8/18/2003 09:18:00 AM by Rob

Hideo Nomo is good...and we ARE going backwards.

S'truth. I'm going to give Cub management a rare pass on this one, though. Nomo's representatives really put the club over a barrel in 1999 during his brief April-May tryout in frozen Iowa. Management was supposed to determine in three frigid AAA starts whether or not Nomo was worthy of big-league consideration, or whether they should just stick the fork in him, which they did after his lackluster performances. I agreed that he was D-U-N, and nobody was more surprised than I when he worked his way back up from the gutter. Good for him, and good for the fuckhead Dodgers.

Once again, I re-iterate that winning the NL Central this year doesn't mean a festering SHIT to me, because if it occurs, we are just going to get strafed by SF or the Braves.

So, therefore, the acquisition of sausage-wack Randall Simon and the demotion of Hee Seop Choi makes no sense to me. In March, I stated that the goal of the 2003 Cubs ought to be DEVELOPMENT. Prior, Wood, Zambrano, Clement, Cruz, Farnsworth and Angel Guzman on the pitching side. Hill, Kelton, Choi, Patterson on the hitting side. These young men should have been brought up together, like McFail's famous 1987 and 1991 Twins were. I remember that bunch of mopes in 1982. They made today's Tigers look accomplished. Hrbek, Puckett, Gaetti, Brunansky, Steinbach...couldn't get out of each other's way. Five years later, they were living large.

To me, I would have been real excited if we could have not signed or cut loose the Turd, Alfucksucka, Girardi, McStiff, etc. Maybe used Alou, Bellhorn and some of our young pitching prospects to bring in some young rising talents, like Mike Lowell. So, what do we do?

We trade the Turd for TWO older guys. Grud pushes Hill back to the minors, then to Pittsburgh. Karros pushes Choi to the bench, and then to Iowa. Karros is probably someone else's overrated 1B next year, and Choi is going to have no more of a clue than he started this year with. Grud, on the other hand, is probably going to be next year's 36-yr-old second baseman.

We let Bellhorn downgrade himself about three levels, and then essentially, he and Hill become Ramirez and Lofton. OK, Ramirez is allegedly 25, but Lofton is about 60 years old, and Dusty is going to want to keep him next year. So what do we do about Corey, who was on his way to an All-Star berth until he tore his knee up? He will be ready for next year, but is he going to sit the bench in back of 38-yr-old Kenny Lofton?

Randall Simon is here, and he is going to keep Choi off the field next year.

Alou and Sosa get another year older and slower.

Shawn Estes is the worst starter in the bigs, and Cruz is throwing shit around the locker room after another demotion.

Wood is his usual erratic self, and is blaming a weak back this time. When did you get that weak back, Kerry, about a week back? No, says he, when I was 18, when my high school pitching coach had me on a strict 210-pitch count.

Finally, Joe Borowski is saving games from his ass, while Farns labors in anonymity as the world's hardest throwing setup man.

Management is going for it all this year, on the notion that "if we get into the postseason, our starting three will be hard to beat in a short series. Well, they will be hard to score ON, but on the other hand, you have to score yourself to win. So we will finish at the very LATEST on October 10th, and as usual, next year, the fucking bottom will fall out, just like the cardboard box of your old LPs that was sitting on the basement floor, that got all wet a few times and turned to mush, then the thick motherfuckers fall through and smack against your toes, and you fucking scream in pain, and chuck the worthless piece of shit across the basement, then your wife yells at you, because they were HER LP's after all, and besides, you startled the dog and the children all flinched and now everyone is on edge.

Ummmm....never mind. I just have less hope for the future. We have gotten OLDER and more succeptible to decline that we were at the start of this year. We have gone BACKWARDS, yet again, in the latest chapter in the longest book ever written...How To Beat the Statistical Odds and Not Win a Championship in 95 Years.

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