Extreme Cubness, Part Deux

 And now with the one-liners, because, come on, they're just sittin' there: 

 So what's next? The Cubs dig up Harry and send him back to the White Sox for a dead guy to be named later?

The Cubs tried to trade their mascot, Clark the Bear, to the Bears, but the deal fell through when the Bears insisted he put on pants.

Cubs: "OK, who wants the scoreboard?"

"Love what you're doing!" -- Bob Nutting, owner, Pittsburgh Cruds.

"Woo-hoo! Now's our chance to get out of last place!" -- The Cruds.

"Hahahaha, just kidding." -- Also the Cruds.

Although now that Jed Hoyer has stripped the Cubs for parts ...

Goodness. What a couple of days on the north side.

Rizzo, gone. Bryant, gone. Baez, gone. Kimbrel, gone.

Season, surrendered.

Not, of course, that the Cubs were going anywhere this summer anyway. Thursday and Friday were, after all, merely the second stage of a fire sale that's been going on all through the current trade season; during it the Cubs have offloaded a total of nine players, including the aforementioned and also relievers Andrew Chafin and Ryan Tepera and starting pitcher Trevor Williams.

I guess if you're gonna do a rebuild, you do a rebuild.

But if it was time, five years after winning the World Series, shedding all your marquee names from 2016 is still a grim business. There is no joy in Wrigleyville today, because what's essentially been over for a couple of years now -- the glory days -- are now officially over. A page everyone was understandably reluctant to turn has been turned.

And now?

Hard to say.  As long as my Cruds are around, the Cubs, even if they go back to being the Cubs, are never going to finish last. So at least there's that.

As for the rest ...

Well. You'd like to think, if you're a Cubs fan, there won't be another 108-year dry spell. But, you know, it's the Cubs, so who knows.

In the meantime, an FYI about your "W" flag:

The Cubs just traded it.

Extreme Cubness

 What they call Silly Season in NASCAR arrived this week in Major League Baseball, and the simoleons are flyin' like confetti. 

The Dodgers are about to send money and a pile of prospects to Washington for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. The Red Sox just raided the Nationals for Kyle Schwarber. And the Cubs ...

Ah, geez. The Cubs.

Let me say this s-l-o-w-l-y, ya bunch of peawits: You ... do not ... trade ... Anthony Rizzo ... to the Yankees.

The Yankees, for God's sake!

The hell are you thinkin'?

And, yes, OK, so it was inevitable Rizzo and the northside were eventually going to part company. But the Yankees? The Yankees are the antithesis of everything Cubs.

 The Cubs are a sun-scrubbed afternoon in wonderful, decrepit old Wrigley, pounding Old Styles and watching the ivy grow. They break your heart and make you smile at the same time. They're Ryne Sandberg and Ernie Banks and Kerry Woods' 20 Ks, and that stupid idiot Bartman, blameless though he may be. 

The Yankees?

The Yankees are some jamoke stealing a baseball from a kid and throwing it at the Red Sox player who gave it to the kid.

The Yankees are a corporate monolith, as gray and soulless as their pinstripes.

The Yankees are the annoyingly perfect Derek Jeter and the annoyingly perfect Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez, who is not perfect but still annoying.

Anthony Rizzo, on the other hand, is the soul of all Cubness. So you send him to the Yankees, baseball's version of TPS reports?

Sure, the Cubs got some juicy prospects in return, but, come on, send him anywhere but there. Send him to Cleveland or San Diego or Tampa, or maybe the Mets. Send him to Philly, where he can commune with the Phanatic. Send him to Boston, even, aka the New Yankees.

Or, hey: What about Pittsburgh? Sure, send him to my Cruds.

On second thought, no. That would be cruel.

Seismic events, and their accomplices

And, no, we're not talking about the 8.2 quake that shook things up off the Alaskan coast yesterday.

We're talking about the latest churning of the Earth's crust in college football -- and make no mistake, it's ALL about football. The Blob played it for laughs the other day, suggesting the SEC was Godzilla and every other major conference would soon be Tokyo, stomped flatter than a manhole cover. But as ever in America these days, satire and reality share increasingly uncomfortable resemblance.

I say this because with Texas and Oklahoma forsaking the Big 12 for the SEC, the latest seismic event has begun. There's speculation the chain reaction might swallow up Kansas and Iowa State, whom the Big Ten  might conceivably covet. West Virginia, which should have gone to the ACC anyway in the last big shakeup, might soon be banging on that door. And everyone else?

Cutting whatever deals with whatever conference they can in a dwindling landscape. And adios, Big 12.

Unless of course it raids the Mountain West, coaxes Nebraska back into the fold, dooms some other conference further down the food chain.

Here's what's different this time around: Apparently ESPN has been actively involved in this process.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby claimed as much when he sent a cease-and-desist letter to the network this week, accusing it of actively trying to lure other Big 12 schools away from the fold. If Bowlsby's right, ESPN is way, way out of line here. As an alleged media entity, it's supposed to report the news, not be an active agent in it.

Of course, that is old-man-shaking-his-bony-fist stuff, here in 2021. ESPN, after all, long ago shed all those futzy journalism rules -- so 1950s, all of those -- to become that curious 21st century hybrid, the media entrepreneur.  As the owner of the SEC Network, it both covers the conference and promotes it. That the latter directly conflicts with the former is just details, conflict of interest being one of those tired 1950s concepts, too.

And yet ...

And yet, there are lines you shouldn't cross. Even if it's not the 1950s anymore.

As for the rest of this, maybe it's time to concede the ground to Godzilla -- aka, Power 5 corporate football. Stomp the current model flat and build a new one that lumps all the major football powers into one entity that operates the way it already operates anyway. Which is to say, as a semipro developmental league for the NFL.

Everyone else can then stop bankrupting their athletic departments trying to keep up. Football may pay the bills, see, but it's also by far the biggest drain on resources. And the latter is far more a factor in lower-tier Division I conferences  -- which is why more than a few schools in those conferences either have dropped the sport or are thinking about it.

The revenue stream provided  by small-time D-I football simply can't keep up with its costs, not when the payoff is some lawn implement bowl in Hog Waller, Miss. It's why so many schools at that level wind up subsidizing football with ever-increasing student fees.

So, sure. Let the big dogs eat, and let the smaller dogs eat better. Sounds about right.

Oh, yeah: And keep ESPN's mitts out of the process.

The limits of greatness

 Let's hear it out there for the tough guys, the wannabes, the never-weres-but-boy-if-they-had-beens. They know what's what.

One of them hammered out a column calling Simone Biles a "coward", and bragged how brave he was to do so because HE was saying what no one else would.

Several others said she was deserting her teammates, letting her nation down, was mentally weak, only quit because she knew she wasn't going to win this time.

Quitter. Choker. All-time choker. Yeah, the Tough Guys hit every mark.

Of course, at this point it must be noted, as Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times does here, that  none of them ever won a world championship with broken toes in a sport where toes are, you know, kinda important.

None of them have been the best in the world at what they do, and worn the bullseye that comes with it, since they were 16 years old.

None of them have been so resplendent and singular at their calling that there are actually gymnastics techniques named after them. Or been the public face not only of gymnastics but the Olympic Games themselves. Or been the public face of sexual assault perpetrated by a grimy perv who was protected by her sport's own ruling body until she and others finally stood up and spoke up.

All of that is who Simone Biles is. All of that makes her tougher than you or me or every Tough Guy who swaggered onto the interwhatsis yesterday to sneer at her.

I don't know much, but I know this: Gymnasts at the Olympic level endure physical and mental stress that would leave every Tough Guy out there curled up in a ball weeping. This is true even at the high school level; I have covered enough of it, seen enough knee braces and ankle braces and every other kind of brace, to know real toughness when I see it. 

When you see a kid successfully negotiate a four-inch-wide beam -- try it sometime -- with everything on the line, that's toughness. When you wince watching some slip of a girl in a bulky brace land a vault and not wince ... that's toughness.

Simone Biles?

She's the greatest woman gymnast in history, and nothing that happened yesterday proves otherwise. All it proved is there are limits even to greatness, and Simone Biles bumped up against them. 

Whatever it is that makes a champion just wasn't there when the team competition began, and after one rotation Biles knew it. To do what she does requires a level of confidence unseen in almost any other sport, because in gymnastics the tolerances are so brutally exact. And if the confidence isn't there ...

Well. Suffice it to say it wasn't.

Suffice it to say it all piled up on Biles at once, and she admitted as much publicly. And so she withdrew rather than risk injuring both herself and her team's medal chances. 

Perhaps more than any other sport, or at least as much, gymnastics at the Olympic level is a game of the mind. And if the mind ain't right, not even the GOAT can do it.

Far from letting down her team, as the Tough Guys and clueless claim, she did what she did for the team. And the United States won a silver medal it surely would not have if a not-right Biles had insisted on continuing.

Call that weak if you want. Make all the phony comparisons to other elite athletes you care to. Drag Kerri Strug into the conversation -- Kerri Strug, who famously landed a vault on a damaged ankle to secure a gold medal in '96 for Team USA.

But if you do, don't forget to mention that she only did it because her psycho coach, Bela Karolyi, bullied her into it. And that it ended her career.

Biles, too, worked with the psycho coach at one time. And was violated by Larry Nassar, the grimy perv. And somehow rose above it all to become what she became.

A weakling, according to the Tough Guys. A coward. A quitter.

Damn. The stupid, it burns.

Your obligatory Cruddy Pirates post for today

 It's been awhile since the Blob last bitched and moaned about his cruddy Pittsburgh Pirates, currently in their customary abode in last place in the NL Central. And by 10 1/2  games, no less!

Nonetheless ... today seems the time. As always, those of you who'd like to leave can exit through the doors at the back of the Blob.

Anyway, today seems the time because the Cruds have again done that thing they do, which is trade one of their few pieces of value for a handful of magic beans. This time the salary dump involved All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier, who at 29 has become so good the Cruds' cheapskate owners were going to have to pay him real dollars.

Frazier leads the majors in hits right now and is batting .327, second in all of MLB. His contract runs out at the end of next season, which means the Cruds had to get rid of him or face the prospect of, you know, paying him what he's worth.

Well. We couldn't have that, could we?

And so off to Frazier goes to the Padres, along with approximately $1.4 million. In return, the Cruds get three more minor leaguers to develop for San Diego or the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Red Sox.

Their names are Michell Miliano, Tucupita Marcano and Jack Suwinski. Remember them, all you actual major-league teams out there.

Someday you may be able to get one of them for a handful of magic beans.

Hoops without borders

 Bad news for you Flat Earthers out there: More proof has emerged that the Earth really is round.

A roundBALL, that is.

This upon the news that France -- France, for pity's sake -- beat the birthplace of buckets, the United States of America, in men's basketball at the Olympics yesterday, which never used to happen. Used to be, the US of A would beat France like a three-egg omelet in basketball, and everyone else, besides. It would be the Stars and Stripes 115, France 47 all the way to the gold-medal game, when the Soviets would lose 95-72 except for that one time when the timekeepers gave them three chances to make the score come out in their favor.

And who forget the monumental farce that was the original Dream Team, which crushed everyone in Barcelona in '92 in the least impressive crushing-of-everyone in the history of games?

Well ... a few years have passed since then. And now any listing of the best basketball players in the world includes Slovenians (Luka Doncic) and Greeks (Giannis Antentukounmpo) and Serbs (Nikola Jokic).

It's an international game now, basketball is, just the way David Stern intended it to be. And so, yes, the US of A is going to lose to France every so often.

I don't know why American commentators who should know better are so shocked by this. But to hear them talk after France whipped the U.S. the other day, it was a major catastrophe for U.S. hoops, and an indictment of Greg Popovich's stewardship of the American side.

But this is an American team that lost to Nigeria and Australia. And the loss to France was the first Olympic loss for the Americans since 2004, when Larry Brown's disastrous tenure as Olympic coach ended with a bronze medal. So it's not like the U.S. is suddenly, I don't know, Iran.

Whom the Americans play next.

And whom FanDuel sets as 37 1/2-point 'dogs.

Bottom line: The U.S. is still going to win a medal, probably a gold one. But if it doesn't, it won't be because the timekeepers gave the other team a couple of do-overs.

Actions and consequences

 The world was too ridiculous to even bother to live in ...

-- Jack Crabb, "Little Big Man"

And, well, OK. So it's not THAT ridiculous.

Yet.

But every day there comes some fresh absurdity from the usual suspects, because the interwhatsis is full of usual suspects. And so here was a columnist -- I'll save him the embarrassment of identifying him -- posting his latest work on Twitter the other day, claiming the NFL's Bastard Plague protocols are "Medical Jim Crow."

Medical Jim Crow.

For the love of all that's holy.

Look. I realize the world has gotten ridiculous enough that loony anti-vaxxers are casting themselves as some sort of persecuted class now. Ostracized! Demonized! Barred from the Woolworth lunch counter!

Or, you know, the 2021 equivalent.

For the love of all that's holy. 

We've got a virus out there that's been responsible for 600,000 American deaths, and now its variant is flooding over-stressed medical facilities again. And yet half the country thinks the vaccines against it will give you autism or shingles or, I don't know, terminal halitosis,  because we just don't know what's in it. Also, masks don't work and are a violation of my personal freedom.

For the love of ... well, you know.

Now private businesses are being equated with 1960s racists and segregationists. And all because they're acting in the interests of public health.

Which brings back to the NFL.

Which has told its players, look, you can get vaccinated against COVID-19 or not, your choice, but as with any choice it could carry consequences. If, for instance, an outbreak among un-vaccinated personnel forces the cancellation of a game, the team with the outbreak will forfeit the game. And the un-vaccinated personnel could be subject to fines.

The NFL is not messing around with y'all, in other words. Nor should it.

Because this is not about liberty or Braveheart shouting "FREEEE-dommm!" or being able to do whatever you want whenever and wherever you want, regardless of who it affects. It's about being responsible, because with freedom comes responsibility. Otherwise it's just licentiousness.

The NFL gets a lot of things wrong, most of them in service to image. But it's got this right.