Off-base diary Archives

If you're new to LOHO, the Off-Base Diary is new to you. The Off-Base Diary is something we came up with to keep us occupied on off-days when there's no Cubs news to be had. Like today.

First up, it's the return of our old friend, Tom Dickson!

Ah, you guys! It's been so long! And there have been so many new "Will It Blends" in our absence. I forsee months of blending fun before us. Don't breathe that!

Per @SI_JohnHayman, Eric Wedge is headed to Seattle.

Should be fun seeing him and Milty back together again.

It's that time of year again, kids, when baseball and 4 feet of snow are in the air. The madder people get about the snow, the closer we are to baseball season. That means it's time to plan our annual fantasy baseball league(s) as well as our LOHO Meetup/Get-Together.

Judging from the poll on Monday afternoon's diary, it looks increasingly like Saturday, June 19 is the get-together date. This means, when tickets go on sale on February 19, you need to grab yourself a bleacher ticket for that game. Some of us will grab as many as we can for those who can't get through.

There's a movement afoot to add a second rooftop game this season, possibly in April, when there's still a possibility of a blizzard and the prices are cheaper. Skybox on Sheffield has the following dates available for $75--all you can eat and drink:

April 14,15,26,27,28,29, may 18 

If you're interested, send me an email at: leagueofherown (at) gmail (dot) com. We'll need a firm headcount for this one.

Now. . . on to fantasy baseball!

 News that Mark Prior is still intent on making his big comeback ripped the scab off some old wounds this week. As a friend remarked this morning, the biggest flameout in recent baseball history is a hard one to get over, especially with Joe Mauer up there in the Great White North reminding us regularly what we could have had.

There's been a lot of blame tossed around when it comes to Prior's denouement; everyone from Dusty Baker (coughyescough) to pitching coach Larry "Rasputin" Rothschild to team doctors have come under fire for their handling of Prior. In the end though, no one has taken as much heat for the crashing and burning of Mark Prior's career as Mark Prior has.

You guys know what I'm talking about: He's a headcase, a prima dona, he doesn't want it bad enough, he's afraid to pitch through pain, yada yada yada. From time to time, I've subscribed to and even advocated some of these views. At times, I've been extremely critical of his mental toughness and desire to pitch at the big league level.

But is nothing if not a bitch, which is probably why I injured my shoulder last summer while carrying a giant bag of baseball equipment. For a couple of days, I couldn't raise my arm over my head; I wore a sling for a while because I kept surprising myself with white hot pain every time I "forgot" I was hurt and tried to use my right arm. Over the last 6 months, the pain has reached a tolerable level, but it's never gone away. And it comes back with a vengence whenever I engage in any kind of lateral movement, like . .  oh say. . .  trying to open or close my patio door because my stupid dogs have to go in and out 10,000 times a day.

As we inch closer to Spring Training (and I do mean inch, bah!) I intended to write a post, directed a Jim Hendry, detailing all the potential, crappy, bottom-of-the-barrell free agents I don't want to see on this team come April. However, after reading Jerry Crasnick's rundown of the remaining free agents on the market, there are way too many for my purposes. And besides, I don't really want to remind Hendry that, for example, Kevin Gregg is out there and on the clearance rack. Or that both Adam Kennedy and Jose Contreras are still looking for work.

With that in mind, I decided that a better idea is to look back at Hendry's past signing mistakes and identify how we can avoid them in the future. We're looking at broad themes and lessons here, people. (And yes, this list isn't all that different from "Worst Cubs of the Decade" and "Most Hated Cubs of the Decade." I'm trying to give us something to talk about until Spring Training. Sue me)

I originally thought I would alternate good lists and bad lists, so as not to drive the fan base too deep into a winter-in-which-we-do-nothing-to-improve-our-team-related depression. However, after much relflection, I think we'll get all the angst out of the way right from the beginning, leaving the "best of" lists for last. Like I said, LOHO's intent is to force you to deal with your Cubs issues, leaving you free to start the New Year in a peaceful and enlightened state.

Enjoy.*

* Due to the unusually high-volume of hated Cubs in the 2000s, I'm sure I have forgotten someone, if not someONES. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments.

To be honest, a lot of the chat on Twitter right now is making my head explode. I know a lot of us are hopeful with the Winter Meetings starting next week in Indy, so let me take a moment to crush your spirit in advance.

Trust me, you'll thank me for this later.

A gallery of the players we won't be getting this off-season:

So yeah, I'm a criminal defense lawyer, news junkie, and general loudmouth, so you knew it was only a matter of time before I had to weigh in on this one. Here goes.

On Friday night, Tiger Woods was leaving his home in Rich People, Florida, when he inexplicably drove into a fire hydrant and then a neighbor's tree. Though he was driving slowly enough that his airbags didn't go off, he was reportedly unconcscious upon police arrival and was taken to the hospital with "serious" injuries.

WARNING: The next few paragraphs of this post are going to be rank with speculation, so if you're the kind of person offended by people being able to make logical deductions from evidence, stop reading now.

My first thought when I heard the news about the crash was that it was a DUI. After all, who leaves their house at 2:30 am and manages to not even make it out of their driveway without hitting stationary objects they've presumably driven around before? When the police stated to the press that "alcohol was not a factor," I assumed that meant they were still waiting for the results of the drug tests.

But when world came down that Tiger's wife, Elin, smashed the back window of Tiger's SUV in a heroic effort to get him out, my response turned to "Oh, so she was chasing him out of the house with a golf club, smashed his back window, causing him to crash the car." (Note: Allegedly) 

Spend enough time in Domestic Violence Court and you learn to spot a domestic dispute at 100-yards. And given that Elin has supposedly changed her story, and the fact that I find it really hard to believe that a slow-motion crash rendered it necesssary to drag someone out through the back window of  their car, this is looking more and more like your typical ghetto domestic fight. (see the photos of the crashed car, with the doors that sure look like they function here). 

Except for one thing.  

As always on Saturdays, I was awake hours ago, scouring the internet for Cubs news for your enjoyment. Unforutnately, today I came up completely empty. I can't find a single Cubs-related item on any of the interweb tubes that hasn't already been posted, discussed, and dissected to within an inch of its life on LOHO.

 So, rather than just give up, I decided to valiantly push forward. Today, I'm just going to post a bunch of funny things I found on the internet.

The above photo is both funny and disturbing. I don't know where Manville is and, frankly, I'm not sure I want to know if there guys there look like that dude. For more hilarious tattoo mughsots, head on over to Fresh Ink, ChicagoNow's great tattoo blog. Though I have to be honest, I'm not sure any mug shot EVER will top these two guys: 

Typical Cards fan at a Morans vs. USA game.

After two days of Tweets from insufferable Yankees fans, it was inevitable that this topic would come up.

I can think of a lot of obnoxious fans in sports. Packers fans come immediately to mind. NASCAR fans are up there for sure (do they cheer for specific drivers, or just for NASCAR in general?). Minnesota Vikings fans, who conveniently forget that they've never won anything, would have to be on the list.

But in order to keep this list manageable, let's restrict it to baseball fans.

If you cheer for another team, you probably think Cubs fans should make the top 5. Ha! Wrong. Why would I call myself annoing? If you want to rip on Cubs fans, get your own blog.

We're out of cheese and revenue!

5. Milwaukee Brewers fans:

They would be higher on the list if they weren't so harmless. Despite the fact that Milwaukee is the 23rd biggest city in America, bigger than Denver, Seattle, Washington D.C, Kansas City, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St. Louis and Cincinnati, they continue to blame their inability to win at baseball on a being a "small market team."  And the fact that America doesn't appreciate cheese-filled sausage and Ryan Braun. Cry me a river, Cheeseheads. You gave baseball Bud Selig, I hope you continue to lose until Brett Favre's kids are waffling about retirement.

If you aren't following this Twinks/Tiggers saga, you're totally missing out.

Here's where we are: Just two days ago, it looked like the Twinks were finished at 3.0 games back in the AL Central. But the Tigers have since lost 2 in a row to the Twinks and the lowly Chicago White Sox, cutting their lead to 1 game with 2 left to play.

Today Nick Blackburn took on Zack Greinke in the game of his life. When Blackburn (recently declared by me to be the cutest thing EVER in the AL Central--I'm a sucker for great facial hair) left the game after 7, the score was 4-2 Twinks, thanks to a Delmon Young 2-out RBI. The Twinks, thinking this game was in the bag, pulled Blackburn and put in Mijares, who promptly gave up 2 runs. It's now 4-4 in the 8th.

The Tigers can clinch tonight in Detroit, but they're running rookie pitcher Alfredo Figaro out there against Freddy Garcia and White Sox team with a chip on their shoulder. Long story short, this race could be all even by the end of the night.

It's a cloudy, lazy afternoon here in Chicago, perfect for ruminating on all the things in life currently contributing to your depression. Of course, the Cubs are right up at the top of the list.

But if there's one thing that can make despair a little easier to bear, it's wallowing along with a good song; one where you know the artist feels your pain. Personally, when my misery is in need of a little company, I lean towards Iron and Wine, Damien Rice, and The Mountain Goats. And, of course, no one is better at fleshing out every nook and cranny of your pain than Johnny Cash.

Quit playing with the wildlife and do your damn job. (Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune)

I'll be honest. This team has been hard to love from the beginning.

I tried, I really did. But it was hard from the get-go. We kicked off the season by saying goodbye to two of the most popular athletes in Chicago (thus rendering my "I got to second base with Mark DeRosa" t-shirt irrelevent), and welcomed in the perpetually grumpy Uncle Milty, a wee former Cardinal who is bad at baseball, and some closer who looks like the guy who tutorued me in Calc in college.

It only got worse from there.

I just want all of you haters, who couldn't WAIT to run him out of town, to know that my beloved Felix Pie just HIT FOR THE CYCLE against the Angels.

That is all.

Photo courtesy of Chicago Tribune.

I think we all agree that this is an action of unmitigated douche-i-ness that reflects poorly on Cubs fans as a whole.

Uncle. We all get it.

What has bothered me today, far more than the idiot who thought it was a good idea to dump his beer on an opposing player (and then had the termerity to point at someone else. . . in the age of DVRs, no less), is how in vogue it's suddenly become to bash Cubs fans. Who is doing the bashing you ask? Why, other Cubs fans, of course.

Wanted: New LOHO Editor to be enirely at my beck and call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Love of baseball and bizarre sense of humor a must. Photoshop skills a plus. Outside life will be considered a negative.

In all seriousness, I have a lot of help running this site. From Carl doing headlines almost every morning to the editors who jump in at a moment's notice and put up a game thread or post on breaking baseball news, it takes a village, people. From the inception of this site, we've sort of had a revolving staff of editors. People contribute when they can, and when life pulls them in another direction, someone else steps in. Right now, we have a lot of editors being pulled in other directions, and LOHO is requiring more work than ever, especially with the explosion of FB and Twitter. For that reason, we're looking at add one (maybe two) new editors to the LOHO staff. If you're interested in helping out, please email me at leagueofherown (at) gmail (dot) com. Lurkers are welcome to apply.

We haven't had an off-base diary around here for a while. For those of you new to LOHO, this is something we used to do over on the old LOHO to kill time on off-days or while waiting for night games. Here we go:

We start today over at The Heckler, where truer words have never been spoken: