The Maestro’s Late Summer Rants

Yes, I know I’ve been away for too long, people…time to get back in blogging shape!!! Here are the sports stories from the last few weeks that have The Maestro fuming…

Rick Pitino, The Arrogant One: Dude, stop talking about the salad bar tryst you had with the woman you paid off to get an abortion. Stop saying everything is a lie except what comes from you. Maybe I’m a cynic, but the ‘concrete’ statement she made to the police rings true. Notice the resemblance between ‘Don’ Pitino and Al Pacino circa “The Godfather, Part II”??? Me too…

Brett Favre, The Excuse Maker: The yearly retirement waffling is bad enough, Wrangler Man. Now you’ve got to give us a list of physical ailments that you can use as built-in excuses for poor performance once the regular season begins? Cracked ribs, torn rotator cuff, creaky elbow, small balls…whatever. Get over it and play. Urlacher & Briggs are waitin’ for ya, bud…

Michael Vick, The Persecuted Man: Okay, I agree with the basic tenet that every person makes mistakes and deserves a second chance. I’ll even give Mike a pass on the Grey Goose incident (although I concur with Tony Dungy - you can’t do that). However, let’s not play the race card on this one, people. The NAACP has no place staging rallies for Vick outside of Eagles games just because PETA may be there to protest as well. This debacle is yet another example of how the NAACP (along with the ACLU and most labor unions) always goes too far in ‘protecting their own’…

Donovan McNabb, He Who Wants To Have His Cake & Eat It Too: Speaking of Vick, you’ve gotta love the ‘throat slash’ McNabb used on his o-coordinator to essentially end Mike’s first preseason appearance with Philly. News flash, Donovan - you can’t lobby for your team to pick up a guy (another QB, no less) and then decide six plays into his first game that ‘there’s no rhythm’. That excuse may work with Vanilla Ice, but not here…

Milton Bradley, The OTHER Persecuted Man: No, Milton - Cubs fans aren’t booing because you’re black. They’re giving you the catcall treatment because you’re petulant, you’ve underperformed, and you’re just a nasty person. When Tim McCarver (among others) says the Cubs should eat the $20 mil left on your deal & cut you after the season, maybe the man in the mirror is the one you should be chastising…

Mark Martin, The Gambler: You’re not old enough to use senility as an excuse, bud. When you have a chance to lock down a Chase spot (as you did at Michigan a few weeks back), play it safe! If your crew chief wants to gamble on fuel, tell him to kiss your wrinkled ass and pull into the pits for a top-off!!!

Lou Holtz & Beano Cook, The Two Stooges: Notre Dame in the BCS Championship? Really? We all know Holtz is a blatant homer, but enough is enough. Great coach, terrible analyst. And Beano? How the hell is he still allowed in front of a television camera? His turkey waddle scares my kid, and his ‘Ron Powlus will win multiple Heisman Trophies’ prediction scarred me for life…

Well, now I feel better. Hey, be sure to check out “Sports Frenzy 2.0” on YouTube for the latest vitriol from the rest of the crew. After all, The Maestro simply conducts…The Conquistador, The Elder Statesman, Huggy Bear, The Cleveland Kid, and Mr. 300 are the REALLY angry ones!!!

Trade Deadline Ramifications 2009

Okay, the ’09 MLB trade deadline has come and gone...who won and who lost?

Nah, that’s too simple - with the economics of baseball being in worse shape than the American stock market, we should filter what we’ve seen over the last few weeks into categories. Welcome to “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”, ‘Sports Frenzy’ style!!!

Moving Players Like Freakin’ Chess Pieces: Must be nice to be a Red Sox fan. Um, we need a first baseman...let’s trade for Adam LaRoche! A few days pass. Ummm, can’t we do better than LaRoche? Let’s trade LaRoche for Casey Kotchman PLUS get Victor Martinez to boot!!! There’s the ticket...

Fire Sale!!!: See ‘Pirates, Pittsburgh’ & ‘Indians, Cleveland’. Also see ‘Disgraceful’ and ‘Pathetic’...

Waiting In The Weeds Like A Viper: The Cardinals didn’t do much last year to improve themselves, and St. Louis fans wondered aloud if they were being hosed like the Pirates faithful...their team opens a new ballpark and then abruptly stops trying to excel on the field as the cash registers overflow. Not so in 2009. Mark DeRosa, Julio Lugo, and Matt Holliday have joined Ryan Ludwick as Albert Pujols’ posse, and the Phillies have started sweating a bit...

How Do You Spell Relief???: The Cubs and Dodgers decided to bolster their bullpens and stick with the lumber they already had. John Grabow comes to The Windy City from Pittsburgh, and George Sherrill goes from the East Coast (Baltimore) to the West Coast (L.A.). Now if Lou Piniella can just get Kevin Gregg straightened out again...

Aces High: The Phillies already had Hamels, the White Sox already had Buehrle. Both pitchers helped lead their teams to World Series championships within the last five years. Now, Cole has Cliff Lee to watch his back & ‘Mr. Perfect Game’ will have Jake Peavy (by late August) to ride shotgun for him...

What does it all mean? In the end, we’re still looking at the haves vs. the have-nots. We’ll probably see the Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, and Cubs (wild card) in the NL & the Red Sox, White Sox, Angels, and Yankees (wild card) in the AL. Sure, the postseason will be entertaining, but people will still drift en masse to pro football come September. Why? Because hope springs eternal everywhere in Roger Goodell’s world...the NFL makes it much more realistic for a team to stage a turnaround or comeback than the flawed financial structure of Major League Baseball does...

Just ask fans of the Pirates, Indians, Nationals, A’s, Royals, Orioles, and Blue Jays...

Lou Tries To Gets His Cajones Back From Soriano & Hendry...

Call it a copycat move (See Francona/Ortiz, Manuel/Rollins, Leyland/Mags) but Lou Piniella finally made an attempt to get his balls back. Cubs fans (The Maestro included) don’t really care at the end of the day about contracts. We don’t give a rat’s ass that Alfonso Soriano is making roughly $18 million a year. We want the best players possible in the lineup every stinkin’ day...

So when Piniella sat Soriano for two games in favor of Sam Fuld earlier this week, it marked a baby step forward for the Cubs manager. The Cubs won both games & had a vastly improved energy level. Then Lou caved on Friday (7/3/09) and put Soriano back at the top of the starting lineup. The result? A hitless game with a couple RISP stranded. So much for the time off clearing Soriano’s head...

Now, on Independence Day 2009, Piniella has pushed Soriano down to the sixth spot in the batting order. Regardless of the outcome (which looks to be an ugly Chicago loss, due more to an ineffective Rich Harden than anything else), Sweet Lou is trying to push buttons. And that’s a good thing, because Piniella was beginning to resemble a Build-A-Bear a few weeks ago...

With Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome, and Milton Bradley, Lou is stuck with Jim Hendry’s playthings. However, young players like Fuld, Jake Fox, and Micah Hoffpauir should give Lou options...namely, to sit the overpriced Hendry mistakes and play the potential bargain-basement gems. A manager should not have to kiss the GM’s hindquarters. The GM gets the pieces and the manager should then be able to use them how he sees fit. In the case of the Cubs, if that means benching the ‘Little Three’ (as I so eloquently call them), so be it...

After all, what big-league manager wouldn’t want $40 million worth of pinch-hitting prowess available for those late-inning heroics???

The Summer of the Maestro’s Discontent

Image Courtesy Baseball Hall of Fame
Wow. It wasn’t enough that the Orlando Magic teased me like Megan Fox in all of her release party “Transformers” pics, but now the hammer has officially fallen on this humble blogger’s head. My second favorite Cub has been busted...Sammy Sosa used PEDs, according to the New York Times. Thank the heavens & Harry Carey that I never renounced my ultimate devotion to Ryno...hey, put the needle down, Sandberg!!!

Anywho, I’m not naïve (except when it comes to the universally-shared middle-age male fallacy that I could still be attractive to 98% of women...Megan Fox included...with just a sly turn of phase and a manly toss of my thinning hair) but I still wanted to hold out hope that the “I don’t speak English” crap from the Congressional hearings a few years back was the act of a stupid man, not a cheating man (hey, there’s a country song in there somewhere)...

So now Sosa joins McGwire, Palmeiro, Tejada, Giambi, A-Rod, and all the rest of the charlatans of baseball who duped us for over a decade. I could go into how New York Yankee rogues seem to get a lighter guilt trip from the media than those from the Midwest (“Pretty Boy” Alex vs. Big “I’m Not Here To Talk About The Past” Mac in a handicap match!), but what’s the point? They’re all basically liars and scum. Unfortunately, I’m convinced that a few will find a way into the Hall of Fame (here’s betting that Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez somehow get a bust after being busted). Not Slammin’ Sammy, though. His homer hop & impish grin will fade into obscurity like mood rings & Vanilla Ice.

This I swear - if Jay Cutler breaks his leg in training camp, I’m switching from sports to macramé...or macaroni...or Macarena...

Should’ve Left Well Enough Alone…

All true Cubs fans want to win. The drunk college kids in the bleachers who pretend to be Cubbie supporters will drink fourteen Old Styles whether the score is 12-0 or 2-1, but those of us who bleed blue & red just want this Goat/Bartman/Garvey thing to go away and want the Northsiders to WIN A FREAKIN’ WORLD SERIES ALREADY!!!

Ahem…anyway, it is just after 5:00 PM EST and I have witnessed yet another disappointing loss (in this case, to the Twins 2-0, where the mighty Cubs offense could muster only 5 hits and zero runs) in what is rapidly turning into Season of Discontent #101. Who’s to blame? I can’t call Lou out. He can only do so much with what he’s given. Therefore and ergo, I blame the giver…

AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
Mr. Jim Hendry. I supported you through the brilliant trade for Randall Simon, Aramis Ramirez, and Kenny Lofton years ago. I thought you were a genius for the Alfonso Soriano signing (oops…my bad). Harden, DeRosa, Reed Johnson…all strokes of genius. Now, I look back at the last year & a half and I wonder if you didn’t sustain a severe blow to the head right before you fell in love with Kosuke Fukudome…

Hell, I can even forgive the Fukudome deal. You took a shot, right? Hey, you wouldn’t be the first GM to get hosed by a ‘can’t miss’ prospect from the Far East. But some of the acts you have perpetrated recently (especially over the last eight months) make me wonder if a rubber room in the press box at Wrigley needs to be constructed just for you.

First, let’s chat about the man who played you like a board game, Milton Bradley. I screamed and yelled for you to take a hard look at Bobby Abreu…a cheaper option with more speed and a hitter still capable of a solid .300/20/80 year…but NOOOOOOOO. You ignored Bradley’s temperament and lack of consistent time in the field and threw money at him. The result as of June 13, 2009? A .226 batting average, an abysmal .380 slugging percentage, and a whopping 16 RBI. Wow – two more years of this and Cub fans will be playing Life and Chutes & Ladders instead of attending games at Wrigley Field…

Second, shipping Mark DeRosa out of town simply because he was going into the last year of his contract was Gump-like, without the unintended & naïve positive twist result. Every time his erstwhile replacement, Aaron Miles, takes the field, I cringe. If Tony LaRussa dumped the guy, why would you think he’d be a stud for us?!?! Wait…maybe that’s the ticket. It’s sabotage! Those stinkin’ Cardinals!!!

Third, and finally, Aaron Heilman, savior of the bullpen…enough said.

If things keep going like this in ’09, you may need to reserve a seat (fully equipped with buckled restraints, of course) for me in that ultra-cool safe room they’re gonna build you, buddy…