10/20/2003 11:06:00 AM by Rob

After further review, it still hurts

I feel just as miserable now as I did Tuesday. Flipping channels and running into the World Series doesn't help. Having countless "year in review" highlight packages on all the local channels doesn't help, either. Whose bright idea is this? It's like having your kid run over by a car, your neighbor happened to be outside with his camcorder, and you're forced to watch it over and over again at some court hearing. Who enjoys having to relive the pain over and over? Yes, it's nice we hit so many home runs, but we all know how the movie ends, and it's not a happy ending.

People from all aspects of my life have been sending me condolences. I guess I am proud to be regarded as a Cub fan, especially one who deeply cares. As Stew so succintly put it in the Coven, I bash because I care.

All we have now is the wait for the postseason to end, so we can start to find out how McFail and Hendry are going to flesh out next year's team. So far, we know that Alou had a player option, which he unsurprisingly invoked. So we have him next year. I still wonder, since Choi has not shown he is ready for prime time, what life would be like if Alou played first base next year? We will get a reasonably healthy Corey, and we can re-sign Lofton. We now have our 1-2 punch for the future, and the left half of the outfield will be well-covered, which helps ERA's and other such pitching stats.

If I were the King, I would start with a blank whiteboard, draw a baseball diamond, write "Ramirez" in the left hand corner, and try to fit the best names in the other seven places on the chart. That of course includes the Big Swollen, and as always, please continue to say your novenas that the Marlins win the World Series due to some inability of Karim Garcia to perform, then Steingrabber all of a sudden has the incurable craving to sign Sammy Sosa to a $20M annual deal in his latest attempt to monopolize baseball.

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