I’ve documented how on the field, the Chicago Cubs are quickly becoming one of the stories in Major League Baseball. This is a team that had been partially stripped for parts by its owner (even though he’s tried to duck that in recent days like the coward he is), who also left the roster high and dry by not providing the still plus-talent with any support. Which is why fans are still treated to ABs by Eric Sogard and starts by Trevor Williams (when he’s not hurt). Despite all that, the Cubs have surged into first place with the third-best record in the National League. As we’ve said, they’re a real live “Major League” team.
But off the field… good christ I struggle to find a more exhausting bunch.
The weekend started with Anthony Rizzo, the team’s unquestioned captain and leader and basically the heartbeat of the whole team, admitting that he was putting his own heartbeat and those of the people around him at risk by not being vaccinated. This was in response to a question about the Cubs being among the dwindling number of teams under the 85 percent threshold of vaccinations to get their protocols dropped, and the admission by both manager and GM they probably wouldn’t get to the threshold because they have just enough dumbasses in the clubhouse.
Rizzo is a cancer survivor, and if there were some complications from that which were keeping him from getting the vaccination, that would be understandable. But Rizzo just spewed a bunch of gobbledygook about “what’s best for his family,” “keeping up to date on the information,” “the doctors have been great,” a host of other horseshit. And no one asked him how it keeps his family safer to be more likely to carry the virus.
That was bad enough, but then Jason Heyward came riding in like his own dipshit cavalry to back up Rizzo after the Cubs swept the Cardinals, generally a reason for all Cubs fans to be drunk for a week (we generally are anyway, but in a happy sense). Again, Heyward is Black and from the South, so if he wanted to cite history of medical racism and experimentation on that community, there wouldn’t be much of an argument.
But instead, Heyward turned to the Whataboutism of the truly fucked in the head by pointing out the fans don’t have to prove vaccinations to be in a fully populated Wrigley (not entirely wrong, but not really an answer to the question asked) and then tried to use his refusal to take a flu shot in September so as not to miss games because of after-effects as a valid excuse.
One, COVID just isn’t the flu, whether it’s Heyward, as it’s far more dangerous. Two, it’s not September, it’s June, and it’s unlikely the Cubs would miss Heyward’s 60 wRC+ for two to three games in the middle of the season.
What anyone should point out to Rizzo or Heyward, or anyone in the organization trying to defend them by pointing to a quickly aging championship pennant as an excuse for anything, is that unless you have a valid medical or historical reason for not getting vaccinated (and even the latter is one that people are going to lengths to work around), it’s selfish or stupid or both to not get the shot. It’s that simple.
The Cubs could be a great story, if they weren’t trying their absolute hardest to ruin it every time they flap their gums.
Ain’t no Jokic
Now that I’ve motherfucked Giannis Antetokounmpo back into being the MVP (with the small aid of every Nets star having a body part fall off of them), I can safely shit on newest MVP Nikola Jokic for thinking he was playing hockey as he pulled the ripcord on the Nuggets’ exit from the playoffs.
Jokic got himself ejected for this brainless foul on Cameron Payne, claiming he wanted to change the course of the game with a hard foul. That’s straight hockey neanderthal bullroar, and really was just born of frustration that the Nuggets spent four games getting their brains turned into Play-Doh by Phoenix. Jokic can hold his head high, it’s the supporting cast that went missing against a team that was that much better after the Nuggets lost Jamal Murray.
Still, Jokic has got to do better than giving in to the helplessness of a lost series and recklessly putting an opponent in danger. Yeah, he didn’t hit Payne all that hard, and maybe he didn’t mean to hit him in the face at all. But he raised the chance of really whacking Payne, and had his aim been off by another inch, it would have been a real problem.
But apparently, second-round exits are contagious around Denver.
Does Westminster test for PEDs?
Now here’s Barry Bonds at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, because...it’s Barry Bonds at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show: