You know your irrational (and largely overstated) hatred for a player has become outsized when a beat writer from a Chicago area newspaper taunts you with news of that player’s return.
Damn you Gabor Bako. Damn you Bruce Miles.
Actually, this is our fault. It really is.
Only with our support, our undying devotion and our completely tongue-in-cheek admiration of Henry Blanco through our Hank White Fan Club was he able to have the best seasons of his career with the Cubs.
Hank played so well in his time with the Cubs, that now he has too much value for the Cubs to pay him what he’s worth to nap on the bench, grow more forearm tats and wait for Geovany Soto’s hand to go numb.
So Hank’s out (maybe to Baltimore where he’ll soon get to tutor uberprospect Matt Wieters), and the Cubs need a backup catcher.
They already have a guy with the bitchingest middle name of all time on their roster. The guy cut three fingers off his right hand, put them in a plastic bag, took them to the emergency room, had them sewn back on and lit up AAA.
But now the Cubs want to bring Gabor to spring training? To do what? Is he going to spray for bugs? Start the players’ cars on hot days so the AC has kicked in before they get in them? Surely he’s not going to attempt to catch.
We’ve seen that act. It’s unsightly. The guy doesn’t even have an excuse. As far as we know (and I’m going to FOIA his medical records if I have to) he has never had any of his digits reattached.
I know the Cubs need to cut payroll in other places so they can afford to trade for Jake Peavy and sign crazy-assed Milton Bradley, but you can’t skimp on your backup catcher! Screw it. Forget Peavy. You know, that Jason Marquis’ not too bad. Did you know he’s never played on a team that didn’t make the playoffs? And Kosuke just needs some time to adjust to America. Very few people know he was always tired from staying up late every night to watch Carson Daly. He’s not even really Asian, his eyes just looked like because of lack of sleep! He’ll be fine!
Just bring Hank back.
I mean, look how upset you’re making him!
Two other quick things.
First, stop all of the hand wringing about Kevin Towers putting a supposed deadline on the Peavy trade. The man has no leverage at all. His owner wants the payroll slashed, so he has to trade Peavy. Jake is screwing him now by saying he’ll only accept a trade to the Cubs. There is no deadline. Jim Hendry can afford to play hardball (and he’s doing it right now by trying to work out a deal without trading Mark DeRosa if he can). Peavy’s going to be a Cub. It’s just a matter of time. The only thing Towers can threaten right now is to keep Peavy, but it’s a completely hollow threat. He knows it, and the Cubs know it.
Second, Bea Arthur must have been drunk when he wrote his whiny column today about how it’s so bad that the big bad Yankees can overpay and guys like CC Sabathia end up going to play for teams they really don’t want to. Holy shit, do you think Bea actually believes this?
And check out the money line in the whole steaming thing:
While Sabathia was happy in Milwaukee, going 11-2 in 17 starts, how could he tell future generations of tall, heavy-set Sabathias that grandpa had left $50 million or more on the table to stay in Wisconsin? He’s just a man, after all, and all men can be money-whipped.
This seems to be the opinion of most of the dimwits who make up about 95% of the sports media. CC loved it Milwaukee, they say. He thought it was a great experience, they say.
Why? Because the day he was packing up his locker one of them asked him if he liked it in Milwaukee and he said, “Yes.”
I’ve been to Milwaukee, chances are you have been too. It’s just kind of there. If you like fat German women and tubed meat you’re in heaven. Truth is, the town is actually shrinking. The population is going down, and has been for 40 years. In the ’60s there were three quarters of a million people living there. That was a 16 percent increase from the census ten years before. It’s gone down every decade since to under 600,000 now. Because people in Wisconsin are conversely getting fatter every decade, the combined weight of the population is unchanged since the 1960s. That’s probably why they desperately wanted to keep CC.
Truth is, Sabathia didn’t pick the Yankees over the Brewers. He never intended to stay there. He wasn’t going to take his big free agency chance and sign with a team that hopes to build up and contend for a year or two every seven or eight years. He had it better in Cleveland than in Milwaukee.
He chose the Yankees over the California teams who decided not to come close to matching the Yankees’ offer on him. He wanted to pitch for the Dodgers or Giants, but neither made him a significant offer.
You can cry about how the big, bad big market Yankees stole CC from the place he loved (for the three months he was there) with their big baskets of cash, but you’d be very wrong. The Brewers offered him $100 million and the same three year out clause that the Yankees did. He didn’t pick the Yankees just because their offer was $60 million more, he picked them because their offer was $60 million more and because they weren’t Milwaukee. For better or worse.
We’ll have to pour a glass of Dos Equis on the Michigan Avenue curb in front of Shitty O’Keas next January in honor of our man Hank. Sniff.
far be it from me to defend Milwaukee – as a Madisonian, I only go there when I absolutely have to. But I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and let you speak badly of cased spiced or cured meats. And it’s especially appalling coming from a resident of the fatter of our two states:
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/
(2007 obesity rates: IL 24.9%, WI 24.7%. That’s right, bitch: we got you by .2%.)
That said, okay: Milwaukee isn’t someplace I’d go on purpose.
is dead! Dead tired of being a Padre.
http://hotstove.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/12/peavy_deal_to_cubs_dead.html
His name was Peavy, he was a showgirl…
The Cubs have backed out of the Peavy negotiations for now because they want to lure Hank back into the fold.
Anything to avoid bringing back Gabor.
Paul Bako is the only major leaguer I have more dingers than. Boy am I going to have fun with him when he comes to bat next year.
Adam Eaton Pussy hates me with every fiber of his soul
Mmm… cured meats
On Yahoo I wrote that the Cubs still think they’ll get Peavy, they just chose not to abide by Kevin Towers’ phony deadlines. I wrote that the deal’s complicated because it involves three teams (maybe even four) and the Cubs have to find somebody willing to take on a fair hunk of Marquis’ contract.
Apparently the big hold up in the Peavy deal was that we couldn’t find a taker for Marquis.
Also look like Ibanez will go to Anahiem
I never liked Henry Blanco until he became a Cub. And I resisted at first; he was a horrible hitter, the tattoos were kind of gross, that sort of thing. Then he managed to hit the first year here, and I developed a fondness for Hank White. When he got his last contract from the Cubs, I thought it was a little much for him at the time and that he was unlikely to repeat his previous Cub performance. And he went out and solidly proved my ass wrong. And now that he might leave I feel like a nine-year-old watching my best friend waving to me out the back of his family’s station wagon as they move to the other side of the country.
Or something like that. The crap you have to put up with when your team can’t manage money. First my “We’ve Got Wood” shirt becomes obsolete, and now adios Hank.
And I’d take solace in the fact that Koyie would be our back up, only for the fact that Koyie’s a bad ass, but noooo, we have to bring back Bako. Why? He’s left handed.
YOu know who else is left handed? Aron Ralston. Why not sign him?
Who can forget how Gabor avoids contact at home plate by either missing the throw or by moving way out in front of the plate to field it? That guy just pi$$es me off. But check out the fantasy comparisons at the bottom of Koyie Hill’s page (thanks for the link Andy). -8??????
I go both ways! You don’t need Gabor.
#13:
Call me.
I can attest to me being a much better town than Milwaukee, WI.
My sister is left-handed, and I’m pretty sure she has more major league HRs than Bako. She once scored 100 pts. in a high school basketball game, so I’m pretty sure.
bako sucks