NEWSLETTER
Few articles require no introduction, and indeed – where ridiculous enough – no fisking.
To wit:
Beginning next week and playing out all summer long, the only relevant baseball team in New Gotham is at 35th and Shields. Yes, for the first time in decades, this town belongs to the White Sox.
Stop right here — I already know what you’re thinking. I’m insane. And not just a little bit, but Heath Ledger’s Joker insane.
Your first argument will be the attendance at Wrigley compared to The Cell. So let’s start there.
Showing up to games year after year, no matter what the product on the field gives you back, is a learned behavior — sort of like rats in a maze searching for cheese. The rat learns the maze, learns where the cheese is placed and eventually goes to it without thought, even when the cheese is taken away. The rat doesn’t know anything else.
But the cheese trick is now going on 103 years old, and that maze crumbles whenever a high wind hits the North Side.
Even rats can only be kicked around for so long before they’ve had enough.
Cubbie fans have had enough. …
The problem with the Cubs is too many what-ifs: If Kosuke Fukudome can put a full season together. If Starlin Castro can avoid a sophomore slump. If Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano can play as if they’re interested. If Zambrano can start hugging Gatorade coolers rather than slaying them.
It doesn’t help the Cubs that the National League Central isn’t the punch line it was a few seasons ago, with Cincinnati young and good, St. Louis looking to rebound and Milwaukee adding ace Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum to its starting rotation.
It’s hard to get excited about a team that showed such little life in 2010. In the past, the Cubs were a story even when they were bad. Now, they are bordering on irrelevant, even in the city they once owned. Chicago Sun-Times.
In case you’re wondering – or are unable to find flaws in the seamless logic above – the reason the White Sox do not suffer the same fate of obsolescence is primarily because the White Sox MIGHT be good IF healthy and the Twins MIGHT not be good. Yup. That’s it.
Oh, and because the White Sox might win their third AL Central title in seven years. Quick: if the Cubs win the NL Central this year, that will be their third since 2007; how many years is that? I was never very good at math.
