friendly than coal, oil or other means devised currently by man. (And he did not rule it out in the Nevada debate, unlike Senator Edwards who took the easy route on Yucca Mountain.)

A book about this subject, written by a former, anti-Nuclear proponent is currently in my possession. Power to Save the World:The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens tells of the fallacies spread about Nuclear Power Industry and Radiation Scares that are overblown. The extremely efficient nature of the beast - and why even the Sierra Club, once a supporter, became anti-nuclear and spread misinformation.

But back to Barack.

He has more than "energy" that I like. I think he could be great president. He seems geniune about his feelings toward people. And his gravitas can make up for inexperience that Hillary & McCain will attack like a pit bill.

In one interview on BET, he actually spoke logically about the criminal justice system and the propensity to put a disproportionate number of African-Americans & economically-poor people behind bars. And more to the point, the inability to educate or improve their lot before they are released again. (His website buttresses this idea.)

Iraq. He wasn't at the front of the line or willing to let his political party's weakness deter him from opposing the war from day one. Having those instincts, as we have faithfully come to realize, are apart of becoming a good President. If due diligence had been done by the alphabet Agencies, Congress, "The Media", we might all be more secure today than we are under the Bush administration.

Barack Obama: "I made a different judgment. I thought our priority had to be finishing the fight in Afghanistan. I spoke out against what I called "a rash war' in
Iraq. I worried about, ‘an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined
costs, and undetermined consequences.’ The full accounting of those costs and
consequences will only be known to history. But the picture is beginning to come
into focus.”

Foreign Policy. Diplomacy. This is a word that can mean many things, and in the case of Bush, nothing at all. I do believe you have to talk to people, friend or fiend. If anything as Barack's message states:

"Not talking doesn't make us look tough – it makes us look arrogant, it denies
us opportunities to make progress, and it makes it harder for America to rally
international support for our leadership. On challenges ranging from terrorism
to disease, nuclear weapons to climate change, we cannot make progress unless we
can draw on strong international support."

In all, I think Barack is a way to the future. Not without flaws, or policy deficiencies, but at least a vision I can get behind.

(Note: He wouldn't want my support if solely on the basis of my personal flaws, background and shortcomings. But I hope that does not deter him in receiving my endorsement, such as it is.)

Political Satire Songs: Don't..Stop..thinking about Barack

In thinking about what songs would be representative (in some way) of these candidates, I came up with these:

John McCain - Hard Sun by Eddie Vedder (cover)

John Edwards - "Same Old Song and Dance" -Aerosmith

Hillary Clinton - Don't Cry For Me Argentina - MaDonna

Mitt Romney - "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred

Mike Huckabee - "Psalm 69" by Ministry

Barack Obama Walking On The Moon - The Police

I didn't clarify the references. But in Mr. Obama's case, the fact he is compared to Kennedy whose goal was to land on the moon, and the lyric, "Giant steps are what you take, " seems to be fitting for the candidancy of Obama.

Rudy Giuliani- "Too Late for Love" by Def Leppard

Ron Paul - Supermodel (You better work) by RuPaul.