chicago-cubs Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
How every MLB team will tank their seasons and break their fans' hearts in 2023
You can all give up the Rogers Hornsby quotes, already. We made it Opening Day, when hope springs eternal for millions of MLB fans across the country, a least for a few days/weeks. We’d all love to believe that our team has as much of a chance of winning the World Series as any other but, realistica...
8 Cy Young winners taking the mound on MLB Opening Day
It’s the most wonderful day of the year for baseball fans. Well, it’s one of them I guess — Opening Day! After the World Baseball Classic, the real fun begins, right Keith Olbermann? All 30 teams will have 161 games to go in the regular season after Thursday, with eight former Cy Young winners throw...
How every MLB division will shake out
Welcome to Opening Day! It was a long, cold winter, but Spring is, at last, officially upon us. Sure, the ivy at Wrigley might be sparse and brown, and your favorite broadcaster might be wearing Gore-Tex for the next few weeks, but baseball is back. As Bart Giamatti once said, “It breaks your heart....
Willson Contreras is a Cardinal, and the Cubs let it happen
The St. Louis Cardinals found their replacement for now-retired catcher Yadier Molina, agreeing to terms with Willson Contreras on a five-year, $87 million deal. After refusing to move Contreras at the trade deadline, or pay him, the last remaining position player from the Chicago Cubs World Series ...
The warm glow of MLB Hot Stove’s warming glow: NL Central
It’s officially the offseason now, as we’ve gotten Scott Boras’s Fozzy Bear-in-the-college-dorm act at the GM Meetings. So let’s keep this record spinning right round and move to the NL Central, which I don’t feel personally about at all....
These 10 modern-day players’ primes were squandered by inept teams
Mike Trout is the tree that falls in the forest every September. He might as well exist in the cold, vacuum of space. If there’s any evidence that sports are raw and unscripted, it’s Trout’s annual storyline. His slow fade from public consciousness as the playoffs creep closer is in stark contrast t...
Revisionist history: Roger Maris Jr. backs Aaron Judge as AL HR king
As Mark McGwire hit his shortest home run of the 1998 season, No. 62, barely over the left-field wall at old Busch Stadium in St. Louis, after the “new” single-season home-run king trotted around first-base and was given a high five by Mark Grace, who would’ve made the rest of the infield look child...
60 is such a round number
It was a number we didn’t even think about when we were kids. Only if you were born in a specific time, where you were an impressionable youth between 1998-2003, would 60 seem reasonable, or even reachable, or something to be expected to happen semi-regularly. It was never even talked about....
Baseball is for lovers
The joke used to be that you were supposed to think of baseball to un-horny yourself. When you needed to prolong proceedings to a length of time that wouldn’t be embarrassing or possibly even to one acceptable to both (or more?) parties. Think of every third baseman in the National League in 1991 an...
What the new MLB schedule could mean for MLB’s future
Yesterday, Major League Baseball released its 2023 schedule. The biggest news to come from the release is that for the first time ever, all 30 teams will play one another in a single season....
The DH could solidify the Dodgers’ transformation into the First Order
The perception of the National League to fans of AL teams is that of inferior baseball, due largely to the (until recently) absence of the designated hitter. This kind of bias happens in other sports, but it’s mostly unproven generalizations like the Western Conference is finesse basketball compared...
They could have at least made 'Hologram Harry' drunk off his ass
Overall, the Field of Dreams game is fine. Perhaps teams should be “flexed” into it during the season, so you don’t end up with two Quad-A rosters in the one regular season game MLB gives the network primetime treatment. Though if you’re trying to showcase baseball in 2022, having two teams that hav...
Are there timelines anymore?
The MLB trade deadline has passed, and for the most part, it was the usual story. It’s not really Haves and Have-nots anymore, because any team can and should be a Have considering the immense wealth every MLB team has even before opening the gates. It’s more Wants and Want-nots. So the Wants, like ...
David Ross completes Cubs’ transformation back to token laughingstock
When the Chicago Cubs hired David Ross as manager, there were only two possible outcomes to his tenure. The first scenario is a return to glory and another ring, which isn’t going to happen this year or next year, or really anytime soon considering the front office has been hocking parts to the rest...
Joe Maddon’s mohawk was a symbol of his slapstick Angels tenure
ESPN baseball reporter Tim Kurkjian’s report on the firing of Joe Maddon included a juicy morsel of information that couldn’t be ignored. According to Kurkjian, Joe Maddon shaved a mohawk into his head in a last ditch effort to awaken his team. However, it was a day late and a dollar short because t...
It’s OK, Matt Swarmer, Chicagoans were too drunk or distracted to remember that
The Chicago Cubs matter insomuch as they give the fine people of the Windy City an excuse to day drink and eat hot dogs. Outside of that one year, this season isn’t that much different from most others. They’re 23-35, 10 games back of the division leading St. Louis Cardinals, and nine games out of t...
It’s all just so pointless
There was a baseball game on the Northside of Chicago last night. I didn’t watch it. I haven’t watched any of them. But Twitter tends to tell me if there’s anything that happens of note with the Cubs. I can’t say I’m not informed. I just don’t have to watch Marquee Network’s high school AV Club leve...
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field has never been to Wrigley Field
Dr. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field has never been to Wrigley Field....
Thanks for allowing us to exhale, Jake
Jake Arrieta announced his retirement yesterday, though the league had basically announced it for him about two years ago. Still, I’ll never forget his run that really started in 2014 and carried through the 2016 World Series....