The Cubs Convention is not just about Ryan Dempster showing what it looks like when he rams a moose up his ass. No, it’s that and so much more.

This year’s was no different. Every year I go to the convention with my dad and every year I come back and tell you funny stories about the convention that have nothing to do with the Cubs.

This year was no different.

I know you think I make this stuff up, and if I heard this story, I’d think somebody was making it up, but there’s a guy at StubHub who could verify this. Friday about 6 p.m. my dad and I were down in one of the exhibition areas having dinner and as we found a spot to sit down, I see none other than the writer of boring Cubs books, George Castle waving his reporter’s notebook in a guy’s face. Dad and I sat down so we were right behing George and we could hear the conversation. He was waving the notebook because he was trying to impress the guy he was talking to with the fact that it contained the home phone numbers of a couple of Cubs’ greats. Yup, take a moment to imagine the current Cubs players who George Castle would think would impress somebody.

Think about it.

Think a little more.

Did you guess Daryle Ward and Ryan Theriot? No? Well, those were the correct answers.

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but eventually it became clear. George has a radio show he’s syndicated to some of the lowest wattage AM stations imaginable and he was trying to convince a guy from the Stub Hub booth (which was within six feet of where they were sitting–and the guy had a Stub Hub golf shirt on, which is a clue even I can grasp) that they should advertise on his show.

The phone numbers were supposed to prove to this guy that George can get the big guests. Wow.

He told the guy that he hears the Stub Hub commercials on the Score and ESPN 1000 and “I know I can get you better numbers than them.” I think he meant in terms of listeners but he may have just been offering the guy a date with Ryan Theriot.

The best part? The guy he was sitting with said he was always looking for extra work and said he’d sat down with George to see if George needed a production guy for the show. Here’s George thinking he’s got a big-time Stub Hub exec on the hook and instead it’s a 22 year old looking for a part time job. Tremendous.

Decorum prevents me from telling the next story. It involves a Goat Rider, a kleenex and a chess book.

Oh, screw decorum.

At the Sports Central broadcast Friday night my dad and I sat down and a couple of seats down sat a guy I thought was Byron from Goatriders.org. Now the Goats are obviously friends of Desipio, and I was going to say hi to Byron but I wasn’t sure if it was him or not. I’d seen him a couple of years ago at the convention when he ran his own site, The Cubdom (which I always thought he misspelled–wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and he’d been wearing a Cubdom t-shirt that time, so I knew it was him. So I’m sitting there, pretty sure that it’s him, but not sure.

OK, the broadcast starts and everyone is being bored to death by Dave Kaplan and some guy near us is blowing his nose. You hear it once and you barely notice it. You hear it twice and you think, ‘Uh oh, somebody’s got a cold,’ you hear it five times in about two minutes and you want to bash the guys head in with a folding chair. People in front of us are turning around and looking annoyed.

Finally, I turn to see who is mucus harvesting at such an impressive rate, and it’s Byron! Hey, that’s no big deal. Everybody blows their nose. I couldn’t figure out why the lady in front us seemed to aghast at it. It was annoying, but she looked like he was taking his pants off or something. Then, I saw it.

If Spauling Smails had eschewed his nose picking for something else, this would have been it.

But here’s what Byron was doing. He was blowing his nose, then opening the Kleenex to check his handiwork.

Hey, I admire a good snot blast as much as the next guy. Men are fascinated by body discharges. Who among us doesn’t lift a cheek to check out the quantity of our evacuations?

But it was the dogged persistence with which Byron kept doing it that was petrifying the Sports Central crowd.

But wait, there’s more.

When you to the seminars at the convention they are usually and hour and things move pretty fast. But since the Sports Central one is actually the radio broadcast there are lots of dead spots (and not just when Kaplan is interviewing Oneri Fleita). Byron was prepared.

He had a book.

About chess.

That he was holding a good two inches from his face. I don’t mean he was hunched over reading it on his lap. I mean the opposite. He was holding the book straight up and down directly in front of his face, almost like he had eyeholes cut out in the book and was spying on someone across the room.

This really creeped out the lady and little kid sitting next to us. Now, I’m enjoying this because I think I know who this is, and I’m fascinated by odd behavior, and Cubs fans are easy marks when it comes to that.

But at about 8:15, Mike D. comes into the room looking really annoyed. Turns out, he was looking for Byron. But Bryon was nose deep in a book on chess and never saw him. I was going to flag Mike down but frankly, he looked like he was going to hit the next person who looked at him. I let it pass. Then about 10 minutes later dad and I grabbed him and took him to the bar.

Byron went up to his room to mold a makeshift chess piece set out of soggy Kleenex.

Desipio night at Kitty O’Sheas was another success. We had an assorted gathering of the best of the Desipio Message Board, and this time there were women! Well, OK, only one of them is an actual member–smg stopped by with one of her friends (and I hope she bought that friend a few drinks or a car for putting up with us). But Fork (who pretended to be Al Yellon) brought his wife (the wife and lack of wax paper wrapped bologna sandwiches gave him away), my wife was there, a couple of ladies from Rockford came over and hey, Pre brought his girlfriend, Apex was there so every single woman in Cook County was trying to bust down the doors. The whole thing was just as much fun as in year’s past, but we looked much less loserly in the process.

Len Kasper stopped by and hung out with us again, which is always a lot of fun. My wife is beyond impressed with how nice he is. The best part was just after we reminisced about the slumpbuster who wouldn’t leave him alone at Kitty’s last year, we turned around there she was!

Last year she was ragging him about how much she liked Chip and how she missed him. This year she was telling him he’d had a good year and she was warming to him. Gee, thanks lady.

Not long after she left, a lady came by to complain to him that when he and Len did their broadcast from the bleachers that WGN set up in her spot in the bleachers. It was at that point I told Ronnie Woo Woo that the lady had stolen his window squeegee. That was the end of her.

It was a great time and the irregulars were there, me and Chuck and TJ and Kermit and I apologize if I’ve forgotten anybody, because–well, I got drunk. Hey, it happens.

Like Oleg.  I mean, how can you forget Oleg?

OK, one last tidbit from the convention. I love the customized jerseys that people get. I don’t understand why you would still wear a Prior 22 or a Pierre 9, but hey, you spent good money on it, I guess that’s why. I still wear my Nomar t-shirt, just not in public.

But this one was the best of the convention.

So many questions cropped up in my mind.

– Maybe she bought that when Jose Macias was a Cub, and she thought it was his name because it’s what fans yelled a lot when he played?

– Why the J. Christ? Did his brothers Felipe and Matty play for the Cubs, too?

– He must have great with the sacrifice flies and bunts?

– And come on, you know Jesus would have tucked his jersey in.

It was a lot like the discussion Chuck, TJ and I had at Kitty’s. There was a douche wearing a Cubs jersey that he had customized so it was a Caray 7 1/2 jersey.

It pissed me off because it was just so wrong. If it’s a seventh inning stretch jersey, then the number means seven and half innings, right?

Isn’t that the middle of the eighth? Hah!

And TJ pointed out that it was a road jersey. Kind of pointless to have a seventh inning stretch road jersey, right?

Anyway, the convention was a good time. A lot was said, some of it funny, little of it informative.

The best part? We’re only three weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting.

It seems like only yesterday it was October. (Almost literally at this site…)