The Cubs are still playing. Apparently, because there are games left on the schedule they will continue to play, and that’s nice since they’re being paid to do it and just about every seat at Wrigley has been sold for the rest of the season. Some people still think the Cubs are playing for something. In truth, they are. They have been eliminated from the NL Central race, but they are still “alive” (in the stomach tube Terry Shiavo sense) in the Wild Card. They have no realistic chance, but hey, until you’re gone, you’re there.

Huh?

But here’s the thing that chaps my ass. It’s the supposed importance of finishing above .500 for the third straight season. The Cubs haven’t done that since the late 1960s. If I were the team, I’d try to keep that quiet. It’s not embarassing, it’s humilating. That’s right up there with “I haven’t seen a woman naked in 27 years” or “I just bought the new Loggins and Messina album.” Some things you don’t talk about. This should be one of them.

But given how everything the Cubs do has the crap marketed out of it, I expect they’ll be selling t-shirts commemorating the feat (if it happens, which is no certainty with this bunch) and they’ll have patches made up for next year’s uniforms.

“Cubs: Slightly better than average, 2003-2005!”

Matt Murton got another start, and he got three more hits. He’s hitting .354 as a big leaguer. If he retired today he’d have the fourth highest batting average in big league history behind Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Joe Jackson. Of course, like Randall Tex Cobb, Bruce Hornsby and Jermaine Jackson, he would not have enough career at bats to qualify.

But there’s good news anyway. Murton’s ability to hit, at a young age, with surprising pop and impressive patience is starting to convince Dusty Baker that maybe…just maybe…the kid might be good some day.

Gasp!

See, this is the kind of thing that they pay Dusty four million dollars a year for. Not every baseball man could look at Murton and his .354 batting average, .426 on base average (nearly .200 higher than Corey Patterson’s) and .573 slugging average (higher than E-ramis Ramirez’s by the way) and say such glowing things about a guy as this:

“I’ve had my eyes open already about Murton,” Baker said. “I just don’t jump on bandwagons. He’s played outstanding. He’s hitting the ball hard and running the bases. I believe, unless you have a superstar like Miguel Cabrera, that you get young players in against guys they can have success against to build their confidence. This young man is performing well. He works hard and he’s a smart player.”

So see, Dusty’s not just praising Murton, he’s taking credit for it. See, it was Dusty’s sage usage of Murton (you know, by sitting him on the bench while Todd Hollandsworth and Corey Patterson and Jody Gerut and a host of other clowns all distinguished themselves and the Cubs lost game after game after game) that brought Matt to this point.

Since Murton has never been a good hitter anywhere else in his career, it’s all Dusty’s doing!

Except, that well, you know, Murton was a tremendous hitter, everywhere he’s ever been. Georgia Tech…the Red Sox system, the Cubs’ system…on MVP Baseball 2006 at my house, anyplace.

And I loved this line most of all…

He’s hitting the ball hard and running the bases.

He’s running the bases so well, that Dusty had Corey Patterson pinch run for him over the weekend in San Francisco. Never mind the fact that while Corey is very fast, that Murton, himself is pretty fast, and that unlike Patterson, Murton actually knows where second base is. Patterson, predictably was picked off first.

Dusty also had some wise words about Corey.

Paul Sullivan wrote this in today’s Tribune.

Baker admitted he “sometimes” considers leaving Patterson on the bench at Wrigley Field because of the booing.

What Paul didn’t say was that when Dusty considers leaving Patterson on the bench at Wrigley Field, is when the Cubs are on the road.

You can almost see Corey sitting in a darkened park, on the bench wondering when the game is going to start. Maybe they should tell him it’s a day game today and see if he gives up and leaves before everybody shows up?

——————–

Last night when I got home, something very cool was waiting for me in my mailbox. No, not Bunny Lebowski’s pinky toe, something better. The set of more than 20 Chicago Bears’ 1985 DVDs from the ubiquitous Bay Ridge Conservative Monthly. I mean, with a quality Web site like that, how can you go wrong?

The DVDs come, via regular US mail in a manilla envelope. Each DVD is in it’s own little paper sleeve and etched in perfect serial killer handwriting on the plain white DVDs are descriptive things like “Wk 1” or “XX pt. 1”. Really, it’s as much a displayable collectible as it is anything else.

Every game is there. Weeks one through 16, plus the playoff wins over the Giants and Rams, the Super Bowl (which is on two DVDs), plus you get a bonus DVD with the game in 1984 when Walter Payton breaks Jim Brown’s rushing record. You don’t want to know what else happened that day, but I think you already do. Never mind, let’s not speak of it again. F@#$ing Jim Frey… Anyway, where was I?

Last night I watched the playoff win over the Giants and the week three, Thursday night extravganza at Minnesota.

The playoff game was interesting. I have, somewhere in my house, both the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl on VHS, so I’ve seen those a few times in the last twenty years. But I hadn’t seen the Giants game since it happened.

Pat Summerall is at his fully kreusened best, and John Madden actually looks younger now than he did then (which, isn’t saying much). Dan Dierdorf is on the halftime show and he seems to think that if Rob Carpenter hadn’t fumbled on the Giants first drive that they’d have scored. See, even then he was a clueless dumbass.

I can’t get enough of the cheesy synthesizer music CBS used during the highlights, or the prominent use of the Glenn Frey classic, “The Heat is On” by some clever producer, given that it was 12 degrees at Soldier Field that day.

After the game there are some Irv Cross interviews with Jim McMahon and Richard Dent, and Brent uses that state of the art 1986 technology to link up Mike Ditka with Rams’ coach John Robinson to talk about the upcoming NFC title game.

One thing about Irv Cross…he was completely useless. When you think that for a long time in the ’80s the CBS pregame crew was Brent Musberger, Phyllis George, Irv Cross and Jimmy the Greek, you can’t help but think that it was the worst pregame show in the history of the world. I’ll bet the Romans had better pregame stuff before gladiator duels. They never went:

“Now before we get to Eustusus against what’s left of the mongrel horde, let’s go to Phyllis George with a profile of Graccus’ wife’s sister. Phyllis?”

The Giants had a fat kicker named Erik Schubert (apparently Ali Haji Shiek was too cold) and when he missed a 20 yard field goal at the end of the first half (the only time the Giants even threatened to score) it was his fifth miss in his last six attempts–all in the playoffs. I’m pretty sure Bill Parcells cut him at halftime.

The best scene of course is Sean Landeta’s first quarter “punt” from inside the Bears’ five. When it happens, Summerall figures it’s been blocked, but doesn’t sound too convinced. Then Madden says, “I was always too chunky to punt. But even I never missed one.” Great stuff.

As great as that was, it paled in comparison to the Bears-Vikings game at the Metrodome.

Let me set the scene.

After getting their asses kicked the last eight weeks of the season in 1984, the Vikings fired Les Steckel and brought Bud Grant back after one year of retirement, and the Vikings started 1985 2-0. So had the Bears, though the Bears wins hadn’t been that impressive. They beat Tampa, barely, in the opener, then thumped the Patriots, but nobody knew the Patriots were any good yet.

In the win over New England, McMahon hurt his back and suffered a pinched nerve in his neck and wasn’t going to play against the Vikings, since the Bears only had three days of practice between the Sunday win over New England and the made-for-TV Thursday night game.

Guess who the announcing crew for ABC was that year?

Frank Gifford was doing play-by-play, which is always amusing, but check out who his analysts were.

Joe Namath…

…and…

OJ Simpson. OJ is worth the price of admission all by himself. He just murders the competition. He slashes his way though the game with reckless abandon, serving up cutting analysis and…you get the idea.

At the beginning of the game, Gifford has both feet firmly planted on the Vikings’ bandwagon. You expect to see him wearing a horned helmet with blonde pigtails coming out of it. He’s going on about what a great job Bud Grant has done and how meany weapons the Vikes have and how it’s going to be tough for the Bears to hang with them. Then he shows a stat where the last time Tommy Kramer started against the Bears he threw five touchdown passes and threw for 350 yards. So it’s going to be a wipeout, according to Frank.

You have to give Frank credit, this was pre-Kathie Lee and he hadn’t had the will to live sucked from his bones (not literally…well, at least not by Kathie Lee, if anybody did any bone sucking it was that stewardess, wait, is this thing on?). But what Frank tries to downplay was the last time Kramer faced the Bears was 1982, you know, when the Bears were awful. Since then Tommy had been hurt, and drunk.

But Kramer had a good game against the Bears. They were still trying to figure out how to make up for the absences of Al Harris and Todd Bell, and Mike Hartenstein was still starting because Buddy Ryan still hated William Perry.

The Bears’ defense is not at it’s vaunted best and Anthony Carter catches a touchdown pass and so does Steve Jordan. It’s 17-9 in the third quarter and Jim McMahon has gone from standing on the sidelines to standing on the sidelines with his helmet on and holding a football.

Frank has also referred to Buddy Ryan as Buddy Curry, and former Oklahoma Sooners’ wide receiver Buster Rhymes is prominently involved in the game. I laughed every time Frank said “Buster Rhymes.” I’m a dope.

It’s jarring, really, to go back in time like that. Steve Fuller slowed the game to a crawl in the first quarter when he refused to run a play until the Vikings’ crowd quieted down. Like that ever worked.

Later, Frank said that the NFL was experimenting with a way to put a radio receiver in the quarterback’s helmet so that the coach could send plays in that way, and that the NFL was looking at implementing an instant replay review system as soon as the playoffs. Kind of weird to hear stuff we’ve gotten so used to talked about like it was something Buck Rogers could only dream of.

So McMahon comes in with the Bears on their own 30. By now we’ve seen the play a million times. But it still is a goosebump moment. Legend has it that the play was a screen pass to Walter Payton, but that Payton saw Dennis Johnson blitzing right up the middle, so instead of going out for the pass, Payton stays in to save McMahon’s ass and block Johnson. McMahon stumbles coming out from behind Jay Hilgenberg and almost falls down, Payton lunges in front of him and nails Johnson who was going to knock McMahon into next week. Willie Gault is sprinting down the left side running his man off the screen play and McMahon throws a perfect pass into Willie’s hands. Willie’s a surprised as anybody to see the ball and that’s probably why he actually catches it. He takes about six strides to go the last 50 yards and the best part of the play is that while the ball is in the air you can hear OJ yell, “I love it!” I have no idea why he yelled it, but he did.

Namath was busy trying to figure out what he was going to say to a then 15 year old Suzy Kolber to convince her to kiss him.

Wilber Marshall picks off a Kramer pass on the next drive and McMahon throws a perfect pass to Dennis McKinnon on the next Bears’ offensive play for another touchdown. McMahon was rolling left and threw all the way back across the field. It was an impressive throw. He didn’t have the strongest arm, but man could he put the ball where he wanted. Too bad he was made out of paper mache.

Frank immediately jumps off the Vikings bandwagon, leaving it to crash and burn in his wake. He starts reading baseball scores every five minutes the rest of the night. The Cubs lost to the Cardinals who kept their one game lead over the Mets and a Kansas City loss and California (not Anaheim, not Los Angels of Anaheim, just Calfornia) win tied up the AL West.

Anyway, the DVDs are even more fun than I assumed they’d be. The Bears are impressive, even in hindsight. They ran a creative offense, which was often hamstrung by the QB du jour, and when the defense was at full fury like they were in the second half of the Giants’ game, you honestly wonder how anybody ever got a first down, much less scored on them.

It’s sad to live in the past (wimps and losers, right Coach?), but from time to time it’s fun to go back and visit Chicago circa 1985.