Timing in life is everything. Within the span of a couple of hours today, two overplayed, overblown and overindulged stories came to their conclusions. Chicago Cubs towelboy Mark Prior had to leave an extended spring training (little league for grown ups) start with a sore side. Don Imus got fired from his radio show.
The timing works out fine. Imus runs a ranch in New Mexico for terminally ill children. Prior will make an excellent camp counselor. He can piss and moan about his maladies and make the kids feel better about only having stage three cancer.
The Imus story just goes to show that if somebody decides they want to act morally outraged at anything, they can probably convince a lot of guilt-ridden white people to start apologizing.
The Prior story just needs to go away. Enough, already. We get it. Your body has decided not to allow you to play baseball anymore. Go put your USC degree to use and leave us all alone. There have to be dozens of Burger Kings in southern California that could use a general manager with really big calves. We all like Jeff Samardizja better anyway. And when he gets hurt in two years, we’ll have moved on to some other overhyped prospect. We’re Cubs fans. It’s what we do.
Back in my younger days, I allowed myself to fall victim to hyperbole. I once referred to a healthy (imagine that, such a species once existed–we’ve got pictures and everything) Mark Prior as the best pitcher we’ve ever seen. Truth is, that was ludicrous. But he was pretty damned good. He seemed too good for the Cubs to screw up.
Yeah, we know better than that. We always have. Once and while we just throw caution to the wind and decide to “believe.” It’s never rewarded.
So what do the Cubs do now? Do they keep rehabbing him and putting up with his inexplicable petulance? Well, yeah.
Lovely how a couple weeks ago he reacted to news that he was being demoted to AAA because he wasn’t ready to pitch in the majors with a sarcastic, spoiled-rotten display. He said he was “just an employee.” He acted as though the Cubs had morally wounded him by daring to send him to Des Moines to try to get himself in shape to throw a freakin’ baseball. He made it seem like he was ready to go. Ready to hop into the rotation and start pitching the Cubs toward their destiny. (Fourth place.)
Two weeks later he still hadn’t pitched again. Finally he did today. And he got hurt.
How typical.
He’s not just an employee. If he was he’d have run out of sick days long ago.
So what do we do? Do we watch the Cubs burn through fifth starters like Alyssa Milano while we cast a hopeful glance off to the west hoping that Prior rides in to save the day?
Not even we are that pathetic.
Chances are that some day the right field glory hole doors will fly open and Prior will walk in. Not like Randy Johnson marching in on no days rest to pitch the ninth inning of game seven of the World Series, but more like Wild Bill Holden, pink legged, sweating and begging for a beer like he walked from Arizona to Wrigley.
The fans will rise and give him a standing ovation even though he hasn’t done a damn thing for years. He’ll throw out a ceremonial first pitch and the ball and most of his right arm will end up somewhere around the third base line fungo circle.
Then Jason Marquis will give up nine hits and 10 runs in the first inning and life will go on as it has for 98 years.
Has any one else had the thought that Prior is faking it? Or at least exagerating his pain? His petulant child act two weeks ago showed us he did NOT want to be AAA camp. He took the full 72 hours to report there. He obviously is pissed as hell at Cub management. I see this as him saying “fuck you Hendry” – I mean.. it’s not like his stock is so high a team will ever want to trade him.. i say he’s burning the horse he rode to the dance on.
Mark Prior reminds me a lot of Meg Ryan. In 2003 I would have made love to Mark or Meg. Now, no way in hell.
I’ve always loved you, $1 Beers. Don’t ever change.
Prior can go into business with Todd Marinovich.
I TOLD YOU SO!
I TOOOOOOOLD YOOOOOOUUUUU SOOOOOOOOO!
I Told YOU SOOOOOOOOOOO!
See you on next year’s premier of “The O.C.” Marky.
It’s over.
Love the Alyssa Milano line. Gold, Jerry.
You forgot to mention my hairy back.
Dolan chimes in from the sticks that black people are only ACTING outraged at patently racist comments. Dirtbags who live in hick towns that are 97% white and
Dolan chimes in from the sticks that black people are only ACTING outraged at patently racist comments. Dirtbags who live in hick towns that are 97 percent white and less than 1 percent black ought to keep their ignorant assumptions about how people are allowed to feel to themselves. Don’t spread your hate by calling people who were insulted liars, too.
Awesome post you fuck up. Learn the internet.
I learned that typing the less-than sign on this page of the internet drops the rest of the post.
This sentence–
“keep their ignorant assumptions about how people are allowed to feel to themselves.”–
makes me.
Igorant ASSUMPTIONS about how people are ALLOWED to FEEL?
What does that mean?
You broke my brain, dipshit. Go troll somewhere else.
I’m not sure who is more relevant these days: Don Imus or Mark Prior.
But if anyone wants proof that we’re all in trouble it’s that Al Sharpton is relevant and that people would actually give him a podium.
It would be nice if “diamond merchant” and “white interloper” Yankel Rosenbaum and of course Steve Pagones could have their lives back, and if maybe Sharpton could “pay the price” for the damage he’s inflicted.
But sure, let’s act like this is an important issue and this somehow diminishes Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team and their accomplishments. People are insulted needlessly all the time. It only says something about the insulter.
Maybe he should be fired, maybe not, but Sharpton and Jesse have warned this is only the beginning. If you think the current FCC crew is bad, wait until Rev. Al goes Big Brother all over the airwaves.
8.4 percent of our population is black and 85.1 percent is white.
For “shocker” boy (did he go to Wichita State with brain surgeon Ben Christensen or rocket scientist Cliff Levingston), 8.4 percent is greater than 1 and 85.1 is less than 97.
Andy Dolan doesn’t live in Rockford
No but he lives in me, the Rockford Metropolitan Statistical Area, and he works in Rockford.
Gee, do you think maybe he was talking specifically about the equally racist and bigoted assholes who were the biggest mouths advocating Imus’s punishment? Do I even have to list for you the public bigotry of an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson? Get a fucking grip.
I’m the opposite of that dipshit #9.
At least I can reasonably make sense of the whole idiotic affair.
Also, read Jason Whitlock.
I’m still rereading the post trying to figure out who I called a liar?
Re-read it 100 times, Andy.
It’ll come to you.
You know, it used to be that white people and black people drank from different drinking fountains and ate at different lunch counters.
Now, when you listen to Imus “outrage,” people are saying that whites and blacks should use different vocabularies. Is any better? Might it even be worse?
And yes, Al Sharpton deserves to be Hitler’s and Arafat’s bitch in whatever corner of hell the anti-Semites are sent to.
quick name last years runner-up in womens college basketball – for that matter name any runner up ever in women’s college basketball. These Rutgers players should be paying Imus for the exposure he has given them , without his retarded comment the Rutgers b-ball team would relegated to the scrap heap of all the other forgotten runners – up. 10 years from now everbody will know that Rutgers came in second in girls errr women’s ncaa hoops thanks to Imus. by the way since when is it such a great accomplishement to make it to the championship game and get your chick brains beat in by other dames? Second place is the first loser thats all great job lady scarlet knights nice accomplishment.
I know I’m gonna go to hell for this, but I thought it was the funniest bit Imus ever had in his whole 30 years of wasting our oxygen. If ur gonna go out, go with a bang.
Oh, Prior? He’s a nappy-headed ho, too.
I expect this kind of bullshit Imus defense from White Sox fans, not Cubs fans.
Imus is a fucking clown who wants to have it both ways: Be a shock-jock a la Howard Stern, and a serious political commentator with regular visits from the ruling class and media elite. You can say all the dumb shit you want, but then don’t expect the Tim Russerts, and Joe Liebermans, and Hillary Clintons, and Barack Obamas of the world to agree to kiss your ring every week.
Also, if you want to call, let’s say, Queen Latifa, or God forbid Oprah Winfrey a nappy-headed ho, it’s not even in the same ballpark as calling a bunch of teenage basketball underdogs nappy-headed hos. What the fuck did those girls ever do to you/him to deserve that? Making fun of the rich and powerful is way, way different than picking on college freshman girls for NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL…other than the fact they were…
oh yeah, BLACK!
One more reason not to follow Cubs baseball. You all are as lame-brained as your retarded relatives on the South side. You must lead very sad little lives as the persecuted white majority. What with all those African American girls taking your right to listen to Imus away.
And yes, Prior is a nappy-headed ho.
And Kerry Wood is done too.
But he’s not a nappy-headed ho.
Imus didn’t pick on the girls because they were black. He did because they were ugly. But he used a characteristic associated with African-Americans, and so other African-Americans — always ready, willing and able to play victim yet again — played the race card. He calls them “ugly hos” and everything is fine, whether they are young girls who didn’t ask for any of this or not. It is accepted at this place, in this time, to call out anyone for being ugly. (Fat works, too.) Most of the articles that attacked Imus referred to his age, his wrinkled face, etc.
I listened to Imus’ show for the period I was in NYC. My main issue with his show was that his flunkie, Bernard (a) did n****r jokes that were not funny and (b) they featured two voices for every black person on the planet (e.g., the voices for Maya Angelou and Diana Ross would be exactly the same). But people who claim Imus couldn’t have it both ways — cranky shock jock and perceptive interviewer — overlook that he in fact DID have it both ways for almost 20 years.
They key is that the MSNBC exec who fired Imus had to check with his black employees for feedback (and Al Roker, long the butt of Imus barbs, had an agenda for agitating for his dismissal). He couldn’t check with his black colleagues, because he doesn’t have any. The real scandal is that, as we act more and more as if we embrace diversity, the fact is that we are culturally more and more balkanized, and employment patterns for senior corporate positions haven’t changed much over the past 40 years. This embracing of diversity is a fake, a preposterous lie. Five years from now, Imus will still be gone, no one will use NHH without condemnation, and the ranks of senior corporate execs will still generally be devoid of people of color.