9/23/2005 09:12:00 AM by Rob

There's gonna be an Apocalypse...

Just not in the part of town we all thought it would take place in

Oh..my..God!

This is turning out to be WAY better than I could have dreamed. The entire Sux ship is listing and sinking like a rock. Ozzie Montana is talking retirement, A.J. Peeholeski is rippin' on everyone, Kenny Williams is publicly upset...so imagine what things are like behind closed doors. He's probably called everyone from Ozzie to Greg Walker to Juan Urine "pussies" and "cun*s" and "faggots"...

You just know Carl Everett is stomping around the clubhouse, incoherently muttering stuff about "flat earth" and "no dinosaurs", and looking for young black children to beat. Hawk probably has DJ held at gunpoint somewhere, for no other reason than that he thought it was the right thing to do.

All this, along with improved Bears, Hawks, and Bulls teams, and pretty much us Cub fans can look forward to a relatively shit-free winter. Not that we deserve it, for rooting for a team like this, run by management like the management we have, where all we have to look forward to at this date is a) whether or not Matt Murton, a Carrot Top-lookalike, is going to get to play, and b) whether Greg Maddux can add to a completely arbitrarily-derived streak.

Don't get me wrong, I love Mad Dog with every fiber of my being, including my pee pee. Along with Carlos the Z, he has been our most consistent pitcher the past two years, and I don't mind the rotation being juggled to get him one more start because that gives us a better chance to win one more game. And it certainly IS an unprecedented achievement, the 15 wins over the past 17 years, maybe 18...

...but just like Mark Grace's "most hits of the 90's", isn't this an achievement of "sustained goodness" rather than "greatness"? 15 wins is a good year, not a great year. Greg is a Great pitcher, who has had some Great years. In some ways, this 'streak' is actually selling him short. It reminds me of another Cub call up of the mid-80s, B-12 Raffy. Doesn't he have some streak of, like, 13 years of 30+ homers, which nobody has ever done? Does that make him the all-time homer champ? Does that make him a Great home-run hitter? Nah, it demonstrates sustained 'goodness'. The Hall of Fame of Really, Really Good. The Almost Great.

Greg Maddux will be remembered, in the end, as Great, the guy with four Cy Youngs, the guy who posted a two year stretch with an ERA under 2 in a time when offense was at an all-time high. He will be remembered for his 300+ wins, his 3,000 whiffs with under 1,000 walks. He can come or go as he pleases. He is above the law at this point. If Sammy Sosa was granted such privileges, he'd have every Cubs home game moved near his home in Miami. But Greg just wants to be one of the guys. He's Great.

Speaking of Great, Big Z versus Fat Roger on Saturday. For a Cubs team out of the picture in late September, this is as good of a matchup as you could hope for.

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