The Cubs have a second straight day off today (what, you mean they weren’t off last night?) and so it gives us some time to catch up on things that might not be directly Cubs related, and some things that are.

After Sam Zell shook things up by alluding to the chance that the sale to the Ricketts family might go toes-up, the Tribune printed a story that said, as Kevin Bacon did in Animal House, “All is well!”  The sale’s just fine, just a minor quibble about the valuation of the WGN-TV and WGN Radio contracts going forward.  See, just a pittance, really.  Just $50-100 million, nothing to worry about.

Just like I wrote on Friday, finishing this sale is as much in Zell’s interest as it is Ricketts’.  If the Cubs don’t sell to the Omaha family for $900 million they’ll surely sell for far less than that to whoever’s next in line.

And, just like I wrote on Friday, it doesn’t doom the Cubs’ playoff run, but it does doom their ability to trade for players to help them this year–which might doom the Cubs’ playoff run.  Oh, never mind.

Speaking of the Tribune, they have a new Internet venture sure to end horribly.  They started a collection of blogs called Chicago NOW at Chicagonow.com.  For whatever reason, they failed to realize that there already is a Chicago NOW, the Chicago branch of the Chicago National Organization of Women, and they have a similarly named Web site at Chicagonow.org.

Who would possibly want to have their site affiliated with this project?  Well, somebody we all know and like is moving his site there sometime this month.  So I’ll try not to make fun of the entire enterprise, but holy shit do they have some awful blogs.

For instance, if you don’t find Dave Kaplan’s simplistic, banal and often completely nonsensical ramblings on the world of sports annoying enough on radio or television, you can now read the horseshit he tries to pass off as “news.” I think I scared the guy in charge of this project, Jimmy Greenfield, (of RedEye “fame”) by spending more time on my replies to Kaplan’s blog posts than Kaplan spent on the post itself.  But I’m tired of this talentless hack not being called on what he is…you know…a talentless hack.

Unlike on his radio show (which almost brought in as much money as Kathy and Judy did…look out, Kap) where he can just hang up on people who disagree with him, or on his TV show where he and happy idiots like Phil Rogers and David Haugh can chatter dopily about things while the “other” panelist, like Paul Sullivan or Dave van Dyck sigh loudly and look at their watch–on the blog, until I’m banned I get to reply directly to him.

By the way, just how terrible is Chicago Tribune Live?  When a show misses Dan Jiggetts, you know things are bad.  My favorite panels are the ones where Teddy Greenstein sits there stroking his seven hour old “beard” and looks for glimpses of himself in the off-set monitors, while John Crist of the Chicago Bear Report tries to avoid the urge to wave at the camera, as Dan Pompei and Kaplan talk themselves into the idea of moving Robbie Gould to outside linebacker since he’s “paid like one.”  Now that is good stuff.

You probably remember that last year, Dusty Baker basically took a flamethrower to Aaron Harang’s season by asking him to pitch four innings and throw 63 pitches on ONE day’s rest during an 18-inning loss to the Padres in May.

Did you see what Dusty did last week? The Reds were playing the Indians and with two outs in the top of the fifth it started to rain hard enough that there was a delay.  A two hour delay.  Sucks to be the starting pitcher, looks like some lucky reliever is going to “vulture” a win when the game restarts.  Right?

Wrong.  Dusty send Harang back out to finish the fifth.  Harang had to face a couple of guys after the delay but he got his out and the Reds went on to win.

Forget about the lunacy of sending a pitcher back to the mound to pitch again after a two hour delay, Dusty says its not his fault, dude.  He let Harang decide.

“We asked him what he would do if he were us,” Reds manager Dusty Baker said. “He said, ‘Oh yeah, I’d let me go out and pitch.’ I knew he was going to say that.”

Hey, why make a tough decision yourself.  Better to take a pitcher you ruined last season and not tell him “nice job, tough break” and sit him.  No, why not have him do this?

“I stayed loose,” said Harang. “We cleared out one of the bullpen mounds in the batting cage. I went in every 15-20 minutes and did my normal warm-up and then a light 12-15 tosses just to stay loose.

Huh?  OK, so after throwing 81 pitches in 4 2/3 innings, you continued to throw between 20-30 pitches every 15 minutes for two hours while it rained outside.  All because you NEEDED a win on your record so badly?  You know, it’s too bad baseball teams don’t have a guy whose job it is to decide who plays where and when and who pitches when.

So how did Harang fair in his next start, Saturday night in Milwaukee?

The Reds scored three runs in the top of the first and Harang…well, he gave up three runs in the bottom of the first and eight in his four innings of work, and 12 hits, and three homers.  104 pitches in four and a third innings.  Hey, maybe after Dusty took him out he went down to the bullpen and threw for two more hours just for fun?  You know, the way they do it in the Japanese League.

An intrepid reader sent me a link to this Ed Sherman blog piece about former Score and ESPN 1000 show host Dan McNeil.  Seems according to Ed, the Score is trying to bring Dan back.  Why they’d want to do this, I have no idea.  At his best, McNeil is pretty good, better than most of the sports dopes on the radio in Chicago, but he’s at his worst a lot more than his best.  He likes to spend lots of radio time talking about shit that we just don’t care about.  We don’t care if he hates his station’s GM, or if the microphones suck, or if Harry Teinowitz has gas that day (we just assume Harry always has it).  With Dan, his schtick is more about stuff we don’t care about than anything else.  The Score has done a good job lately of letting it’s overhyped “talent” wander off to the end of their careers on that stupid ChicagoSportsWebio.com thing.  Does anybody miss George Ofman or Jesse Rogers, and will anybody really miss OB and Uncle Fuzzy?  There are still a host of useless hosts at the Score, but at least fewer than there used to be.  So why bring McNeil back?

Then again, if Dan’s return means the end of Mike Murphy’s suck-fest, hell, I’ll drive Dan to the station to sign his new deal.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re wondering why Ed Sherman would be talking up McNeil for a radio job like that, check this out. Think maybe it would behoove their little project to have McNeil back on the radio every day?  Nah.  They’re too ethical for that.