3/18/2004 09:12:00 AM by Rob

A double standard? Why, yes.

OK, Mad Dog got shelled yesterday. I thought to myself: "Self? Should you make tomorrow's post all about wanting to trade Maddux, like you have been doing for Clement?"

Of course the answer is no, for about a million good reasons, a few of which I'll list here: 1) Maddux has earned the right to fuck up during spring training, Clement hasn't; 2) Clement still has trade value, Maddux doesn't; 3) Maddux is here two years, maybe three years, tops, but Clement is a possible logjam for the development of some of our other arms; 4) Maddux, whether he wants to admit it or not, is a defacto pitching coach, while Clement is just a poster child for the Gillette Mach3.

Sitting here in the gray damp gloom of an Illinois late winter, it is hard to imagine the sunshine and warmth of Arizona right now. I'm sitting herre in the knowledge that in three weeks or so, these guys, these mega-million dollar arms, the only hopes we have ever had of winning a pennant, have to go risk their bodies by pitching in this shit. If this were summer, it would only be logical and proper to expect that Maddux, Prior, Clement, etc. would be able to go outside, into the warm sticky humidity, and stretch themselves out well, and work on correcting their flaws, without fear of shredding tight muscles in the numbing cold we're feeling now.

IN other words, it just doesn't seem like baseball season yet. So I sit and worry about other things, like the inevitable shocking upset of Illinois in the NCAAs by a second-rate state school from Paducah whose best players can't keep their hands offa da bong. I also worry about whether it is a good idea or not that our state is going to send a guy to the Senate whose name sounds like an African battleground (Reuters reports hundreds of casulties in bloody infighting in the jungles near Barack Obama) and what its going to be like next year with a Democrat president AND Congress?

I don't expect that we were going to win every spring training game. Let delusional mopes like Ned Yost get their willies that way. I guess I'd just feel a lot better if Prior was taking HIS turn in the rotation, too.

It's just hard to imagine a man with an achilles problem feeling better, when mine has been aching for days here in the wet.

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