I really honestly expected more from this team. You can never expect a title, but I did expect more. Thanks for 162 great regular season games. Reed Johnson’s diving catch, coming back from 8 down against the Rockies, the 4 game sweep of the Brewers, my personal favorite the come from behind grand slam by Aramis Ramirez, and of course Carlos Zambrano’s no-hitter.

See you in April.

AC 00 61 98. Eamus Catuli.

That young man was also a talented ski jumper, and he wanted to represent his country (Bias Note: also my country) in the 2006 Winter Olympics®¹. This is where the problem begins.

You see, in order to ski jump at the level of international competition, one needs equipment. Suits, skis, time in a facility set up for ski jumping, and I’m sure plenty of other things that I have no idea what they are. The standard practice is for a company to stand up and donate the money and materials necessary in exchange for minor promotional considerations. This is no big deal. Unless you’re the NCAA.

You see, they decided that taking that money and materials constituted a breach of their ethics, whatever they are (they seem to apply to players more than coaches, administrators or schools). So they forbade him from playing in his senior season. He had the choice of going to the olympics or playing football. He chose the olympics.

Having taken a year off, he was drafted by the Eagles and is currently sitting out this year because of an injury. We wish young Jeremy Bloom well.

Now, where’s the beef, you ask? Let me tell you another story.

A story about a young man who grew up in Valparaiso IN. He grew up playing both baseball and football and was heavily recruited to play at Notre Dame, where he continued to play baseball and football. Finally, in June he entered the major league baseball amateur draft, where he was selected by the Chicago Cubs and offered a back-loaded contract guaranteeing about $1M and worth up to over $7M if he continues to play baseball.

He then returned to Notre Dame to play football this year and enter the NFL draft in 2007.

Wait a second.

Doesn’t that violate the NCAA’s precious eligibility rule?

If Jeff Samardzija can take a $1M from the Cubs, why can’t Jeremy Bloom represent his country in the Olympics®¹?

1 – The Olympics and the ugly olympic logo are trademarks of the IOC, just as big and nasty and corrupt an organization as the NCAA.

That BLOWS.

I really hope this doesn’t turn into a bad excuse to let Neifi play every day. Here’s the lineup I’d like to see everyday until DLee comes back.

1. Juan Pierre, CF
2. Jerry Hairston, Jr, 2B
3. Todd Walker 1B
4. Aramis Ramirez, 3B
5. Michael Barrett, C
6. Jacque Jones, RF
7. Matt Murton, LF
8. Ronny Cedeño, SS
9. pitcher

My deepest fear is that Neifi Perez ends up seeing 350 ABs this season because of this.

One of the greatest things ever is the Lanham Baseball Database. It’s a database of all baseball statistics since 1871, suitable for random SQL queries. Not quite pitch by pitch, but season by season. Note that retrosheet has made their boxscore database for all games since 1971 available, at least in limited fashion, so you can do a day by day database, which Baseball Musings has done. One can only imagine what sort of amazing data we’ll be able to get in 2071.

As an example of the kind of fun you can have, here’s a query to figure out the most recent world series win, loss and appearance for every team in the league:

SELECT
teams.franchid,
MAX(winyear) AS lastwin,
MAX(loseyear) AS lastloss,
MAX(COALESCE(winyear, loseyear)) as lastappearance
FROM teams
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT a.yearid AS winyear,
null as loseyear,
franchid
FROM seriespost a
JOIN teams b
ON (a.yearid = b.yearid AND
a.teamidwinner = b.teamid AND
a.lgidwinner = b.lgid AND a.round = 'WS')
UNION SELECT null AS winyear,
a.yearid AS loseyear,
franchid
FROM seriespost a JOIN
teams b ON (
a.yearid = b.yearid AND
a.teamidloser = b.teamid AND
a.lgidloser = b.lgid AND
a.round = 'WS')) years on (teams.franchid = years.franchid)
WHERE teams.yearid = 2004
GROUP BY teams.franchid
ORDER BY lastappearance desc;


And here’s the output:

(30 rows)

Note that the database doesn’t yet have 2005 data. But you get the picture.

Bloody Cubs. I’ve completely written them off, because I should, because they’re awful, and they go and sweep the suddenly fading Marlins to end the All-Star break on a high note.

However, I won’t be happy with this team until Macias is gone and a kid from the farm system is up on his place. I don’t even care who. Dusty needs his dice taken away.

Alternatively, you could fire Dusty. That would be fine with me too.

Thanks.

Some would see these as completely unrelated facts. One fellow Cubs fan went so far as to tell me I should raise him a Yankees fan. (Side bar: That’s not going to happen. As I tucked him into bed last night with a Cubs blanket, he mentioned to me that he hates the Yankees. That’s my boy.)

However, I’m at a bit of a quandry. Four year olds sometimes have a hard time getting beyond the one favorite player position. Last year, that was Sammy. This year, obviously, it’s not. Though Theo keeps asking me what happened, and I’ve had to tell him The Story Of Sammy And How Eventually He Got Traded at least a half dozen times. [Abridged version. No mention of how Dusty is a terrible manager, for example.] Anyway, here’s my dilemna. It needs to be a position player; someone who he will see play pretty much any time we go to a game. Although, he does know Prior and Wood by now. I had been trying out “Go Nomar!” with him, but obviously that’s scrapped. Jerry Hairston Jr. is a bit of a mouthful. I’m not quite ready to embrace DuBois.

So tonight, in the 8th inning, as I watched the game in the bedroom and we roughhoused on the bed, I paused for a second and said, “hey Theo, GO NEIFI!”

He said “Go Neifi!”

Neifi hit the next pitch into the right field bleachers.

Congratulations Mr. Perez, you’re the new Mr. Cub.

Certain naysayers think this means I’ll be sure to see a loss, but that’s ok, I’m a Cubs fan.

Update: Today’s game rained out. Doubleheader at noon tomorrow. I win.